Phil_H
Nice detail work CJ, she's coming along nicely.
Thank you. I’m enjoying it – it’s a fairly easy yet well engineered kit, which makes for a hassle free build.
SLW 45
Looking very good
What you got planed for paint
Here, let me show you. 
Painting started with the detail parts that would need to be masked before putting on the base color. I used Testor’s Model Master enamels for almost everything on this build.
I wanted a reddish-brown for the cover of the missile launchers located on either side of the “head”, and waffled between Burnt Sienna and Military Brown – the Military Brown won out.
Now, for this kit, I wanted a strong definition between the highlights and shadows – to give the impression of large size and mass, but also to try to copy the paint scheme on the box cover. To that end, when I post-shaded all the colors, I used a high ratio of burnt umber mixed w/ the base, at about a 50/50 ratio. As it turns out, the contrast wasn’t nearly as strong as I thought it would be…
The main guns have some inset stripe-type things on them. These were painted Black, and the I post-highlighted the upper surfaces of them by mixing Neutral Grey w/ the base, at about 25%. Again, not as much contrast as I thought.
For the “eye”, I first airbrushed the whole area Dark Red mixed w/ Black, and then Bright Red in the center. I then mixed a little Chrome Yellow into the red, and sprayed a small spot right in the middle. I kept mixing more yellow in, and painting a smaller and smaller area until I reached the limits of my airbrush. It’s not perfect, but I think it looks good enough.
Front openings in the feet were sprayed Jet Exhaust, as was the inside of the main gun barrels. Neither was shaded, as I liked the way the paint looked already.
The spotlight was first undercoated w/ Anthracite Grey, then painted Steel, followed by a Gunmetal shadow tone sprayed around the edges, w/ some Silver highlighting in the center.
When all that paint was dry, I masked everything off w/ Tamiya masking tape. I also masked the contact points where I would be putting liquid cement later. For such a small kit, there sure was a lot of masking.
Notice that I left the upper hull in two sections. This was to make painting and masking some parts easier, like the missile covers and the eye, but also because the head piece sits on top of the hull, and painting and shading underneath there w/ an airbrush would have been almost impossible otherwise. Also, the head mounted machine guns are fitted into place from the inside, and I wanted to avoid dry brushing metallics in so confined an area when painting them.
Masking done, I airbrushed the whole model Dark Tan. I was worried there might not be enough difference between the Military Brown and the Dark Tan, but it looks okay.
Then I began shading the base color. First, I mixed Burnt Umber w/ the base to get a shadow tone, and airbrushed this all over the undersides of all the parts.
Then I mixed Raw Umber w/ the base, and airbrushed the highlights on the undersides, and all the vertical surfaces. The vertical surfaces were then highlighted w/ the base color, and the upper horizontal surfaces were highlighted by mixing Armor Sand into the base and spraying the inside of some panels, like the top if the auxiliary missile launcher, the searchlight and the head. At this point, the effect is more subtle than I had hoped…
Then I removed the masks to see how everything looked. Unfortunately the paint on the face of the spotlight was ruined - for some reason, the gluey backing from my Tamiya tape stuck to the paint, and couldn’t be removed without pulling up the metallic colors too. So I just tossed the light in some paint stripper and started over.
That done, I fitted the head into place, and glued the two halves of the upper hull together. I then masked the missle covers to keep them from getting damaged during sanding.
The seam between the parts was carefully removed, and the paint process was repeated to cover up the repair. I’m liking it now.
Time to do a little work on the base…