[{HVY-E}Jinxx]

First and foremost.....

GET A DECENT EDITOR. Paint is not very good for skinning at all. If you want something good and FREE, D/L Gimp. It's available on Sourceforge.net. It's a completely free, opensource Paintshop/Photoshop clone. I personally use Photoshop CS3 Extended and Fireworks MX. If you have access to Photoshop, there are a couple of small plugins you will deffinately want to get. One is called remove white (removes all the white from a void, leaving you with just the rivets and panels etc), the other is called remove black, (same kind of deal as the previous).

Then start working with color pallettes and markings. You can find pretty much all you need on Airwarfare.com, mission4today.com, wp.scn.ru (Wings Pallet), and flying-legends.net.