Gamera

Sorry to hear about the Grissom but glad to see you moving ahead. 

Maybe you could stick the parts in a diorama with some plants and call it a Grissom's wreckage on Genesis dio? I guess there was some... before of course the whole friggin' planet blew up...

 

LOL.

Now theres an idea! 

A wonderful combination of therapeutic destruction with beauty of creation.  Sounds like a parable for how the Genesis planet came about.

Perhaps the remains of the Grissom are embedded in the remains of the Genesis planet?   Possibilities...

Sorry to hear about the Grissom but glad to see you moving ahead. 

Maybe you could stick the parts in a diorama with some plants and call it a Grissom's wreckage on Genesis dio? I guess there was some... before of course the whole friggin' planet blew up...

It's been many moons since I worked on a kit or checked the forums.  Mostly because my workbench is in an unheated garage.  Not cold enough to freeze paints, but cold enough to make fingers ache.

Weather has been nice enough that I sat down to work on the Grissom, looked at it and crummy decals and said F*** this and tossed it into a box and am moving on with my life. 

Starting a new Macross model instead! 

Will post that later.  Now it is time for me to catch up on everything I've missed!

Aww snap on those crummy decals!  And the kit relies on them for a lot of surface details.    Well, the BOP is coming along nicely, impulse engine part notwithtstanding.

Oops!!!!

I did the same thing with the oil cooler on a P-51- you look in there and you can see right though...

Otherwise she looks great, the paintwork turned out fantastic! 

Good luck with the Grisson, I know what you mean about large decals- they're a PITA. 

Hit a little snag on the Bird of Prey.  I thought the clear acrylic part for the engine would just snug into place.  Turns out it looks like it was meant to be inserted as part of assembling the upper and lower hull assemblies.

Pressure sure I'll just crack/break the piece if I try to force it in.  I may trim/grind the tabs down enough to make it a snap fit or remove them entirely and use white glue to secure it.  This and the photon torpedo tube are the final parts.

Here are a couple of shots of the finished hull.

The decals continue to crumble during application and when trying to fix wrinkles and bubbles they shatter under the brush. 

Didn't scan the decals before starting, so no second chances on what's already been applied.  I"ve scanned what remains and will eventually print them out for applying the rest.  The decals have been so frustrating that I'm setting aside the Grissom, again, to regain my calm.

In the meantime, I'm focusing on detailing the Klingon Bird of Prey.  Added some darker wash in a few places, tried darkening some panels with pastels, and clear coated it all to secure it.

Will share some picks of the Bird of Prey once the matte finish has dried and I've had a chance to drybrush some highlights.

Bakster

Oh Wow. Very cool how you did that. Flowing the paint on seems to be the trick. It looks great PG.  Thanks for sharing your process!

It's fun to share things we've tried out .  Never know what might help.

Thinking about it, brush painting has similarities to airbrushing.  The end result is very much dependent upon preparing the paint properly.

You have to tailor the consistency of the paint to match the tool and the results your looking for.

Gamera

So sorta like dry-brushing but with a wet brush? Looks great, the results came out really well! 

LOL, I hadn't thought about it that way, but yeah.  I'm glad you like the results.

PhoenixG

Thanks Gamera & Bakster!

To be honest, masking and airbrushing never crossed my mind.  My brain went directly to brushes.

I used a mix ratio of two drops Vallejo MC + 1 drop of Vallejo black wash.  Using the wash was an attempt to get a 2-in-1 benefit.  Create a darker shade of red so it wasn't quite so vibrant. And thin the paint just enough so that it would flow from the brush without brush marks, and not flood the gaps between the panels.  As it was the paint flowed beautifully from the brush with minimal contact to the surface and stayed where it was placed on the panels.

I started the typical way of using the tip to carefully paint each panel but it was slow and challenging to fill in.

Then there was a light bulb moment.

Rather than using the tip of the brush what would happen if I laid it so the brush head was as near parallel to the panels as possible and used the side of the brush to apply the paint. My hope was the brush would only hit the tops of the panels with paint and avoid the spaces in between.   And it did exactly that!  Using small sweeping motions back and forth over the panels it covered only the tops. Doing it a couple of panels at a time, 2-3 quick passes with the side of the brush and they were filled in with a nice even coating of paint.  It made short work of the whole thing. 

The whole process was an inspiration of the moment and luckily the gamble paid off. 

 

So sorta like dry-brushing but with a wet brush? Looks great, the results came out really well! 

Thanks Gamera & Bakster!

To be honest, masking and airbrushing never crossed my mind.  My brain went directly to brushes.

I used a mix ratio of two drops Vallejo MC + 1 drop of Vallejo black wash.  Using the wash was an attempt to get a 2-in-1 benefit.  Create a darker shade of red so it wasn't quite so vibrant. And thin the paint just enough so that it would flow from the brush without brush marks, and not flood the gaps between the panels.  As it was the paint flowed beautifully from the brush with minimal contact to the surface and stayed where it was placed on the panels.

I started the typical way of using the tip to carefully paint each panel but it was slow and challenging to fill in.

Then there was a light bulb moment.

Rather than using the tip of the brush what would happen if I laid it so the brush head was as near parallel to the panels as possible and used the side of the brush to apply the paint. My hope was the brush would only hit the tops of the panels with paint and avoid the spaces in between.   And it did exactly that!  Using small sweeping motions back and forth over the panels it covered only the tops. Doing it a couple of panels at a time, 2-3 quick passes with the side of the brush and they were filled in with a nice even coating of paint.  It made short work of the whole thing. 

The whole process was an inspiration of the moment and luckily the gamble paid off. 

Yeah the 'feather' details on the lower wings looks great! I'd love to know how you did them too! 

It looks really good! How did you paint the orange panels? Did you brush paint? Mask and AB? Either way, looks good.

Quick share of a couple of the progress shots.

I like what the preshading did here.  Something I will definitely continue experimenting with.

Gamera

They both look good to me. 

The Grissom looks fine in the photos. And I like how the pre-shading is going on the Klingon BoP. 

 

Ditto. Keep at it. Coming along nicely!

They both look good to me. 

The Grissom looks fine in the photos. And I like how the pre-shading is going on the Klingon BoP. 

Started laying out the black preshading and then covering the rest with grey primer.  The hope is it will create further variation in the green and reds yet to be applied.

With having very limited experience with pre-shading I'm looking forward to seeing how this experiment turns out.

Fingers crossed!

disastermaster

Just some help here. Maybe next time spray it all black first, clearcoat it and later mask the area with bluetak. After removing the bluetak, the area should be pretty well defined.

Hey Disastermaster,

The thought had occurred to me.  I was concerned that painting the dark base color would make the overall model too dark so I went with the method shown.

However, I did something similar to your suggestion for painting the center dish a steel color.  I surrounded it with silly putty.

Was pretty happy with the results.

Just some help here.

Maybe next time spray it all black first, clearcoat it and later mask the area with bluetak. After removing the bluetak, the area should be pretty well defined.

The Grissom suffered a warp core containment failure during a test cruise and they had to jetison the core.  There was a flaw in the shielding that wasn't apparent till they attempted warp spped.  It's in spacedock for refit. 

Translation, I tried using Pledge Floor Gloss to prep it for decals.  Rather than going down in nice smooth coats it puddled in globs all over the model.  Never had that happen before.  Setting it aside for now.

While Starfleet is busy repairing the damage to the Grissom the Bird of Prey (BoP) is getting attention.

The BoP is coming together nicely.  Tacked it together for a dry fit and it's looking sharp.  Next up is taking it down to core modules and then priming it.

The Grissom looks great and a couple washes should bring the Klingon BoP to life. I know what you mean, seems something comes up everytime I want to work on something.

Nothing new to show for the past week.  Everytime I've sat down at the bench, something popped up and pulled me away.

It's been a bit frustrating because the Grissom is so close to decals and finally assembly, but can't seem to get the time for it.

Fingers crossed that this week will be different!  

Now that Minmei is done there's more time to work on this pair.

Blocked in a few more areas with color.  Touch ups aren't going as well as I like but hope to get those done in the near future.

Started work on the Bird of Prey.  Lots of flashing to be trimmed and fitting to be done.  Lots of modeled detail though.  I thought pre-shading worked pretty well for the Y-Wing and think it could work well here.  Especially on the wings.

PhoenixG

The Federation ships always look so darn clean which means I don't get to do my favorite part, weathering.   Making the Klingon vessel all dirty will be my reward for being patient with the Grissom.

Lol. That's the spirit! 

Bakster

I agree with Gam. It looks good. Keep at it... 

 

Making the Klingon vessel all dirty will be my reward for being patient with the Grissom.

Gamera

Yeah, she's a small ship. The old FASA ship's manual gave the 'Gargarin' class ships like her a crew of 78. It's probably been reconned at this point though but still she's a small ship.

The included Bird of Prey was a big clue but it just sailed over my head.  Star Trek III & iV pretty much established the size of the Klingon vessel which I think they said was crewed by 15.

Gamera

Also she's got a weapons rating of 0.5 as compared to the Klingon Bird of Prey's 21.4.

With such a disparity in capability it's no wonder she was taken out with one shot.

Of course that got me thinking about the "Undiscovered Country" and Chang and his propensity to quote Shakespeare in the original Klingon.  Imagine what the comm chatter would be like if Chang and Kahn got into a fracas.   I'm thinking Shakespeare in the park, except with photon torpedos and phasers!

I agree with Gam. It looks good. Keep at it...