Resilient Cruiser Part 12 Completed

This has been the most time spent on a paint job for any of my models ever.

I think I spent six full days on it over the past month.
This is down to my attempt to improve my paint finishes while adopting a new (for me) technique.
My old technique mostly relied on using car primer and where anything other than grey or white was required car paint acrylic lacquer spray cans.
The weathering consisted of a liberal wash of Tamiya flat black diluted with methylated spirits (alcohol) which I always called poo juice. When dry this was wiped off with a rag dabbed with methylated spirit cleaning off the high spots and leaving the crevices dark. This was then followed up with a dry brush pass of white students acrylic paint and that was it.
It was a pretty rapid process developed during the very short period of my VFX model making days when stuff had to be done quick and look good for the camera ending up on film. The old rule of thumb was that the camera would only see what you can if you really scrunch up your eyes and squint at the model, which essentially means a lot of detail is lost and the weathering has to be really exaggerated to show up at all.

Times have moved on.  Models if used at all in filmaking these days would be photographed digitally and not on film and my models are now occasionally exhibited and therefore may be seen by the naked human eye.

The first task was to do a colour rough in photoshop to figure out the paint arrangement. I took one of the primer grey photos and fiddled about eventually settling on the scheme below.

I wanted to be able to paint panels in varying shades of a similar hue so I decided to try out acrylic hobby paints with an oil paint based weathering system.
I started dabbling in this process in the previous project, the Moebius-1 but in this this project I took it a bit further.
Starting with the primer grey  and masking off a few areas I wanted to keep light grey, I sprayed the base colour, red oxide car primer from a spray can. I got the underside done and then after starting on the top side the can valve started playing up with paint coming up from under the nozzle. I kept having to wrap bits of rag around under the nozzle to prevent the paint from splashing about all over the place. It progressively got worse and worse and with much frustration and copious swearing I eventually had to spray the left over paint into an airbrush jar and attempt to finish it with my airbrush.

It was a total nightmare and I had lots of primer drying in the air and causing a furry surface. After dry I had to try and retrieve the poor paint surface on the top of the model. I used a scotch brite dish scourer to remove all the fuzz which had the result of making a very faded and weathered looking finish where the underlying grey primer started to peak through. I followed this up with some plastic polish to try and get some of the colour saturation back in the red oxide primer.

In the end I managed to repair the situation and proceed with the panel colour variations.
Ive been watching a number of tank and figure painting tutorials to get some idea of how you use these hobby acrylics and came across the wet palette concept to prevent the paints drying out so fast.
I made one from a sealed sandwich box and some paper towel and baking paper. It works extremely well and I could sit outside all day painting the 3 different panel colours which were made up from a MIG Ammo rust set, mixing the desired colour shifts on the wet palette.
I started applying these shades by masking and airbrushing but then tried to see if I could do it by brushing which would be quicker. Brushing seemed to work fine over the small panels, gave more modulation in the tone than airbrushing and was considerably faster.

Once the acrylic colours were down and dry I mixed up a mix of burnt and raw umber oil paint with odourless thinners and made a wash. It was applied as a pin wash with a fine brush around all the raised detail. This drys in a pleasing dirty but warm colour staying in all the crevices and grooves and works particularly well with the red oxide colour of the panels.

In the grey areas I found although it had a pleasing warm tone it wasn't dark enough. I am used to my Tamiya wash (poo juice) which stains the grey primer a darker colour where as the oil paint does not. Eventually I added some Tamiya wash over the grey ares to darken them up a shade which was what I was originally hoping for.

The other thing I discovered about my old technique is that the white drybrushing only works on grey It didn't really work on the mainly red colouration. I ended up adding a hand painted orange scratchy edge around every panel to simulate wear and tear. After spending nearly 2 days on this it dawned on me that maybe I could drybrush orange students acrylic on the red oxide bits. I actually had a tube of some and tried it out and it worked a treat to tie it all together.

So it has been an interesting exercise and I have learnt a lot about paint finishes and weathering and hopefully have improved my work just that little bit.

I am relieved that it is now done and ready for the model shows coming up this year.
This model was commenced in a somewhat different form in 1999 just after I had seen Star Wars Episode One.
Here we are in 2020, 21 years later and it is finally done.

 Thanks for looking.

More soon...