Painting on two fronts
This was something I hadn't done before: following two painting recipes at the - more or less - same time.
Hell's Horses, Alpha Keshik
First and foremost I had to prime the Pack Hunter black and then transfer the Nova as Isorla from the Jade Falcons to the Hell's Horses. This Nova had been assigned to the Gamma Galaxy for ages with unit number #66. The IWM miniature was at least two decades old, and it was quite different from the oven-fresh plastic one by CGL.
A blackish basecoat
The horseplay theme was a black base with red-yellow flames as decoration. Flat black was a pretty bad basecoat as you couldn't catch details, so I thought of using dark grey (VMA 71056 Black Grey) instead. Something gave me the idea of adding a drop of blue (VMA 71318 AMT-7 Greyish Blue) into ten drops of dark grey (VMA 71056 Black Grey), followed by two drops of black. With this mix I overbrushed the bits liberally and thought it stood out from black even if it darkened quite a bit when dry.
Red flames
With the basecoat dry I started doing some red (VMA 71003 Red RLM23) flame areas, very random and weirdly asymmetric bits wherever it felt most interesting to me.
Some of them looked better to me than some others, such as the top of the Cougar which looked more like a red mass from this viewpoint. Next we'd see how the yellow subchunks would affect this show.
Yellow flames
Of course I had no pure or proper yellow as the old ones had dried up. I had to conjure up something else to use instead. Based on a pure gut feeling I mixed together some Medium Fleshtone with Yellow Ochre and thought I could always brighten it up if needed. To my surprise the colour mix worked nicely as it was so I started doing some flamey thingies with it, inside the red shapes I had painted before.
Generally speaking some of them looked actually neat, some had gone too wild. I had also been quite cautious with my application areas so they concentrated mostly on the fronts and upper parts of the 'Mechs. The backs got heavily ignored because of the surface shapes, and because in my mind these flames were meant to be on the armoured plates and for show.
White-hot highlights
With the flames otherwise done I got this idea of drybrushing some white into the roots of all the flames could bring some more hellfire into the decorations. It was supposed to be pretty mild by somehow noticeable an effect, especially if you looked at before | after photos.
Metallic metals
From the blackish base the bare metal bits wouldn't stand out much if I painted them in dark grey, so I went with a metallic instead. Either Gunmetal or Oily Steel sounded like good approaches here, being more muted than chromes and silvers, so I was going to use the first one I found (VMA 71072 Gunmetal).
The Fire Moth got metallics on the arm-based lasers and missile launchers, as well as the joints that looked like they would or could be left unpainted.
Cougar followed the same line, I painted its Pulse Lasers and LRM faces. Of the joints I painted mostly the shoulders, waist, knees and ankles.
The Pack Hunter was maybe the weirdest of all five, as it only carried only that lonely ER PPC on the shoulder and I wasn't going to make its full fists metallic. To compensate I concentrated more on the joints to break out the black monotony. This left me thinking if I should do the antennas in dark grey for a tiny amount of extra variety.
And the winner of the most varied set of weaponry went to the Huntsman, so it had lots to paint in Gunmetal. Of the AMS turret I left the radome as it was but painted the gun-swivel bits metallic.
Nova had all its weapons in its arms so they didn't bring much decorative joy. Like on the Pack Hunter I concentrated a bit more on the joints.
Like these rear-facing photos showed, I highlighted each and every nozzle and grille on the damn ponies, a bit more than I would normally have done. Especially as I was using Gunmetal instead of Black Grey, it was jumping out more, but monotony-breaking was essential.
Preparation for the lenses
In preparation for the energy weapon and cockpit painting I painted them all flat black. This might save me from some stupidities especially when painting the more obscure layouts. While prepping I also painted the Pack Hunter's antennas in black grey and gave them a quick cold grey drybrushing like I had somehow planned. This would make them stand out a bit from the actually armoured bits.
Clan Jade Falcon, Gamma Galaxy
My Gamma Galaxy recipe was pretty standard: cold grey base, a stonewall grey drybrushing, then green (VMC 70942 Light Green) camouflage shapes based on the method that appealed to me that day. These three got some squiggly lines to break their shapes.
Green shapes
I didn't plan these ahead anyhow. This time I also didn't play with tape masks, this triplet of Warriors had different level Techs taking care of their 'Mechs than the last Jade Falcon minis I painted. Any paint on the Crossbow's LRM-20 launchers was just unimportant overflow because they were going to be dark grey like all the other unpainted metals here.
I had to dig through Record Sheets to get the Kingfisher's armaments because based on the shapes alone the other Large Pulse Laser was clearly in the Right Arm, the missile launchers were clear as day, and I could guess the Medium Pulse Lasers on the shoulders. But the Left Arm was supposed to have an ER Small Laser but I didn't recognize it from this photo, perhaps it was slung under the launcher. The other LPLas was in the middle of the chest.
Nova Cat's guns were politely grouped in the arms, one had ER Large Lasers and the other a double ER PPC. From this view I got some Cain vibes from Robocop 2.
Jade highlights
My jade paint had to be slightly thinned with tap water because it was a bit on the thick side. Traditionally some panels almost called to be highlighted, while some highlightable bits had to be hunted for. Crossbow's asymmetric shoulder decorations were very much a purposeful thing.
Metalless metals
With the jades done I went through all the unarmored parts of the weapons and the different joints of the 'Mech such as the ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders. None of the three had the actual hands so there was no funniness available there. I also iterated through the different vents, grilles and other bare bits, especially on the back side. No Jump Jets on any of this set, so they weren't of no additional guidance.
Later I gave all the metal pieces a gentle drybrushing of cold grey. It had worked wonderfully on some pieces before and I liked the effect.
Preparation for the glasses
Like with the heckin' ponies, I checked the viewports in advance from the Camospecs article I. When painting the Pack Hunter's antennas I also did the same for the Crossbow: a cold grey drybrushing over a dark grey base.
And now we were handily and conveniently ready for the next round and individualizing the 'Mechs furhter! Probably I'd do the cockpits and energy weapons first, but one never knew.
