Painting was definitely the main challenge of this build, especially the grid patterns on the legs. I’ve covered that technique in a previous post; this post is about the rest of the colour application.
Primer
I used two different primers, white for armour; black for the frame and daggers, applied after I separated all the pieces with an airbrush. It gets the job done, but it takes quite some time.
In retrospect I should have primed the whole thing while it was still assembled with white primer from a spray can and saved the airbrush primer for touch up only. The frame could then be airbrushed gloss black after it was dissasembled. Lesson learned…maybe…hopefully….
Anyway, let’s go over the interesting stuff.
Purple edges
Black thighs
The thighs are based in black, the stencil is placed, and then finished with a very dark grey. Here I’m checking the piece between layers of dark grey. Musn’t make it too thick. The top half of the front of the thigh is done. Also note I’ve masked off sections that I want to remain black. Here’s the back of the thigh, done the same way. Again, the raised details at the top are left pure black. Adds a nice bit of variance. And here is the finished piece on the completed model.
Arms
So the arms started with a base layer of 80/20 Fluorescent Pink/Blue. I then masked some of the raised details and followed up with pure fluoro pink. The third layer is the deep blue that covers the lower forearm. This is after the first layer of blue. And this is after a second and third layer. Now what is this blutak for? Well at the moment there is a hard divide between the pink and blue; the blutak is part of the process for smoothing the transition. I’ve curled the blutak around the whole forearm, leaving some of the blue exposed above it. The blutak is kept rounded to give a gentle transition. I then masked the lowest part of the arm and began spraying on light layers of fluoro pink. It’s important that I spray perpendicular to the surface, so the rounded blutak can do its part in giving us a gentle transition. Here’s the final piece. You can clearly see the armour transitions from pink, to purple and to blue. Nice. The last few steps are handpainting all recessed areas on the arms, fingers and the knife with lacquer based gunmetal. A few sections are then finished with silver paint to make them pop.
Left Leg
I started with the same fluoropink/blue mix I used for the forearms. And did the stencil technique mentioned in this previous post. The colour over the stencil is pure fluorescent pink. The same is done for the rest of the leg. I do the same thing with the lower parts of the legs, but with two different shades of blue. Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the intermediate stages here. Unlike the arm, I ran out of time to do a smooth transition from pink to blue, so I separated the two with a gloss black band. Finally, I again handpainted gunmetal lacquer onto the recessed details to simulate frame poking through.
Right Leg
The idea here is that Blitz is decloaking to ambush the enemy, and the leg still in contact with the glossy black surface is still cloaked. As you can imagine, this makes it a lot eaier to paint than the left leg. I painted the upper half of the leg the same as the left leg, but once the whole leg was assembled I freehand airbrushed the cloacked areas gloss black. Like the arms, I was avoiding a hard divide between the cloaked and uncloacked areas, simulating the ‘cloak’ falling away from the Gundam.
Others
The other stuff is much simpler, they’re just solid colours airbrushed on, and thus not worth dwelling on too much.
- Frame – Gunmetal over gloss black base.
- Thrusters – Bright silver, also gloss black base.
- Turquoise pieces – Blue green, followed by masking where neccessary.
- Bicep – Fluoro pink base colour, black on raised areas.
Next week I’ll be uploading the gallery for this model, and I’m very excited to finally get it online. Stay tuned!
Fezzer says
I love how you elaborate on each steps, it makes everything clearer and made me learn few cool tricks. Can wait for the next post
admin says
Thanks Ferry, I appreciate it. Let me know if there’s something specific you’re interested in. ^_^