The Chief Smeg

Hi R0ver, Thanks for your words of encouragement; in answer to your question, I'm leaving the white parts unpainted, it seems to accept weathering quite nicely - I'm certainly not going to paint the white in the Stormtrooper I have in my stash. As everybody says, these kits are beautifully engineered and almost fall together; this has been a good reintroduction to model building.

So, This weekend I managed to spend some time with my brushes. First up was all the parts of the main body that would require Blue decals - it turns out that Vallejo Game Colour Ultramarine Blue is an amazingly good colour match for the blue plastic. It hand painted really well onto the White plastic parts which was a bonus. You can also see some early starts on the weathering Next up all the fiddly silver items that needed little stickers; again these painted up really nicely I also took the opportunity to break out the gold paint Here he is partially reassembled I decided against Painting the silver items - I'm too worried about brush marks (even though the Vallejo Metal Air are supposed to be be very good even for painting). I have also had a go at painting the parts of the dome that needed stickers and decals, the red was very unwilling to adhere, but I got there in the end. The 'Slot' feature on the dome with the red paint still needs some more work, I want spot some pink in there to break up the red a little, the green was also very unwilling to stick to the plastic, but I did get there in the end. I also had a little experiment and painted the inside of the lens with black and I plan to do the same with the remaining two parts that are the same. And here he is with his top back on Not sure what to tackle next yet, I may try adding a little chipping to some of the blue, but I'll have a practice on the inside of some of the blue dome panels first, if that goes well I'll have a play with the rest of the droid and then properly set about adding some oil staining. The eventual plan is to mount this as a bookend so I also need to plan his pose and diorama - early days for all that though. More updates when I'm next able to sneak off to the garage!

I agree with Wll, looks really good; how did you create the crackle/cracked effect? Leigh

I might have to get a kit and build it now - used to build these aircraft in real life. Now that it can be lighted too...

That rusted base is incredible - I would swear it was actually a rusted block of steel if I hadn't seen the unpainted version earlier. Astonishing work Andy.

A little more progress, today I dug out the paint brushes and had a little play: i spent a long time adding gold washes to the sensor dish and was getting nowhere so I stripped it off and dry brushed gold over the top of the silver paint and it gave the effect I was looking for. Unfortunately in the photo it looks a lot more 'gold' than in real life, the camera seems to have not included the silver that is still there. And just to show how obsessive I've been getting with the brushes, here is side 2 of the circular saw This is is now all of the tools for R2 completed, I'm now going to work on weathering and painting up the droid (he is built, but without decals or any paint at all so I have a little work to do yet). I want to try to paint every decal instead of using the water slides themselves, but we will all soon see how that turns out. I am also leaving the dome unpainted, mainly because I don't have an airbrush yet to do it properly; the last thing I would want is brush marks. So stay tuned for the next instalment tha may include more mad detail painting or possibly my first forays into manually painted chipping.

So, slow progress because I just don't seem to have any spare time at the moment, but I sneaked down to the garage and spent an it more time with the weathering of R2's Arc Welder, I'm finally happy with the look. I had been adding progressive washes of Vallejo black that I had been mixing myself and was not really getting the results I wanted so ended up getting a bottle of Nuln Oil and that was just brilliant: now now all I have to do is EVERYTHING ELSE!

Thanks, the look I'm going for is where it looks like the droid is really 'grafted' with dirt. It's really an excuse to get to grips with heavy weathering and chipping

Sigh, that is just awesome - love the video.

Looks like he is just stood there with his hands in his pockets waiting for the bus lol. Really impressed with how much difference such a simple dio has made. When you mentioned about the screw cap I had to go back and have a good look - I'd not spotted its origins at all. Brilliant!

Yeah, I have a few kits that I'm now reluctant to start to build until I make my investment but that will be next year, I'm concentrating on learning to weather by looking at everyone's WIP and RFI threads, I have learned a lot from this forum. Some of the sprues I've weathered (got to start somewhere right?) are now actually starting to look something like , that was why I appreciate the comments people put in their threads about problems they encounter, it helps a LOT.

Yeah I think an airbrush is going to be a must have - I just need to find the time to do some more painting of the kits I've built!

I've always liked the Snow Speeder, one of these kits is definitely on my list of models to build and I'll definitely look at the cockpit side decals - looking at your build I think I'm going to have to invest in an airbrush if I'm going to build vehicle models. I love the weathering you have applied, excellent.

That looks stunning. Just watched Aliens again after seeing your WIP and now I'm looking for a powerloader model!

So after a very long interlude I have returned to model building; following some great advice from you guys at the forum I have begun my first ever attempt at detail painting and weathering. I decided to start small and build my confidence and techniques on the tools that come with R2 and BB, so I selected R2's Arc Welder for my first 'victim' I'm using Vallejo acrylics and what you see is black base coat, gun metal, silver, blue (mixed to lighten the shade), gold and red from the basic set I bought along with the first layer of black wash. Looking at it I think I should have painted the gun metal sections black and washed with the gun metal or attempted to dry brush it on as I think it looks a little bright, but I aim to tone it all down with a few more dark washes. More WIP to follow as soon as I find the time to do some more painting!

I have been utterly stunned at the dedication of this build, the quality is simply outstanding and ALL SCRATCH BUILT, I doff my cap sir (or as we say in Yorkshire: 'loody 'ell fire that's crackin')!

I like the scratch built engineering tricorder. Depth and tread of the dilithium crystals - lol You going to get that hedge trimmed now you are back, you want a wide spread on that phaser to do it (set on stun obviously, you don't want to kill your hedge). Seriously though nicely done.

Very impressed with the scratch built control vanes - they really make a difference.

That is very cool, I think the colour scheme is perfect too

Although Andrew, those original Vipers were heavily influenced by the X-Wings from Star Wars and this too was a good thing. Got to say though that model dies look fantastic; 2 years to build! Wow.

Hey, the clown has gone!

I'm going to steer clear of enamels, I saw the problems you had on the AT-ST, the rest though is on order, along with some Gauzy which (I have on good authority: Ie. this forum) is the dogs dangly's. Thanks to all those who have posted responses and to the rest of you people on this forum who have inspired me to return to modelling.

Gauzy eh? That's another two for my list of magic potions!

Thanks Andy, I'll add some flow retarder to my list (it's getting longer all the time). I was a little concerned at encountering the problem of tide marks that a lot of people have been mentioning on here, I had figured that if I went slowly enough then I should be able to keep that to a minimum, then I find there is a magic potion that will also help! Thanks Andy, very much appreciated. I know there are only supposed to be two( a Master and the Apprentice), but this forum seems to be a full Jedi academy and a very friendly and helpful place. Thank you all so much. One final thing (and sort of off topic) but if any of you have a bit of spare time, check out http://www.badobsessionmotorsport.co.uk/category/projects/project-binky/these guys are chucking the engine and running gear from a Toyota Celica GT4 into a mini, the amount of fabrication work going on there makes it more like a 1:1 model! Thank you all Smeggy

I love the paintwork shading and detailing there it looks stunning