Imperial Thunderbolt - Part III

 

Now with wings on the wings.

 

Painting these fighters is proving to be painfully slow. No real reason other than lack of time, but perhaps there is an element of them being something so different that I'm having trouble getting into the feel of it. I am still painting all four simultaneously, which will naturally take longer, but even so they should really be much further along.

I used some busy time to think which transfers to apply. Obviously the leader has wings on the wings, and with a black tail there will need to be a white transfer. I've glazed a little Russ Grey over the white transfer as well, but it needs some more. The other planes have a number on each wing, and the black variant on the tail. On the note of transfers, I used airbrush cleaner to help soften and match the transfers to the surface, but it appears to have reacted slightly with the prior varnish step and smudged some paint. It's visible on the left wing, so I might have to add some scratches there to cover it up slightly. A good point to remember however: only varnish after transfers, never before.

I've outlined all the panels and shaded all the rivets on the blue-grey areas. That took some time. I ended up batch painting areas, e.g all tops of the wings, then all tops of tails, then all sides, then stages along the undercarriage. This helped quite a lot - batch painting doesn't mean only one colour at a time, but it can equally apply to one area instead.

There is still some of the time shading to be done, then trim highlighting, metallics, the canopy, weapons, and weathering. Still a lot to go. Somehow it feels like I've turned a corner though, as if the hard part is now over, and so I'm hoping the rest will go much more quickly. Still, with the little time each week I have right now, it will probably take another couple of weeks to get these models done.

I've been using the new STC paintbrushes from Games Workshop on these models too. I haven't used enough to get a full feel of them, but they are so far handling better than the last ones. They still form a hook on the end, which just seems to be a part of using synthetic brushes - but at least harming animals isn't required. Definitely superior to before, but don't come close to sable brushes. I may write more about them after finishing the Thunderbolts.

-- silly painter.