Front hull in VSD's, you can get away with them around the stairs to section near the center front.

On GSD's the side areas just to the outside aft of the turbo lasers. As well as the bigger kills you can use the sender rectangle area. If you add the rancher then use a hobby knife and cut the transfer where the hull plates seperate you can use large tansfers

I like it, I like it. I'm going to have to do some experiments with it (size, exact placement, colour, logo, etc), but that sounds like a great idea as far as I'm concerned. I particularly like the idea of using the slender rectangular area for the big kills on the GSD, something to put on those really odd litle barely-there square bits.

Yep, transfers shouldn't be too hard either: I use a dissolver, so that and a hobby knife should work together pretty well. Thanks a ton Lyraeus !

Why do I even try....

Still, among all of the repainted ships, I love DesRon 44 the most.

I may need to strip the colours off Howl's Howlers and repaint them....

Why do I even try....

Still, among all of the repainted ships, I love DesRon 44 the most.

I may need to strip the colours off Howl's Howlers and repaint them....

Because trying is the foundation of new techniques and a gateway to terrific ideas? I actually like DesRon44 more than the Dauntless as well. I had to hold myself back from doing any dorsal stripes, though I am still pondering a single white stripe from about the hanger back to the drive section right near the turbolaser battery (where I can put some bright red kill marks in the form of daggers).

Fighter are always a little tricky, I'm considering either blue-grey, or an elite squadron/group (3 'stands') of fighters with white in addition to the blue grey.

Wow. Just wow.

So amazing. Just - wow.

I have already touched up my fighters to the point where I felt they looked "good" and I was getting lots of great comments from my group... but then I saw yours and wanted to re-paint them once more... Your work is truly spectacular! Props sir.

Thanks Madaghmire, DrunkTarkin .. I truly didn't think this would really get this kind of a reception, so I am pretty flattered. And thanks ImperialBucketHead , (nice X-wing repaint, by the by!) . Trust me, I know the whole 'retouching' and outright repainting thing. Just painting these fighters is a bit of a chore, so I'm impressed anyone would paint these fiddly little buggers.

For me, it's an illness: a terrible-terrible sickness born in the depths of the darkest pits of the wargaming kingdom. (I've been ye' close to stripping and repainting those Red X-wing lads for almost a week now. I just keep saying 'nope, not until the next fighter pack. Paint the new ones as Void Drakes first, and then all shall be well, and you won't go back to repaint what was already finished. At least, not until the next craving rears its ugly head).

On a completely different note, I have some red and grey glowy effects that I think I need to blend. If I don't, I'll be fretting about it all day at work.

Why do I even try....

Still, among all of the repainted ships, I love DesRon 44 the most.

I may need to strip the colours off Howl's Howlers and repaint them....

Because trying is the foundation of new techniques and a gateway to terrific ideas? I actually like DesRon44 more than the Dauntless as well. I had to hold myself back from doing any dorsal stripes, though I am still pondering a single white stripe from about the hanger back to the drive section right near the turbolaser battery (where I can put some bright red kill marks in the form of daggers).

Fighter are always a little tricky, I'm considering either blue-grey, or an elite squadron/group (3 'stands') of fighters with white in addition to the blue grey.

I might try Kampfgeschwader 200 paint scheme on my VSD. Yellow on the ventral side

I might try Kampfgeschwader 200 paint scheme on my VSD. Yellow on the ventral side

Kampfgeschwader 200 is a pretty awesome choice, but I have a thing for the yellow fighters. Just the Ventrals, or the ventrals and top wing to make the yellow more visible?

Gah, as a minor update in general: got another pack of fighters in the mail and it should be here by Monday. Now I'm stuck with questions of what colour schemes I should do. Made up a hasty swatch, now I'll be staring at it (and its 12 variations) all weekend.

my need to paint has made me want to go out and buy more ships myself

Update time!

Alright, so I picked up a group of rebel fighters and now it's just getting down to painting them. Frankly, I'd love some feedback as I'm not impressed with most of them really. So, here's what we've got:

Coyote Ace: Y-wing

Painter's note: not bad, but I might go over their engines with another coat of light grey to make it pop out. I'm also thinking of adding some quartered sections on the front of the engine nacels. That said, I was going to put stars on them, but my SO said they looked like Vegas pasties, so.... yeah, no.

Alternate Angle: Y-wings

Flight Recorder Excerpt:

++Begin Transcript: 29:03:04++

“ Saluka!” The Ashtek clanner spat into his microcom, hastily glancing back over his shoulder as the bat-winged TIE advanced turned on him. The scream of its engines howled through the audio-amps a fraction of a second before the proximity sensor shrieked in alarm.

“ Blue-Four, Blue-Four, boggy at eleven o'clock high!” a disembodied voice warned far too late.

“ I hear you.” He mentally swore and kept looking back as the TIE tried to draw a bead on him. The lock-on glyph glowed a menacing orange. The Ashtek warrior slammed the afterburners and rolled the X-wing to port, dimming the lock-on indicator. He'd barely drawn another breath when the panel lit up again and the TIE's howling engine roared in his ear.

“ Looks like you're in a spot o' trouble, eh lad?” An unfamiliar and all-too chipper voice intoned. It had to be one of those cantina-hopping mercenaries.

Craning his head up, he spotted a pair of tiny red dots far above him, hovering like a carrion bird over a dying calf. “What's it to you, Coyote?” Despite the confident sneer, the clanner was in trouble. His X-wing couldn't bank hard enough or fly quick enough to get away from the Advanced, and he knew it. Lock on Indicators, proximity alarms, then a master alarm klaxon bleated uncomfortably in the shaking cockpit of the snubfighter as a nearby lance of ruby turbolaser fire blazed across the ink-black void.

“ Might want to get just a touch further away from that Victory. See that big one at two-o'clock?”

Sure enough, he'd inadvertently flown into its gunsights in a blind attempt to get away from the Imperial fighter tailing him. Now the kilometer-long bolts of searing red lanced past. Somewhere off to port, a fighter disintegrated in a fireball, dwarfed by the beam that enveloped it.

“ Saluka.” he swore to himself, biting the inside of his tattooed lip and listening for the inevitable chatter of laser cannons that would blast him to dust.

“ Now's 'bout the right time. Righto lads, who's up for a stroll? Coyote-Alpha's rolling in, Blue-chap down there, just hold tight. I'll be right with you.”

The calm voice was answered by another equally unfamiliar but all too identifiable twang, “Right with ya' Mister C.”

A flurry of red lashed across the X-wings hull, the firestorm licking across its dull grey skin and rocking it violently. The Ashtek clanner stared straight up; the pair of red dots circling overhead dove down and were recognizable as a pair of aged blood-red Y-wings. A small pinprick of orange streaked out: a concussion missile arced towards the pair of fighters, driving the Tie away from beleaguered X-wing and into a steep dive.

“ Well, what are you waiting for, lad?" The disembodied voice chortled, "Go get 'em!"

The clanner pushed the flight stick down, chasing after the Tie Advanced that was already starting to rattle in a flurry of sparks and flicker of dying blue. A wicked grin crossed his lips as the lock-on glyph pulsed an encouraging green. He squeezed the trigger, revelling in the moment as a staggered hedge of red laser bolts ripped into the damaged spaceframe. It came apart with a roar and blossomed into an orange fireball before dying out in a sparkle of glinting metal shards.

“ Coyote leader, this is Blue-Four. Target destroyed.”

++End Transcript: Ref. 2142.16F, Blue-Four Avoss-Ashtektek, Dymitre J.++

Blue Squadron Ace: X-wing

Painter's note: It's not too bad but I was trying icons on the nose of the lead fighter and it was just looking too cluttered. I might be able to get away with it on something like Red flight, or add a stripe or something, but it's a small surface area that gets filled up real quick. Too bad the wings are so stubby.

Excerpt:

”Sencha, would you care to explain something to me?” Commodore Lylent stood with his back to the doorway staring into the twisting spirals of an azure nebula. The eerie blue pall crept across every surface in the cabin, turning the stately salon into a morose chamber. The Ashtek flight leader said nothing.

“ Eleven X-wings, five Y-wings, nine R-22s, seven A-wings, and two B-wing have all been written off thanks to these backwoods Imperial pilots. More than that, I have to contact the Rebel Alliance and tell them that we lost six of their pilots and two more are in Imperial hands. Why?”

Silence greeted the question, broken only by the methodical tick of a grandfather clock in the Pel Mondarr's stateroom. Surrounded by the guilded cage of wroshyr wood panelling and artisan brass, Lylant had been pacing like a wild animal right up until the point that he'd questioned his subordinate.

“ My Lord,” Sencha firmly intoned, shaved head bowed low as the rings in his ears jangled like a wind chime, “It's not that we haven't made every attempt to eliminate this Imperial Squadron. We can confirm more than fifty TIE fighters have been destroyed, I myself have eliminated six. But their leader continues to slip away from us at every turn. This 'Paladin' is a difficult target. She is well protected by her elite formations. Two of the Clan I lost at Anstadt were from trying to pursue her through an interceptor screen, par your orders.”

“ Are you trying to blame me for your failings?!” Lylent's eyes popped open as he stiffened his spine.

Senche kept his head bowed, not rising to the barb, “They are acceptable losses, as always. I require more time and more free reign to eliminate the Paladin.”

“ Time,” Lylent spat and hastily picked up an empty wine bottle from his ornate desk. “I can't afford time, Senche!”

The glass bottle was pitched across the room and shattered against the wall. “You know what I also can't afford?! Replacement star fighters! It cost me one and a half million credits to secure just ten of your replacements, and another two hundred thousand credits on top of that to pay the protection racket that the Hutts have on Ordo Mandel to ship them here! And your incompetent gutter trash lost all ten of them in twenty-six hours! Those refurbished rust-fighters the Imperials are using wouldn't fetch fifteen thousand apiece.”

“ With respect, we lost five, and five more were damaged: two from defective parts.” The flight officer's reply was as mechanical as a protocol droid.

“ I don't care about defective parts, just like I don't care that a couple of mangy Coyotes were killed in a hangar fire either. I care about my reputation. I care about the governorship I was promised by your lords. And I care about the results of this now-exceptionally expensive endeavour. Especially, when the only results I see are my credits going up in smoke thanks to your gutless clan and the few rancorous cantina slime that I have to parade around as pilots!”

Senche's knuckles cracked at the slight, but his face betrayed no emotion.

“ As such, I am finding someone more competent. I assume you know of Russlan Argarro.”

“ Y-yes.” For the first time the Ashtek clanner's stone-faced facade faltered. Senche blinked back surprise and tore his gaze from the floor, affixing it to his commander. “Argarro is coming here?”

Lylent placed a hand on his hip and made a dismissive gesture with the other while staring into the void, “Not quite.”

A soft hiss echoed from the door behind the clanner. He jumped and took a few wary steps back from the yawning entrance. An impossibly tall figure stooped just low enough to clear the door frame. His dark skin was patterned by dozens of draconic tattoos, dark amber eyes almost glowing in the vibrant azure-hued stateroom.

“ I hired your house's contract killer to solve my problems. It cost me less than another batch of fighters for you and your miscreant thugs, Senche. Admittedly, not much less.”

Jericho Flight:

Painter's note: I haven't had to highlight black for years... I'm more rusty than I remember. I'm thinking of some decoration on the side of the 'lead' fighter.

Codex: Jericho Flight

Jericho flight was found more by chance than anything else. The Degobah Tramp was chased down by an Imperial Carrack cruiser, when a squadron of X-wings intervened on its behalf. When hearing of captain Rochet's allegiances, they eagerly joined the Lions of Korrell.

On the older rim world of Yathalla they formed part of an anti-Imperial alliance of tribesmen that protected an early rebel cell. Their X-wings are slightly outdated T-65A models, but they fly well and more easily accepted engine cowling modifications, as well as after-market mining sensors made to penetrate Yathalla's dangerous dust squalls.

The flight is a professional Rebel Alliance sleeper cell. Striking from planetside bases or laying wait in dust clouds and asteroid fields, Jericho flight lays waste to unsuspecting Imperial convoys and pirate crews alike.

Hochin Bar'Karath was one of the first pilots to join Jericho flight. Once system race pilot of some repute, he turned from the life of minor fame and fortune after a routine customs inspection gone wrong. Yathalla overthrew the yolk of Imperial rule and slipped into anonymity, such was the neglect that Ceknell suffered following reunification. The squadron now consists of half rebel crews, and half Yathallan clan warriors: Tanak Seil, the Sky Spirits.

Whether targeting small speeder patrols from howling haboobs in Yathalla's Salt Wastes, or screaming out of the Lentarra nebula's impenetrable dust clouds, the Jericho flight's reputation for breakneck attacks and unbridled fury have made them modern legends in the region.

Player note: They're my new 'Luke' to differentiate them and give me 2 full X-wing groups, and the Brace is a nice representation for their hardiness .

...

That's it for now. Next up: 2 A wings, 2 B wings... maybe an X-wing repaint if these don't grow on me, or y'all have a better idea.

I'll put on my super-critical hat for you right now... I only have one after living with a Golden Demon painter for so long....


...

With your style of painting, your highlights need to be -tight-... Its hard with something so small, but if your paint bleeds away from the edge at all, which is normally a good thing on a larger piece, it chokes up what null space you have on these things...

For the most part, things are looking good - you definately Do need another lighter load on the Y-Wing s nacelles - especially double because of the way you've painted engine-flare on the inside, you need just a bit more light there... But can't go too bright, as they should be in shadow, rather that glow... Its a very, very fine line - but you have the skill that I've seemed to have lost in that regard

Especially with the Y-Wings in the picture, at least (but probably not IRL), the Wingmen are a bit more subdued than the Ace... Something picking out their details on the front would be nice - I assume thats their blasters (since their Ions are the turret on the top) or something.... They tend to just disappear...

Also, as a request - a Rear shot on some of them would be great, too...

Huzzah, now that's what I'm talking about! Thanks Drasnighta !

I'm always worried about overlayering and making it too painterly by having just too much contrast between the shadows and highlights themselves. It gets worse with the nacels and anything that has a degree of OSL, which I'm still trying to get down. Toyed with the forward cannons a bit too but despite them being one of the darkest greys I have -laughs- they now look white.

Did a bit of a touch up:

IRL, the Y-wing nacels are annoying. The tops and bottoms are good, but because of the way that the model is cast, the sides are basically flat, and thus it's trying to artificially replicate what I could do with a bit of paint and ink to get the depth. That said, the depths are actually red, rather than black Figures that a camera would wash it straight to black.

Lets see, here's a picture of the back. Again, they look a lot better in person but some of that is the shadows I can't get rid of (I used a drill bit to hollow out the backs of the Y-wings. The A-wings I'm painting up have the same treatment, but it looked better than the big block-back.

Amazing painting :-)

At this size of model the highlight have to be sharp to create any sort of definition when on the tabletop.

If you are only worried about how they look in the photos then you're highlighting is spot on, tip top! They look great!

If you want them to stand out a bit more on the gaming table the highlights could be brighter/sharper.

The grey on the Y-Wing engines looks great now, but I reckon the red domes could be given just a slight swipe of brighter orange or yellow along the top...

Thanks Wetaas, mate, I'm glad you like it I'm still a little ho-hum about the X-wings.

And thanks a ton DWRR. The scary thing is, I'm not sure if it's the blending or just the camera lighting, but I'm well past orange in those highlights and it's actually a golden yellow. But, I took your advice and I had to go all the way up to a canary yellow I think there's... 5 layers on that I think, or 6 plus a wash. I've forgotten.

I updated the 'reshoot' picture and it sorta shows it, but I added in the rest of the Flight group and it shows a bit better. No idea why, maybe just the colour contrast makes the camera work better. On another note, it's reminding me a ton of the 1960's USS Enterprise.

Nacelle domes look great now! Really going to pop on the table!

how do you keep your black outline lines so thin?

is it a marker? or are you just using a tiny brush?

That they will DWRR, that they veeery much will. I need to find an excuse to do more yellow, it always looks great on the table-top and aside from a few lines on my X-wings, I haven't been able to use it too much in Armada. Maybe I'll work on some Gold Squadron B-wings or something.

It's a little bit of A, and a little bit of B, Centerpoint.

For a lot of lines that are 'freestanding' (such as the cockpit outline on the X-wings, or the wing pylon lines on the front leading edge) I use a marker. I'd recommend something like a micron from an art store; it uses an archival ink so when it's dry it doesn't smudge. Right now I'm using a Faber-Castell PITT artist pen as that's all that was in stock.

For anything that's 'against' something, I tend to use a very fine Windsor and Newton 0000 brush (It's basically a novelty, but a 00 or better works) with a bit of black ink. That said, I've tried the artist marker on the same thing and it works just as well. The big advantage is that often on larger ships (such as the Star Destroyers) the fissures and hull pate lines are too deep for some artist pens, so the brush and ink works a little better.

Sometimes you can get single markers from a typical craft or art store for less than the cost of a W&N brush; so 9 times out of 10, I outright recommend the artist marker.

Blacklining with the artist marker 0.05, its an old cheat - mainly because it **** well works...

But yeah, honestly, I have to put on the super-critical hat. Because even with close up macro, they look great - and I'm sure at arms-length on a tabletop, they look even better...

On the A-Wings in particular, it looks like your shading was a bit thick - was the primer coat smooth, or did it powder a little? I'm tossing my X-Wings into the 'Green because of that very issue myself, so perhaps I'm just seeing it - especially around the nubs on the front, it seems to have pooled where its grabbed the surface abit too much...

Aye, an artists marker is a fantastic cheat for blacklining, as it often feels far more natural to use than a brush. But as a bit of a word of advice, it's semi glossy over paint until you dullcoat it, but then the black shade fades to a charcoal (and it can even bleed a bit, which is what happened on those Y's. It's imperceptible tabletop wise, but under the macro it shows up.)

I do love critical painting things because I swear I've lost a lot of my talent too. Never entered more than a GW store painting competition, but given that our store painter was a Canadian GD winner, I didn't win at that either )

Shading was thick as I had to hand mix the wash (funny enough, it was the same earlier Alberta heat which dried up most of the medium and over-concentrated the pigment). I didn't want to rewash it because I don't trust the Vallejo to behave. It's an older paint, I need to replace it and my grey. Honestly I'm thinking of switching to Reaper from Vallejo as that's given me some pretty good results and has a better fluidity at the cost of a slight bit of coverage.

I was going to toss them in the vats too, but I already have a group of A-wings in there because of a issue with powdering from a light grey basecoat.

Maybe its the way Alberta works out when it comes to paint... I find 90% of the time, the Vallejos I pick up from the Sentry Box are horribly separated, and in some cases, patently unmixable... I've got a feeling its the way they - generally- sit in the **** Cold while shipping up here in Winter, and then Sit on Shelves...

I direct order Reaper from Texas now, and I only do so in the Spring/Summer... But I find their Master Series squeezes last forever too... I think my Leather White is the only one I've had to purchase a second time in 6 years...

If I need a paint -right now- I still pop into GW Chinook to grab what paints I need there - because if I get one that's bad, I know - 100% - that I can bring it straight back to them and get a replacement on the spot. Which does happen when, again, the Alberta Weather throws everything for a curve ball and they have paint sitting on the Frozen Tarmac for a Weekend.

I learned most of my painting in Australia, and specifically the Southeast Coast, where it is best described as "Temperate 9 months of the year, Hot and Stormy over Summer..."... So the distinct lack of Humidity here has forced me over the past 5 years to completley relearn my techniques. Wet-Blending is something I have to set out to do from the start now, rather than just something I can do straight-up on the model itself, and there's absolutely no time to correct a bleeding paint here before it dries... I honestly believe that Cold+Dry is the worst to try to get a handle on painting...

Honestly as well, the brighter grey-white on the front of the Ys works... its an effective point to draw the eye in, and then you follow the markings on the nose and fuselage to the nacelles - it helps that your eye isn't caught somewhere in the middle to start with... So I'd certainly go for taht too.

I just had to learn how to be critical... When the two demon painters I knew asked me what I thought of something, I had to learn how to say something other than "Awesome.", because thats' not what they want to hear from a friend...

That wouldn't remotely surprise me. Vallejo's coverage can be pretty good, but I'm finding with it and a few 'newer' GW paints I have, they separate pretty bad over time. It's a shame as GW's foundations are quite nice, but the lighter pigments I have (with the exception of their golden yellow shades) became nearly worthless over a period of 12-18 months (that horrid black film haunts me). I had wondered if it was the cold doing that, and that mixed with the absolutely abysmal dryness makes painting pretty miserable. I've given up on trying to wet blend acrylics, for now it's just working with glazes.

I've been meaning to pick u some Reaper Bones for a while now, so I might use it as an excuse to update my paint collection. I have a bottle of maybe 4 year old Master Series clear yellow that is absolutely incredible, so I can believe it.

Good point on the Y's nose cannons setting the visual line. They do seem to perfectly align with the most significant indicator markings. I may have to go over the other Y's and see if the effect still holds on the slightly brighter colouration. I was wondering if the canopy colours were too dark and would draw everything to the middle to start out as well, even on the regular Y's that looked like a problem (which is why on the Ace I picked the white lines on the interior to offset it a bit.)

Aye, true critical feedback is fantastic. There's an odd aspect of critical feedback where most tend to figure that being critical is synonymous with vitriolic condemnation. I do really really appreciate it

I still feel so insignificant with my painting. . .