Hey guys, I'm having a bit of trouble with a couple paint jobs and would like advice from our more seasoned painters.

The first thing I'm having trouble with is patterns, specifically the checkerboard on Sabine's TIE from rebels and the hounds tooth pattern for its namesake. What's a good way to do these without it looking awful?

Draw it out with a pencil (or fine point marker if you don't have a steady enough hand to paint an outline over the top of the pencil lines) and fill the little squares in. Don't be too tempted to overdo the paint; two or three thin coats are always better than one rough thick coat.

Cheers

Baaa

Sabine's Tie is something I dread having to paint. I know someone will probably commission me to paint it sooner or later, and trust me I don't wanna!

Anyway, I think Baa has the right idea, a fine tipped marker pen should help immensly.

I used to do thin paint and grid for chequers but now i use very fine nib art pens.

You can get them in most colours now

It may also help if you can (gently) disassemble the wings, so you're not working at odd angles. I've never disassembled the FFG TIEs, so I don't know how well this will work for putting it back together.

With any complex freehand pattern, the key is understanding it.

Checkers, for example rely on spacing - how many squares over how big an area - to get it working you need to make the same number of regular divisions in the same space. That's the key to the pattern (not necessarily, as you might think, drawing straight lines and having them cross). Straight lines only really become an issue when long (more than about 4mm).

I mark out checkers with dots, each one the 'corner' of what will be a square. These mark imaginary lines (or close to it, you can fix it as you go) that you want to paint 'up' to. Start closer to the centre of a square you're filling and work up to the lines. Repeat for alternate squares.

Houndstooth pattern is a pattern-in-a-pattern - start with a straight, checker pattern, but you fill every other square on every other row (so you effectively have a wide grid). Then on every other square that isn't filled, cross hatch it in 4 sections, and keep the triangles adjacent to a filled square that colour.

Sabine's TIE is a mess, many patterns and many different divisions to do, and some long lines to paint - again these are all about spacing - so work 'up' to lines, not 'from' them.

It's often well worth sketching the pattern on paper, even worth a practice run with paint on a flat piece of plastic if you feel it needs it.