A sickeningly quick proto-paintjob

My first thoughts had been to clean up the model and so on. But then I thought, why bother being fancy with a prototype? Especially, as I didn't have a clue of how this material would behave with the paints or anything.

Primed

White Vallejo sufrace primer, what else could I say or describe? Same, same. I just sprayed it on and enjoyed the whiteness.

Airbrushed greyness

Just for simplicity I started by blasting Vallejo's USAF Medium Grey all around (VMA 71120) and then dusted it a bit with the USAF Dark Grey (VMA 71123) for some hopefully subtle variety. Then I  attacked the solar panels with a bit of some of a much darker grey to make them stand out more.

The paintbrush approach

Later I thought that maybe I should do the most visible surfaces again, with a thicker layer of paint. In this case losing even some of the model's surface scruffiness would only be a good thing. To protect the command pod's viewports I applied a bit of masking tape before blasting it with a dark grey, just like what I did with the solar panels. These pics below are from the "just before removing the masks and actually taking the paintbrush in hand" phase.

One final round for the detailings

To wrap this one up I applied some Citadel's black wash (Nuln oil) on the viewport transparisteel bits and the solar panels. The double sticks in the rear parts of the pods I painted red (VMA 71085 Ferrari Red) and then I used some plain black with a piece of a sponge to mostly-drybrush and dab at the port of the missile/rocket launcher and its details that always have made me think of exhaust redirection vents.

As soon as the paints had dried I applied some semiglossy varnish on the black-washed pieces (Vallejo 70522 Satin Varnish) because that one looked more natural than the wet-looking gloss varnish. In this case the result wasn't optimal, as I think that my varnish had gone beyond its best before date already. Some of the photos still showed the effect, which was good enough for a proto model.