Sunday, March 25, 2007

Deconstructing the damage

As promised, I took some photos of the different stages of my hull weathering process so that I can better illustrate how I am going about adding all the grunge and grime. I hope this helps.
First, I want to show some closer images of how I do the streaks themselves. In the left photo, I'm using a thin piece of paper (a sales receipt in this case) like a mask to define the edge of a dark streak. In the right photo, you can see that I'm holding it in place while brushing black pastel dust onto the surface. I try to brush right along the edge of the paper to keep the streak as thin as possible.

After removing the paper mask, a nice streak is left on the hull. I go heavier at the top when brushing on the pastels and use less toward the end to make the streak fade off. Before doing the streaks in this manner, I have pre-shaded the area the streak will be made to soften the mark a bit. After this step, I make a thin mixture of water and black pastel dust to brush a fine line in the streak to make it pop.
This series of images begins with the hull quadrant free from any weathering. I begin darkening the areas with black pastel dust and a medium sized brush. I softly indicate where the streaks will be as well as dirty up any areas that are dark in the reference photos I have. Next, I add some color to the armor plates by brushing in browns, oranges, reds, yellows, etc. It's tricky to keep the balance so I go slow and step back to look at the area as a whole frequently.

Now I add the streaks using the technique described earlier. I use the method for both the black and rust streaks. Finally, I paint the blast marks using Tamiya German Gray with a super fine brush. Once that dries, I take my base hull color (50/50 Grime/Reefer White) and outline them looking at the reference. I also have added the chips in the red hull panel using this paint. The access wells/ports get weathered with black pastels, rust, and a little red. That's pretty much all there is to it.

2 Comments:

Blogger Phil Smith said...

I am really impressed with this blog - thanks for taking the time to describe the build-up. I am currently working on this kit, and this is helping me out considerably.

One thing that I decided to do was cut out the separation between the flap segments in the back. Since these are apparently actuated to deflect exhaust (or whatever), it made sense to do this. For some reason, I note that this was not done on the studio model. In any case, it makes the back look much more interesting, and you can manipulate each segment a bit for added interest.

3:45 PM  
Blogger Milton Yogi said...

Hi

Could you list the colors you're using?
What is the entire pallete?
Its should be helpful for all of us to have similar paint supply as yours.

thanks,

Milton

12:49 PM  

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