That looks great. Awesome work.

Not that I know how to do it better, but I've never seen a metallic color look good for anything other than highlights.

There is, however, a backup plan if I chicken out.

Well, I was inspired by this thread. I last painted minis in the 90s, pre-internet, with no one to teach me the ropes. The whole thing about diluting paint is genius I'd never figured out on my own!

So I went to a painting class at the FLGS with my 4 year old, who proved to be almost as good as I was with HeroQuest minis. I got home and started working on my idea for the shuttle, which will take a lot of time to complete, and then got to work on a Red Ace, which made the Inquisitor jealous.

They're nothing special, and they're not finished yet (layering is so much better than trying to get it perfect in one try), but I give you Red Ace and a Red Inquisitor:

I still need to figure out how to get closer to the line I want to have without going over, but considering how unsteady my hands have been since I got CTS 6 years ago, I'm pretty **** satisfied with the start to those two. I have special, and probably overly ambitious, things planned for the shuttle though.

Browsing Michael's, I picked the same brushes as the OP prior to seeing his recommendation, but went with their CraftSmart acrylics in a "value" bundle instead. Only the white had a weird texture. I've only been using the smallest brush for these and it works fine, though it appears to be feathering a little. If I keep it up with the painting, I may upgrade the brush at some point, as is, it was an affordable jump into it.

Need to figure out how to get closer to the line I want to have without going over, but considering how unsteady my hands have been since I got CTS 6 years ago, I'm pretty **** satisfied with the start to those two.

A good brush will help immensely.

Need to figure out how to get closer to the line I want to have without going over, but considering how unsteady my hands have been since I got CTS 6 years ago, I'm pretty **** satisfied with the start to those two.

A good brush will help immensely.

what brush do you recommend?

Need to figure out how to get closer to the line I want to have without going over, but considering how unsteady my hands have been since I got CTS 6 years ago, I'm pretty **** satisfied with the start to those two.

A good brush will help immensely.

what brush do you recommend?

Any Kolinsky Sable hair brush will do, but most people will recommend the Winsor Newton Series 7 brushes. They aren't the only one and if you are in the UK there is a good company called Rosemary & Co. brushes. I tend to prefer them over W&N, but it's only a slight preference.

As I mentioned before, if you happen to get one locally, make sure you check the bristles and see that they are straight. If they aren't, then don't buy them. Beware the last one or two at a store. You can go to a Michael's / Hobby Lobby with 40% off coupon to get a good deal. If you order online, make sure you check the bristles. Send it back if it's messed up.

You don't have to have a Kolinsky Sable hair brush. There are cheap ones that work just fine. If you look at them when you buy the cheapo packs, you can do alright. It's all about a brush holding it's point. The finer brushes do it better. A good brush cleaner can help even the cheap ones last a long time. So, I'd say it's more important to get a good brush cleaner than a good brush.

Oh, that's another thing in general for people wanting to do things on the cheap. Those 40% off coupons for the hobby stores. They are great if you live near one. I've a friend who does and goes and buys one bottle at a time of the Vallejo paints and gets them for a lot cheaper than you would expect. If you live near one, you can get all sorts of stuff on the cheap.

Well, I'm back from my vacation and I jumped right back into painting.

Before I left, I painted over the break in the yellow and green lines on the fuselage, due to some confusion on whether they were intentional or an attempt at worn paint. I also went back over the light gray exposed metal with a darker gray. I think the darker color lookes better, since the base color is a light gray. I also painted the astromech. I don't have steady enough hands or patience to do extreme detail work, but I got it close enough to the Targeting Astromech card art to be happy with it. It is better than the plain silver blob that comes standard, at least.

Then, I got to work on the engine "lighting". It is nothing special, but, again, it looks better than nothing to me. I put down bright red first(but white would have been better to start with), then some white in the center, then went back to red, then pink, then red, etc, etc, until I got something that looked decent. I haven't experimented any with blending, so it isn't the best. I assume that I'll care more about it if I repaint a larger ship like the Falcon.

Srry for the vertical image... I'll crop it later.

I also redid the squadron markings on the fuselage in between coats on the engine. The breaks in the yellow and green stripes are relatively even now, so it looks more intentional.

After some more detail work, like adding some different colored panels to the engine covers and a copper pipe or two from some metalic model paint, I'm happy enough with it to be done. May be after a little more touchup, I think I'll give it a clear coat and be done with it.

Also, here are some finished shots next to the original. I'm not the best painter, but I think I did good enough for it to fit in next to the mass-produced version on the table top.

Well, I was inspired by this thread. I last painted minis in the 90s, pre-internet, with no one to teach me the ropes. The whole thing about diluting paint is genius I'd never figured out on my own!

So I went to a painting class at the FLGS with my 4 year old, who proved to be almost as good as I was with HeroQuest minis. I got home and started working on my idea for the shuttle, which will take a lot of time to complete, and then got to work on a Red Ace, which made the Inquisitor jealous.

They're nothing special, and they're not finished yet (layering is so much better than trying to get it perfect in one try), but I give you Red Ace and a Red Inquisitor:

I still need to figure out how to get closer to the line I want to have without going over, but considering how unsteady my hands have been since I got CTS 6 years ago, I'm pretty **** satisfied with the start to those two. I have special, and probably overly ambitious, things planned for the shuttle though.

I can still see some brush strokes, so you may want to thin a bit more and do an extra couple layers, but I know how much pictures bring out mistakes that aren't visible in person.

Also, regarding your question on how to be more precise, look up how to hold your brush properly for detail work. That helped me a lot. I've been holding my model with one hand, extending my middle finger of that hand, then pressing my bush hand's middle finger against so that neither the model nor brush is shaking in relation to the other. The brush is held between my inde finger and thumb, and rests on the middle finger of the same hand.

Something like this:

In any case, you make me want to do a Red Ace!

Well, I was inspired by this thread. I last painted minis in the 90s, pre-internet, with no one to teach me the ropes. The whole thing about diluting paint is genius I'd never figured out on my own!

So I went to a painting class at the FLGS with my 4 year old, who proved to be almost as good as I was with HeroQuest minis. I got home and started working on my idea for the shuttle, which will take a lot of time to complete, and then got to work on a Red Ace, which made the Inquisitor jealous.

They're nothing special, and they're not finished yet (layering is so much better than trying to get it perfect in one try), but I give you Red Ace and a Red Inquisitor:

(image)

I still need to figure out how to get closer to the line I want to have without going over, but considering how unsteady my hands have been since I got CTS 6 years ago, I'm pretty **** satisfied with the start to those two. I have special, and probably overly ambitious, things planned for the shuttle though.

Hey, those are pretty good! I'm glad that you decided to try it out again!

I can still see some brush strokes, so you may want to thin a bit more and do an extra couple layers, but I know how much pictures bring out mistakes that aren't visible in person.

Also, regarding your question on how to be more precise, look up how to hold your brush properly for detail work. That helped me a lot. I've been holding my model with one hand, extending my middle finger of that hand, then pressing my bush hand's middle finger against so that neither the model nor brush is shaking in relation to the other. The brush is held between my inde finger and thumb, and rests on the middle finger of the same hand.

(image)

In any case, you make me want to do a Red Ace!

I came to a similar stance, though I'm using the magnetized base instead of holding the mini itself. Having paint so thin is still something that feels weird to me, but it does make sense.

Okay. Tomorrow's my trip to JoAnn's for supplies, with a total budget of $25.

Here's what I already have at home:

• Ice cube tray (to use as mixing wells)
• Plastic container with lid (to make a wet palette)

Here are the necessary items on my shopping list:

• Inexpensive set of acrylic artist's paint
• Inexpensive small, pointed brush(es) for detail work
• Inexpensive medium brush(es) for drybrushing work
• Resealable wells
• Sponges (to make a wet palette)
• Parchment paper (to make a wet palette)
• Painter's tape
• Plain masking tape or modeling putty (for mounting)
• Drinking straws (for mounting)

Here's my optional shopping list, if I can get them and stay under-budget:

• GW ink wash
• Gray spray primer
• Brush cleaner
• Upgrade from a cheap small brush to a decent one
• Spray matte finish

Anything I'm missing? Anything on the "necessary" list that actually isn't?

Okay. Tomorrow's my trip to JoAnn's for supplies, with a total budget of $25.

Here's what I already have at home:

• Ice cube tray (to use as mixing wells)
• Plastic container with lid (to make a wet palette)

Here are the necessary items on my shopping list:

• Inexpensive set of acrylic artist's paint
• Inexpensive small, pointed brush(es) for detail work
• Inexpensive medium brush(es) for drybrushing work
• Resealable wells
• Sponges (to make a wet palette)
• Parchment paper (to make a wet palette)
• Painter's tape
• Plain masking tape or modeling putty (for mounting)
• Drinking straws (for mounting)

Here's my optional shopping list, if I can get them and stay under-budget:

• GW ink wash
• Gray spray primer
• Brush cleaner
• Upgrade from a cheap small brush to a decent one
• Spray matte finish

Anything I'm missing? Anything on the "necessary" list that actually isn't?

Well, not that it matters much now since "tomorrow" was a couple months ago, but your list looks pretty good. How did the painting go, or (hopefully): how is it still going currently?

(I'll find a mod and ask to have this thread moved to the new painting section, but if any one sees this brfore then: please help me out with that!)

Alrighty. I'm back at it. I took a break to deal with Summer chores around the house, but I have been slowly(very, very slowly) finishing the Y-Wing. My last update on it was that it had been primed, the White basecoat was down, and I rescribed the panel lines because it took so many layers to get a good white base.

After that, I did some more work on the front of the engines. While I gave it several more layers of white to fully cover the domes, I also gave each have engine a gray stripe. It's actually a pretty smooth ring all the way around, which was achieved through many things layers.

Then some yellow stripes in front of those. This is the first coat, to give you another sense of what a single layer looks like. If you have a solid color after one coat, your paint is way too thick.

After a few more coats, it's looking pretty good. After taking this picture, I realized that the mold line on the side of the front of the cockpit area bugged me, so I decided to remove it with me exacto... big mistake. I took a chunk out of the ship. It was just a sliver, but at this scale it was pretty bad. I covered it with paint and no one will see it unless they are looking, but I'll always know it's there. I don't have an immediate post-mutulation picture, so just look for it in the rest(or forget to. That's cool, too.).

Well, not that it matters much now since "tomorrow" was a couple months ago, but your list looks pretty good. How did the painting go, or (hopefully): how is it still going currently?

It's an OA-37b, the forward observation variant of a Vietnam-era close-attack fighter that (like the HWK) was consistently overlooked and underestimated.

But that left me in the throes of a dilemma: to prime or not to prime? A color scheme that includes a lot of light gray/white is going to struggle to cover the HWK's default muddy brown, but there's a lot of fine detail and greebles I don't want to just spray over. And that's where I left it last week... I'm hoping to actually start tomorrow or Tuesday.

Rubbing Alcohol will strip it right down to its bare plastic without damaging the surface - at which point you can prime away without fear

Rubbing Alcohol will strip it right down to its bare plastic without damaging the surface - at which point you can prime away without fear

Even the factory paint? That stuff is pretty resilient.

Yes. I use it to strip Armada figures right back to the bare plastic... Simple Green won't do it, because as you say, its pretty resilient latex-based nastyness...

But 95% Isopropyl, even after a 5 minute bath, will let you scrub it straight off..... Just gloves and old toothbrush away, because it'll dehydrate your skin something absolutely shocking....

Great thread! Some of my can't live without tips:

1. Toothpicks soaked in distilled water (magic eraser, reverse-stippling)

2. Art Sponges (some wet, some dry, really good for "grime" and textured highlights)

3. Canned Air, PC Duster (so good for moving washes around; hold at a distance--adjust)

My latest paint (today, in fact):

3. Canned Air, PC Duster (so good for moving washes around; hold at a distance--adjust)

Brilliant idea...have loads of this [for dusting photo negatives, etc], but never even considered using it for that...thanks!

3. Canned Air, PC Duster (so good for moving washes around; hold at a distance--adjust)

Brilliant idea...have loads of this [for dusting photo negatives, etc], but never even considered using it for that...thanks!

And if you hold it at strategic angles, you will get "motion marks" consistent with flight-craft. )

Great thread! Some of my can't live without tips:

1. Toothpicks soaked in distilled water (magic eraser, reverse-stippling)

...

That's an awesome idea. I'd never thought of that. I'd have to be careful with doing that with these cheap paints, though. They work fine, but I don't expect them to be scratch resistant. Still, I'll try it out and report on the success/failure.

Also, does anyone know who I should contact to ask for a thread migration? I'm trying to figure out myself, but the most recently active mod I could find has a full inbox and can't be contacted. I don't want to keep a painting topic on the main X-Wing Forum.

As for my next update: I mixed up some pink and started adding a poor attempt at lighting the engines. At the same time, I also drybrushed all the wires and what-not on the body to make them stand out more.

It started looking better after a few more very thin coats, some attempted blending, and some other minor details like the black cockpit windows. It's still splotchy work, but I think it looks good at a glance!

Then some yellow stripes in front of those. This is the first coat, to give you another sense of what a single layer looks like. If you have a solid color after one coat, your paint is way too thick.

Just a note.....the primer color does matter, as well as layering the paints. If you look at the yellow lines on the engines. It's the same one coat, but you can see how much better it shows up on the white than the grey. So, if you have a white primer, the colors do tend to pop more. White primer is a little more difficult with the darker aspects, though. So, you have to pick what you want.

The other aspect is the layering. Paint is really just particles that give color suspended in a medium. Some colors work better than others. Yellow is not one of those. It's one of the hardest to paint with because the particles that give the yellow color do not blend well with the medium. So, you tend to have whatever is behind it bleed through a bit. Just look at that grey and you can see. So.....you can either paint a white beneath it, or some other color. White is a good behind base, but white has it's own issues with being see through. So, you might have to paint a bunch of layers of white to then paint a bunch of layers of yellow, which might be too many layers (as well as too much work). Building up to a color is usually considered best. Since yellow doesn't suspend well, it does get see through a bit, so having layers that work up to yellow tend to require less work. Start with a brown, then a mustard brown, and then up to yellow means you will have to do fewer coats. You will still see through the yellow layer some, but the layers beneath will be a darker version of the same. So, it ends up being a deeper color. It will look yellow, but will look more solid.

I know I've said it before, but it really is important and makes a big difference in your painting. If you take the time to do layers, it will look better than if you don't. Besides, it's really not that much extra work! Just pop on a podcast and listen to it while you paint.

Just a note.....the primer color does matter, as well as layering the paints. If you look at the yellow lines on the engines. It's the same one coat, but you can see how much better it shows up on the white than the grey. So, if you have a white primer, the colors do tend to pop more. White primer is a little more difficult with the darker aspects, though. So, you have to pick what you want.

The other aspect is the layering. Paint is really just particles that give color suspended in a medium. Some colors work better than others. Yellow is not one of those. It's one of the hardest to paint with because the particles that give the yellow color do not blend well with the medium. So, you tend to have whatever is behind it bleed through a bit. Just look at that grey and you can see. So.....you can either paint a white beneath it, or some other color. White is a good behind base, but white has it's own issues with being see through. So, you might have to paint a bunch of layers of white to then paint a bunch of layers of yellow, which might be too many layers (as well as too much work). Building up to a color is usually considered best. Since yellow doesn't suspend well, it does get see through a bit, so having layers that work up to yellow tend to require less work. Start with a brown, then a mustard brown, and then up to yellow means you will have to do fewer coats. You will still see through the yellow layer some, but the layers beneath will be a darker version of the same. So, it ends up being a deeper color. It will look yellow, but will look more solid.

I know I've said it before, but it really is important and makes a big difference in your painting. If you take the time to do layers, it will look better than if you don't. Besides, it's really not that much extra work! Just pop on a podcast and listen to it while you paint.

Yellow is a difficult color for any media or medium. Even if it is solid, it doesn't have much of a pop. Digital media, what I work in professionally, is even worse than physical. In fact, most displays don't even have yellow as a main color. They use RGB(red, green, blue), instead.

I'm using the same color here as I did for the X-wing, which was to mix just a little red in with the yellow to push it toward amber. It worked much better than just yellow(I assume. I didn't even try the yellow alone.), and helped cut out the need for building up layers of different colors since it was already in a middle ground. I just painted it straight over what I had, and that worked out ok. The picture you quoted was only the first coat. After two or three more, it was a solid color with no bleed through that I can see. If there is, it doesn't bother me enough to fix it. Not yet, at least.

If I paint anything with a larger surface, I'll put more thought into it, but I feel like going with layers of a single color worked fine for me in this instance.

When I moved on to the final wash for the Y-Wing, I decided that I wanted it to look dingy instead of just washed. So, I just made a brown wash and applied it to the bottom on the cockpit.

Oh God, what a mistake! What was I thinking? This is why it's always a good idea to experiment with the bottom of the ship for each step.

As I've said before, this paint comes up easily with water if you don't let it dry for a few hours first, so I just applied a normal black wash over that disaster and all was well. Still, I won't be trying straight brown as a wash again any time soon.

That killed the stark white, which is what I was after, but I ultimately wanted deep, high-contrast panel lines also. (Using nuln oil instead of a homemade wash would have done everything I wanted from the beginning, but the whole goal of this project was to do everything without anything high-end or fancy.) To get that effect, I applied my wash directly to the recesses just by touching the tip of my wet brush to an area. As soon as my brush touched the panel line, it flowed into all the surrounding crevices. I didn't even have to trace them all! This is about half-way through with the bottom.

And then the same treatment, minus the brown wash, for the top!

And then with some details:

I actually cheated on the details(Right after I decided to stick with only the artist acrylics, even), since I used some metallic copper paint for the piping, but I couldn't resist. It just felt right for the Y-Wing.

I need to go back and do some cleanup work, but this is mostly the end result.

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but how are you finding the cheap acrylics for durability? any chiping/cracking?

If you're concerned about paint chipping, cover the finished model with varnish. One spray can is just ca €10 and will last you a long time. I'm using satin one from Citadel or Army Painter and am yet to see any chips on my plastic models.

Proper priming will help prevent chips as well, cheap paint or not.