White overspray

Off-white

I had finally reached the stage of this renovation project where the look of the vehicle was going to change visibly from the previous iteration. Last night I remembered that I had bought ages ago some off-white for national insignia painting (mostly for Balkenkreuzen, and I still hadn't gotten to try out the sets of stencils I bought many years ago now!) and such. I thought that maybe I'd try it out and in the end, if I felt like it, blast a tiny bit of plain white from above, very gently. Maybe it couldn't even be noticed at all, maybe it'd add a bit to the result, but we'd find out in good time.

This was in line with the "shade by shade towards the final colour" method. The first and potentially only white was Insignia White (VMA 71279), that got its first appearance in the 'Mumblings now, and not on a German blocky cross, as I had stupidly assumed.

The cockpit submodule

Regarding the cockpit I decided that of this bit only the swanhead-like part was going to end up white. The neck - or the part that joined it to the hull (whatever this airlock / corridor was called in the specs) was going to remain grey. Maybe the look I was going for would work in real life, at least as an idea it sounded good, because the iconic features would be highlighted natually and the visual support surfaces and areas would also bring some depth to the entirety. Besides, if it was all the same colour, the shuttle would end up looking much more boring.

The spaceframe and wings

This time I started with the hull itself. The edges I painted by blasting from the center towards the outer edges, to protect the front and back ends from silly and unnecessary overspraying.

Next I pointed my attention and my Badger towards the wings, starting from the freshly-greebled areas with a gentle touch. I didn't want to drown the greebled trenches with paint, ruining the depth effect, I did as gentle a touchup I managed.

The wings themselves were pretty straightforward. Again I had either mixed my paint badly or it was a tiny bit drier than necessary, as the airbrush spat some flakes pretty much constantly. Perhaps a part of the reason was the high temperature at that moment, but these excuses didn't really help much with my irritation.

Again I left a small patch uncovered on the top wing for my own safety. Just like I said the last time, a 100% flat factory-like application of paint was not my goal (splotchless, yes, but...) and the fluffy cloud effect gave it a more used look.

Continuation ponderings

On the next session I'd cover up the handhold area and I'd wrap up the other surfaces of the rotating wings. After that I was going to be thinking with my head glowing red in which order I'd approach what detail and subtask.

The current plan was that I'd mask off certain rectangles for various greys. Maybe all of them weren't going to be dark grey, the middle grey could work on most, then I could use a different light grey on symmetrically located bits just for variety. Maybe I'd do that to one per wing surface, but at this point I knew I'd pretty much make up my mind on the spot, when I got that far and the compressor was already purring.

Some sort of an application of a light wash was looming in the horizon one. I was also thinking that I could apply some rain streaks on the shuttle sitting somewhere in its landing configuration. The engine exhaust ports were their own still shrouded mystery, as I don't think I was going to leave them as they used to be, glowing white.

Dry-fitting to check the effect

Now I wanted to check how my chosen look worked, because it was still decently easy to change direction. I felt it looked nice in white and the dark, totally untouched cockpit looked great already. The contrast was good and I couldn't really but wonder why in the Empire was I so fixated to flat grey over a decade ago.