Progress continues on the BergeLuther. I’ve applied the oil discoloration using the 502 Abteilung oils paints. This time I used the colors German Gray Highlight + Faded Navy Blue, Light Rust, Dark Mud and UN Faded White. These were dabbed on as usual then blended in with clean odorless turpenoid. Before this I attached a fuel barrel/mount, tools and extinguisher to the main body. The rust of the barrel mount was done with a rusty base coat followed up by sponging on lighter and darker rust tones. More pics below…

I also began work on the Mig Productions Burned Out Modern Car kit which arrived a few days ago. After cleaning the resin and constructing the wire seats using the supplied jig and a soldering iron, cleaning up the kit and painting has been a fun and relatively quick process. I used an SBS at the Mig forum by vsuarez666 seen here. It was a great tool for getting great results quickly. I’ve still a bit to go on it, but here’s where I’m at so far.

After priming the kit with self-etching primer I followed up with a coat of flat black spraypaint. Over that I sprayed a dark overall rust tone using the black base as shadows to show through, followed up by two lighter rust coats mottled on with my airbrush.

Over this base coat I used cheapie acrylics and stippled on yellow, brown, gray, blue and red with a damp sponge. This adds more color and variety to the rust and will add more depth in the next steps.

Over this stippled coat I sprayed a flat layer of FFA to seal the base coats. I let that cure overnight and the next day I sprayed the kit down with hairspray and generously sprinkled kosher and table salt over it.

After the hairspray dried I sprayed on some neutral gray, white, then a light mint color for that “classic” car feel.

I removed the salt by rubbing and with water and a brush removing some of the hairspray layer as well to re-expose the rust. Rubbing the salt off took some of the base coat with it resulting in some dark spots, but those actually add to the overall rustiness and look great IMO.

Then I took some rust-colored oils, some dark brown and some ocher and blended them into the surface to enhance the color. I then took some white and Faded German Gray which is a very light bluish color and enhanced the leftover paint spots of the vehicle.

Once this layer of oils dry I plan to go back with some grays and whites and dirty the car up as it’ll be sitting in a pile of building debris.

And speaking of debris, here’s the start of my base for the Berge. The Berge will be plowing some debris off a road and into an open crater. There will be corrugated steel, barrels, building rubble, the car, a fridge, chair and vacuum, girders, pipes, bricks and more.  The base is foam and thin plywood for now, but all that will be covered. The exterior in basswood and the foam in Bondo, Celluclay, and a Sculpey road surface (made, but not pictured)

Here’s the latest on the build-up of the four Snowspeeders. First I airbrushed some German Gray onto the rear engine parts to darken them up as per the reference. Then I applied a clearcoat of Future and the decals. Those went on quite smoothly except that since I wasn’t using the kit-supplied stripe decals I needed to carefully cut out the orange boxes on the gray speeder on the sides of the air-breaks to remove the gray.Once the decals were done I applied a thin flat coat for the next steps.

I applied the paint chips using neutral gray with a very fine brush then afterwards added more with some sponge to get the finer masses of chips and scrapes.

After the chips I added an warm buff colored filter in order to warm up the cool gray of the initial painting. After that I applied the discoloration with oil paints. This is done by adding small dabs of oil paint (I use and love the 502 Abteilung brand… very fine and smooth!) then blending them and streaking them with clean odorless turpenoid. For this I used Dark Mud, Navy Blue, Buff, and Dark Rust colors. Below you can see the difference between the discolored speeder (left) and the one with just a filter applied (right). Notice that it gives you subtle variations in the surface color making it appear more worn.

Once that dried overnight I went back and added more Dark Mud oils to the gun crevasses and engine parts. I also applied slightly thicker filters of either Dark Rust or Snow White 502 oils to further accentuate panels.

Next I’ll use some thinned 502 oils and apply a thin wash to just the panel lines. No need to get sloppy with a thick wash covering all the color variations. After that I’ll apply another flat coat and then do the soot-streaks, rust, and grime with Mig pigment powders.

Someone had asked about there actually being a gray Snowspeeder in the Empire Strikes Back. Frankly I wasn’t 100% sure either so I loaded up the DVD and took some screen shots. Indeed there is a gray speeder and from what I could tell, the only one I saw flying about was Lukes. Here’s some shots of that and of the 1:1 set pieces:

Here you can see Luke’s speeder in gray and the standard orange model.

Look close and only one is gray. (hint: largest in foreground)

This I found interesting… looks like they used the same model a LOT. Were there more than one model used for the filming?

Here’s a shot of the large set pieces. Man these things were dirty!

And here’s more shots:

As it turns out, what was to be a HUGE diorama has turned into two dioramas… one pretty big and one smaller. No worries and just as fun for me! When it was released I purchased four 1/48 scale Fine Molds Snowspeeders with two earmarked for these dioramas and two for fun.

I opened the 4 boxes and started construction on this quartet on Sunday morning. By Monday evening I was priming the kits. They’re very simple and straight forward to build with only a few easy areas needing seams fixed or gaps filled.

Once the primer had cured I sprayed the interiors with Tamiya Neutral Gray then using a small brush painted in the details. After a quick spray of Future Floor Acrylic to seal it I applied a wash of thin 502 Abteilung blue + black oil paint to pop the control details. After that I applied tape to the insides of the canopy frames to mask the interior and set about painting the exterior.

At first I was going to use the hairspray technique, but after looking at references of the studio models I decided that level of chipping would be excessive. Instead I started by painting all four speeders in Tamiya Neutral gray then painted over that with a very light gray… almost white, but not quite. When that cured I went about painting on the markings instead of using the provided decals. While I love orange on the speeder, nothing I’ve seen, studio models or film shots seem as orange as Fine Molds decals do.  If anything it’s red-orange (to me) so that’s what I did for two of them.  The other two I mimicked the gray scheme of Luke’s speeder as seen on the Master Replica version which I had lots of pics of in an old issue of TMMI since I couldn’t find shots of the actual model used.

To paint the markings and chips I first masked everything with Tamiya tape. Then using Mig’s Liquid Mask and a sponge I dabbed on what would be the chips after painting. Then I painted the markings, rubbed off the mask, and repeated as needed for the different colors. It was a LOT of work! LOL!

Next up, airbrushed dark soot and darker chipping.

Slacking again… I had actually almost finished these months ago, but due to other commitments I had put them aside for a bit. Today I spent 20 minutes finishing them up and now they’re ready to be shown and shipped to my client. Eventually these two 1/72 scale Tie Interceptors  by Fine Molds will be paired with my Y-Wing for a chase-scene diorama. For now though they’ll be enjoyed sitting on my client’s shelf until I’m ready to tackle the project.

Because I did these a few months ago and didn’t do an in-prog report I can’t recal much of what I did, paint-mixes, etc… I know I used some Tie Fighter canopy masks I purchased at Starship Modeler. They were decent, but left way too much residue on the canopies. To keep them from ebing a boring solid color I used oils for discoloration and to highlight panels.