DropShip like the skies in November

Greyscale

I started my painting process by blasting the whole mini with a layer of Cold Grey (VGA 72750 Cold Grey). Right after that I picked out pseudorandom panels with a different grey (VMA 71120 USAF Medium Grey) and some other equally pseudorandom panels and the whole top cupola with a lighter grey (VGA 72749 Stonewall Grey). My idea was to avoid the panel lines but I didn't go out of my way to absolutely not touch them.

As the photo below showed, the coverage and texturing was purposefully dynamic. Maybe a later washing stage would tie them all together. My idea was to give some more liveliness to the hull, and hint at the fact that the armour panels would occasionally be changed and things would change between fights. I might try to work more on that with some battle damage later on.

The tip of my airbrush has been for years a bit larger than what detail work would require. Despite that I didn't start masking off panels, I wasn't going for anything that tight. 

Above/below views:

Landing struts on and greyshaded

Before gluing the landing struts on I scraped any paint off to ensure a stronger bond. My Overlord-C was nicely standing on the table with only three legs.

It was a sturdy construct, but as the landing struts didn't sit flush with the hull, and I didn't want to start poking around that much, I had to paint a bit more grey.

While I was at it I also painted the upper and lower armoured doors of the landing struts, which obviously overflowed a bit on the hydraulic bits. Painting those by hand was the next event.

Bare metal

Like so many times in the last couple of years, this was how I did the unpainted metal. Dark Grey RLM66, a component at a time.

After all six landing struts were painted I continued on with the grilles, gun turret blisters, and the two gates. Those were the fighter launching bays of a smaller Overlord-class DropShip, but I wasn't going to start filling and smoothing those so I let them be.

After the paint dried I drybrushed them with Cold Grey for gentle highlighting.

Any battle damage and chipping would come much later, after all the important stuff got done. I also forgot to take a photo of painting the four engine nozzles.