Rapid painting

Greyness

Again I spent a few moments pondering on which of the different greys I would be using this time. I believe that any of them would've worked, but I was a bit boring and airbrushed the pod and the outer wing surfaces with USAF Medium Grey (VMA 71120). Maybe I'd drybrush them  with a bit lighter grey before washing anything, but that'd be decided on later.

At this point the model looked like someone's half-excited reversely preshaded panel-work. The next afternoon I painted the other halves and left them drying for a good while until I could sit down and work on the masking. At this point you could already tell that no, you couldn't really see into the cockpit.

Half an hour later

One Wednesday I finally sat down with a roll of Tamiya masking tape. In advance I had thought that "this'll be done in the blink of an eye" and as usual, I had been wrong. What slowed me down then? Well, the areas to be protected were considerably narrower than the tape so I had to to quite a bit of slicing and fitting. [105]

I was pretty confident in that I had been careful (and paranoid) enough and that nothing would leak through. Even though it was getting a bit late after all this work on the masks, I estimated that the painting itself would only take a few minutes. Why postpone something that quick to the next day?

Airbrushing the solar collector panels black (VMA 71057) took three minutes, tops [108]. But as everyone knows, waiting sucks...

Early next morning

Like a kid celebrating a birthday, I tore off the taping before leaving to work the next morning, because I just had to see how I had succeeded. To me it looked pretty great.

Wonderful, wonderful! Next I'd get on to the bloodstripes that are the main decoration of this model. After that I think I should finally paint the main viewport's frame and then apply a wash over everything grey. Then to top that I'd drybrush the greyness and finish up with the varnishing and we'd be finished.