The last few months have kept me from the bench and the forums and therefore haven't posted much of anything.
As a warm up, sharing something from a build I did late last year. One of the many Bandai 1/144 models. My goal with this one was to treat this as much as possible like a large scale model.
These things are so tiny especially in my meathook hands.
Like all modern Bandai models, clean assembly just happens. So we'll skip that and go into painting. I used filming models photos for inspiration.
Here I painted the nose with a mix of lemon yellow and clear orange. I didn't mix it thoroughly which gave it a look of discoloration due to age and exposure. Everything was so small that I couldn't mask and did it all free hand.
The canopy and cockpit outline is a mix of Medium Sea Grey plus Azure to give it that blueish hue. A thinned version of that mix was used to create a pinwash that I used to color the panels on top of the engines. Finally the center gray strip is plain Medium Sea Grey. I created the wear by hitting it with the tip of a toothpick while it was no longer wet but not yet dry.
I really didn't like the stickers so I scanned and cleaned them up before printing them on waterslide paper. This was my first attempt at this so I printed several different copies of the decals. Which turned out to be fortuitous as each decal took several attempts to apply well. Decals were used for all the red markings.
As it turned out this waterslide paper is particularly susceptible to even the gentlest decal solution. They would literally start to dissolve on the model.
Turns out this was a great way to create a well worn look! Talk about serendipity!
Applied light grey pinwash to make panel lines stand out more. Then did a very light brown wash over the entire model to give it a sense of use and grime.
And of course had to show my custom template for painting the the engine exhaust.
Then pastels, and yadda, yadda. Enough of that stuff, onto the final model!
Really pleased with how much detail I crammed into a model this small.
Reviewing this build has got the boiler fired up. Really want to get some new builds finished and posted!