Re: "The Show Must Go On!" Hello Mr. Snowman - updated with more pics and words!
Thank you all very much!! ;D
Decals, Details and ID bands, adding sharpness and interest to the model.
First off I like to add the ID bands. With the roughness of the hand paint, nice, sharp ID bands can do a great deal to pull a paint scheme together. The color doesn’t necessarily need to be contrasting and here an old favourite of light blue for the Mercenary forces always looks right on snow camo.
I didn’t do anything special other than run a line of tape across to give me a base line to paint up to and used Mr. Color Sky Blue and then added more and more of the Snow Camo white wash paint to it until it looked right – it’s meant to contrast to a degree but too much and I feel it ruins the scale effect and looks a little toy-like so knocking it down helps to eliminate this. There are a number of ways of doing it, adding the models base color like this is a good one.
No special techniques, equipment nor product this time (but I will show in the future!), I’ve just left some of the white and dark spots poking through to simulate the start of worn paint which I can work further with abrasives – knife and/or sandpaper. Easy!
Please next have a look at the photo below of the SAFS hatch laid out on the artwork, the decal just doesn’t read right? The color is way off from the artwork and does not contrast enough with white. No problem, re-paint! It’s not as hard as it might sound and an excellent way to practice and build confidence to paint your own markings.
I’m thinking I want a medium, olive green so it doesn’t look too much like the base green-gray. Rummaging through my paint dishes I find a good tone of green and look for a yellow/orange tone to lighten it with. This is yet another benefit of using the Japanese lacquer paints in that I keep these from each model and can then re-use them and produce interesting and very unique colors each time. Mixing some of the desert orange into the green it produces a nice olive green.
Painting this onto the “Eggplant 6? produces a much better contrast but it’s a little too dark and perhaps not olive enough. I go to Gaia Notes paints for help as the most powerful yellow I know of, “Sunshine Yellow†and add a little to my olive green and then highlight the centre of the 6?s. That’s the one I wanted!!
Lastly I paint the “orangy†parts with straight Mr. Color Brown and add a little snow camo base to highlight. The leather padding is painted with a base of Mr. Color Mahogany and highlighted with some Dark Yellow (not sure of this one, it’s been through so many models and keeps changing with each one, I have no idea what it’s composition is now other than it’s my Go-To Dark Yellow dish!).
One little point, please have a look at the manipulator hand in the black background shot – the darker colors read much better on that background. You can see it’s been based with Dark Grey and then that’s a simple drybrush with Mr. Color Brown. It’s not the only way to do it but in this case the best because it then matches and lines up with the Nose and other details. Many easy small things that when they work can really add to your overall model and it’s presentation.
In case you were wondering about the the yellow tape on the leg pipes. It’s easier (at least for me) to put them in, build the model in it’s entirety and then keep paint off them until they are ready. The plastic used is notorious for not having paint stick to it so you’d think I wouldn’t bother right? But that is the issue, any paint I get on them paint way through, especially clear spray coats, start to flake off when handling the model and generally make a mess. I find it saves me a bit of time to run a strip of tape around them and peel it off at the end and work on the pipes just the once.
Weathering coming up soon, thanks for looking through. One more Easter Egg pic on my blog, please head over and hit "like" if you are in the mood. No, I don't get paid for the traffic but it helps me to feel like I am making the world a little happier with modelling!
http://www.scale120.com/?p=3105
Linc
- I tried taking some more pics along the way to break it down into little steps. The bench top/non studio photos might work better for me, they seem to interrupt my flow less which is a good thing. My “studio†shares the same workspace so…
