Nonmetallics and jade highlights all around

German Grey

40% of my Star had already received the metallics and the cockpit canopies, of course I did those for the rest. The base idea for the Star was clear, I would simply follow on the path I had started on.

Gargoyle

Getting this Assault monster decorated was the most painful subprocess, because it was just so insanely ugly. I painted the AC barrels in the arms, and the laser barrel in the chest. The air intakes and the missile launcher ports also got painted metallic grey. In the legs there was loads of space, so from the front I painted the knee joints. To get something else done here I also painted the shoulder joint, it didn't look too stupid in the end.

 

The backside hadn't got much more than some joints and grilles to be highlighted. At leat the gun pods in the arms looked nicer with these changes.

 

Mad Dog

Finally something more interesting to look at and to paint. My first and most obvious detail were the faces of the LRM-20s and the laser barrels. For a moment I thought if the upper arms should have been painted metallic, but I decided against it with the large entities on the upper hull already done that way. So I painted the hip bit and the ankle joints instead.

On the back side I had a number of grilles, vents and Jump Jet nozzles. Maybe I could've painted some more on the legs themselves, but I didn't want to go overboard.

Hellbringer

Last but not least, Hellbringer got to the painting station. As expected I painted the missile launcher and the searchlight or whatever sensor pod's face, the ERPPC barrels and the side torso's lasers, without forgetting the knee joints. I was pretty happy with the asymmetric detailing on the Hellbringer, that made detailing it more fun.

Unlike the other ones, with Hellbringer I thought that if I painted the upper arms metallic they wouldn't stand out too much. So I painted them. It worked nicely in my opinion.

Jade highlights

Now my full Star was more or less in the same point, except for the canopies. I decided to leave them for later and first do the jade highlights on each of them. I remembered that my VMC jade was a bit thick so I started by thinning it a notch. If I only had also had the time to buy new small paintbrushes as well.

As always, I chose the highlightables more or less randomly and followed my own usual guidelines, such as  painting the edges of missile launchers and so on. When I was done with the highlights, I foreached through the minis and painted a few new metallic (still using German Grey only) parts.

Cockpit admiration and metal highlights

Those done I painted the cockpit canopies with the same RLM red as earlier, and while I was painting these I also touched up the two LRM launchers that had visible missile tips. These ended up looking much better now.

Then I mixed up a lighter and much thinned-down grey, that I then poked or stippled randomly into all the dark grey parts. In this scale the trick didn't work quite as nicely as in 1:35, or my paint ended up being a bit different this time.

The next step from here was to do some freehanding, and I've always sucked at it. I still wasn't feeling like ordering a dozen decal sheets from FPG. If they (or someone else) had airbrushing stencils, I wouldn't hesitate at all.