UNDER SNOWY SKIES

We had a bit of an unusual cold spell the past few days up here.  On Saturday it was 24 degrees and the next day it was one degree and snowing.  It snowed for two days straight.  Yesterday, the weather recovered a bit up to 10 degrees, but it was not very nice.  The weather was a great excuse to stay inside and hobby.  I have been working on the Judicator and will probably be working on it for the foreseeable future.

After spending lots of time prepping the model I put it together in chunks.  I have been using my airbrush more lately.  Once I got over the trepidation of using the thing, I’ve tried to  use it more and more.  My control is still not great, so I thought that having the model in smaller pieces would make it easier to get into the nooks and crannies as well as not painting parts I hadn’t intended to.  Sadly, it happens a lot.

I used my new Vallejo primer in the airbrush for the first time.  I loved this experience.  You have way more control over where primer goes and how much goes there when using the airbrush rather than a spray bomb.  I’ve found that paint is adhering well to the primer as well.  I had been using Army Painter spray primer and I found the paint adhesion was extremely poor.

I base coated the parts dark green with the airbrush and then it was time for a leap off of the deep end.  I decided to try and use the airbrush to do some highlights.  I thought that I won’t be doing a model this large again any time soon, so I would take the opportunity to try something new.  The results were acceptable.  The lessons learned during the process were invaluable though.  I tried airbrushing without the needle cap on and learned about dry tip, where paint dries on the tip of the airbrush and needs to be cleaned or your painting stops.  Overall, the results will do and I’m more happy with the fact that I took a chance.

Finally, I decided to try some masking and do a second colour on the forearm shields.  The results were ok, but I got a bit of a wash that I put on in between coats under the mask and had to spend some time with a makeup applicator removing it.

Unfortunately, I pulled a small bit of paint off of the green area down to the plastic while removing the masking.  I need to spend some time deep thinking on how I am going to fix this without it looking odd in with the airbrushing around it.  Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

END OF SUMMER UPDATE

Well, summer has past and with the beginning of September, fall is here.  As a teacher, this is how the seasons work for us.  Although it is a bit strange not to be back to work.  Hopefully, that situation will be taken care of in the coming weeks.  Regardless, with the coming of fall, it is time to see what I managed to accomplish over the summer. 

I just finished two more models.  I finally have Lady Ayana and Master Holt to add to lists for some high armour cracking potential.

With the completion of this trio, I counted (and recounted) how many models I completed during my Summer Surge.  It turns out that this summer turned out to be more of a gentle nudge than a surge.  I only managed to finish 17 models this summer.  Granted, I had a lot of other stuff going on, but I really dropped off in August.  I don’t know if I hit a wall after doing so much in July or what happened. 

I have decided to keep doing the graph and add any models I have acquired and of course those that get finished.  I think it’s a nice way to visualize what I have and what I have to do.  It helps me from becoming a collector of models and a painter instead.

Finally, here are a couple of shots of my next project.