Re: favorite painting techniques?

On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 04:10:28 -0600, "Brent Jacobson"
<sirrufustb@sprintmail.com> wrote:

>I prefer what I call the hack paint job to get the ships to the front
lines.
>It pretty much involves only dry brushing techniques and requires
little
>time. 

If you don't want to get into drybrushing techniques (which I'm only
so-so at)
there is a good technique that uses basic painting. Basically, pick two
contrasting or complementary colours.

In one set of Star Frontiers ships I did, I first sprayed them with
black
primer (important: always prime). The ships had a lot of detail that
consisted
of a hull with gun turrets and engines on top. I painted the hull
metallic
(metallic red or metallic blue), leaving the gun turrents and other
detail
parts unpainted. I then went back and painted the detailed parts
platinum.
This takes care, but not an incredibly steady hand. If you slosh a bit,
just
do some touch-ups later. When this is done, the platinum bits stand out
against the darker hull. Up close it's no hell, but from a distance it
looks
pretty good.

In the other set of ships, my wife did the painting. Hers was a much
more
basic, but in some ways more stunning, technique. The ships had little
in the
way of detail, as the ships were mostly smooth hulled. She took a
metallic
green and painted the main hull of the ship this colour. The booms
leading to
the engine nacelles were painted metallic, uh, pink (the guys at the
mailing
list game at GenCon last year called it the Revlon fleet, but it sure
looks
alien). The engines she painted metallic green, except for the one end
of the
nacelle, which she painted metallic pink. She went over the ship,
painting the
detailed bits the contrasting colour. They looked quite good.

To figure out which ships are contrasting or complementary, go to a
house
paint store or a craft store and buy a colour wheel.

If you have detail you want to bring out, particularly on light coloured
ships, you can do a wash. You water down paint, usually black, and paint
it
into the crevasses of the ship. The paint will settle into the cracks.
The
highlighted areas may have a little bit of paint residue on it. To fix
this,
you can just touch up the raised areas. If you learn a drybrushing
technique,
using it on the raised portions is good. You can also do a black wash on
engine outlets, air intakes, and exhaust ports to give it a sooty look.  

Allan Goodall	     agoodall@sympatico.ca

"Once again, the half time score, 
 Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
  - This Hour Has 22 Minutes