5 hours ago, Force Majeure said:

@Stoneface Great video & series of videos, thanks!

You're welcome! I've been building models off and on for 40+ years not counting the time spent blowing them up with firecrackers as a kid. Back in the day, a phrase I hate, there were few if any sources for serious modellers to share ideas. Probably the oldest still available publication is Fine Scale Modeler, which has been around since the early 80s. Organizations, like International Plastic Model Society, aka IPMS were and still are a great source of information. Most of the info from these sources deals with model kits but they do contain the occasional article on painting.

Companies like AK Interactive, AMMO by Mig, Vallejo and others have some info either in print form, on their websites or as videos on YouTube. A lot is geared once again to model kit building but there still remains a ton of info on painting and detailing.

One thing I'd like to mention is "scale effect". This deals more with the artsy side of painting rather than the historic side. Basically what this means is if you have a color matched to an official source, like Federal Standards, and paint a model with that color it will appear darker on the model than on the full size item. This is due to the viewing distance. Theoretically if we view an X-wing at a distance of one foot it would be the rough equivalent of viewing the full sized ship at 270 feet. When the model is placed on the full sized replica, we can see that the paint matches.

The reason I mention this is because there are some great repaints showcased here but they are too dark IMO. If you start with a dark color then give it an overall wash with black this darkens the paint further obscuring details. Starting with a lighter base color you can use dark washes to tone down the brightness. It's hard to go the other way.

One last thing I'll mention is using a very dark base color for panel lines. Grey for white, dark green for a lighter shade of green etc.. This adds a subtle panel outline rather than the starker black outline.

I remember getting a revell model for my birthday one time. It was a level 2 on their old rating system, the same system with the massive difficulty gap and that didn't tell you everything wasn't included, so that kind of ended any want to do models after that. Getting a level 4 kit later and a lack of painting skill didn't help either.

Ended up giving them to my little sister, and she hasn't built them yet.