DropShip markings

Double marking

First thing I did was to measure the max width of the Clan emblem that I could fit nicely on the side of the Overlord-C. 35mm looked like it would sit in nicely, so I took the simplest of the Clan markings I could find to print with the b&w laser of ours. There wasn't quite as much to choose from for the Galaxy marking, so I used the official one. Like I said, I scaled the Clan one down to 35mm, and the Galaxy one to 30mm width. 

Preview was polite and offered the option to print the same image multiple times on the same A4 as long as I remembered to readjust the scaling back to 100%. Due to the complex shapes of the Clan emblem I printed that out nine times to give myself some space to fail, the Galaxy emblem I expected to be ok with just two layers so I went double to be safe.

The Galaxy insignia

Because the Gamma Galaxy marking could be achieved with two simple stencils, I started with it. I cut the planet off from one of the prints, using a fresh blade. Of another one I cut the bird out. The beak of Turkina would be painted by hand anyway, I really wasn't going to use a separate stencil for those tiny things.

This left me thinking how to achieve a nice result with the smartest - or laziest - approach. I'd start with the planet by painting it white, then doing some sort of a crescent or a C-shape with grey, depending on how my airbrush handling would be. My jade green wasn't from any of the Vallejo $foo Air series so I'd either have to thin it down by gues, or optionally I could blast some dark grey or black for the outline and then sponge the green on that. The latter option sounded pretty decent now that I thought of it.

A snow white world

I taped the first stencil onto a nice spot on the hull. The surroundings got covered by a hectare of masking tape to avoid any and all possible and impossible overspray. Unless I sneezed while airbrushing, that is.

To get a first planet shape done I based it with stonewall grey to get it completely done. I tried to keep my painting angle straight to avoid shooting paint under the edges.

Right after I blasted a bit of white to the right top corner, probably I'd been ok with a bit smaller surface for the effect.

Checking the results after peeling all the protection was quite a tense moment. It looked neat. Now I just needed to not make a mess of it with the second layer.

A Jade Falcon over a planet

Thinking of this whole thing I came up with the idea of painting the bird black to begin with to get the outlines done. This'd make it look more like the source material.

Instead of trying to thin down the VGC jade to pass through the airbrush I went with the sponging approach, to introduce some subtle surface texture on it as well.

Otherwise it was nice but there was some passthrough visible on the right wing.

I covered up the most visible mess with cold grey. I didn't use the last minutes of my painting time to try to fix the feather gaps, those were a task for the next session if I remembered and was bothered by them. Then I painted the beak with yellow ochre, and added the chest line and eyebrow with black, all the time comparing agaisnt the printout.

Clan insignia

The Jade Falcon emblem was a rather complex setup, so I started simplifying it straight away in an attempt to reduce the failure probability. I wasn't going to airbrush all of the little angles and tilts. This first part was going to be the dark violet thing that was also a colour I didn't possess and I had to mix one up before starting. RLM red and either Magic or Electric blue was the probable set for mixing, maybe darkening with dark grey if needed.

I chose a higher position on the opposite side to the Galaxy emblem for the new mask, and started taping. My paint mix was a pretty much 50/50 (RLM23, Magic Blue) that didn't require any darkening. And yes, I left a gap around the tail feathers and the katana on purpose, I did not forget to cut those.

Again, it worked surprisingly well. I was going to add the red line to follow the outer edges at some point, as that was in the source image.

Jade Falcon with a katana

As my second layer stencil I cut off the Falcon and the katana. Because I liked this idea on the other emblem, I blasted the background black now as well.

To make the Jade Falcons look alike I sponged some slightly thnned down jade green onto the opening. I could've gone further with the tail feathers but I was mostly interested in getting the texture and overall coverage done, not a 100% printed out quality which would've been absolutely unattainable.

Just to be sure of this I made a third mask only for the katana and the talons, I didn't trust my freehanding skills to get a nice enough straight line. This also gave me a much clearer placement idea for different pieces than what mere eyeballing provided.

I left the katana handle as it was, and painted the blade only starting with gunmetal. Then I did a bit of an attempt at the specific edge for the blade with steel. The beak and talons I painted with yellow ochre. From a bit further away it looked pretty fun, looking as close as the camera did I spotted more issues. One of the little things that bothered me was the grey area between the left underwing and the purple bit, somehow the masking had gone misaligned. Fixing that wasn't going to be super easy because I didn't trust my ability mix up a perfect match for the purple. Maybe I had to try anyway.

The final key detail was the red line on the purple thing. In this next photo I had two layers of RLM23 red, probably a third one was still needed.

One evening I mixed a new small batch of red and blue and filled what gaps I dared. Then I added another, final layer of red along the edge to make it stand out better. Now that had to be good enough.

Glossy

To save my progress so far I applied a good layer of gloss varnish (Vallejo 70510). In addition to a savepoint it was also good for the flow of the upcoming oils. If nothing else, I was going to do a pin wash for the panels.