In Progress » Three Waldos Plus…

I’ve finally gotten a chance to start painting the Ian McQue Waldos (order your Waldo here!) I mastered for Industria Mechanika. These great little kits come with a lot of resin of course, but also a laser-cut wood deck and plastic windows and LOTS of photoetch including a full-PE wheelhouse.

I started off before I had any resin with the photoetch and decks. I cut and assembled as much of the etch as I could before getting the resin. The decks were stained with diluted black india ink, then various paints and filters were applied to bring out the different colored planks and for one some chipped paint on more chipped paint for a really old worn look.

The wood deck snaps right into the hull which makes building a breeze and allows for a hollow hull with a full engine piece. The engine is visible from under the hull in the thruster area and from above through the deck grating/maintenance hatch.

The wheelhouse uses a lot of photoetch for details including control panels that are glued onto the control consoles.

Here you can see the various pieces of photoetch including the window frames which sandwich the laser-cut windows into place. hiding their edges. It all goes together relatively easy.

First up in the paint queue is the engines. I’ll need to paint the insides of the ship before the outsides of course. I used some techniques detailed in the AK-Interactive “Weathering Magazine” (engines, fuel and oil edition) to do these in a snap. I started off by priming the parts in flat black primer. Next I sprayed a base coat of white, then either green or red Tamiya Acrylics. Details were painted on with AK-Interactive’s acrylic paints (great for airbrushing or by hand) which to my surprise brushed on better than any acrylic I’ve ever hand-brushed thanks to their slooooow drying time. After that, I sponged on some vallejo dark gray and dark red-brown chips. Next was a wash of really thin AK light tan/gray paint. I thinned it with plain water. After that I airbrushed on some of the AK Engine Grime and Track Wash then stippled that in to randomize it with a brush moistened with odorless turpenoid. While it was wet I applied pin-washes and details of the AK Track Wash and Dark Brown Wash products. Finally was a powdered graphite buffing with my fingertip followed by some fuel and oil stains/drips.