Washing and detailing a bit

Following the footsteps of the Savage

Before I started using the purpose-made washes, I wanted to try darkening the engine nozzles in a different way. First I just applied flat black on the center tube on the top half of the plane, and then wiped the fresh paint off. What remained was a noticeably darker but still red surface.

Encouraged by this working so nicely I flipped to miniature around and did the exact same thing on the three engine bits. At least in this case it worked, in my opinion, more nicely than a brown or black wash applied over a gunmetal (or some other metallic) layer.

Panel linings too

I didn't want to get the full AeroSpace Fighter that dark, so for the panel lines I used some black wash (Citadel: Nuln Oil). Wherever I got a bit of an overspill I wiped it immediately away. This of course darkened some panel edges a bit, but I didn't find it detrimental to the overall look. It was always nicer to look at a bit lived surface than a fresh one.

My weathering was purposefully pretty simple. I also just found the look fine. Of course I'd need to compare it to its bipedal siblings in arms, whenever I had the time.

Cockpit canopies

On my four earlier red DCMS warmachines I had used some pretty bright green colour on the viewports, so I was going to stick to the ancient plan (VMC 70942 Light Green). This mini had three bits to be painted this way: the obvious main viewport, the round dome behind it, and one that was going to be useful for landings in the bottom front. Later I'd apply a green wash to make them look a bit more interesting, but that'd be later.

Things I missed earlier

While I was detailing the chin-mounted LRM launcher (Shigunga LRM-20) I noticed that I hadn't even thought of checking what a mainline Shilone even had as the loadout, so I may have committed errors when painting the laser barrels in the wings (2x Diverse Optics type 20 Medium Laser)! Sarna.net/wiki knew to tell me that in addition to these there was a centrally mounted LLas (Diverse Optics type 10 Large Laser), so that one I painted on the right side of the cockpit.

Those little panels in the inner edges of the wings I painted steely (VMA 71065 Steel). I expected that these panels were protecting the fire control system's sensors.

The tail end also had something obvious that hadn't been obvious enough for my woeful eyes, but as soon as I knew what I was looking for, I found it. The rear-facing medium-capacity SRM launcher (NCK "Thornbush" SRM-4) got a dark metallic surface to make the tubes nicely visible.

I really had to tip my hat to the WYSIWYG modeling on the CGL minis. With a very little effort the key details were highlighted and drawing the eye.