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Thanks Casey. I'm now on a mission to find inspiration for the paint-job.


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And woo hoo for page 8. *shrugs*

You should paint it similar to an old microchip. Green base with brass studs and wires. You could do little yellow osl spots on the wires and ones where the electricity is traveling.

 Theophony wrote:
You should paint it similar to an old microchip. Green base with brass studs and wires. You could do little yellow osl spots on the wires and ones where the electricity is traveling.

Now green like a circuitboard is not a bad idea.
I was already thinking brass/copper/gold for the tracks and domes.

Don't know if I'd do the whole thing in green, I am thinking ambitious thoughts about colour to colour fades...
Not flat at least. Maybe only the sections with the domes. Maybe a lighter green to darker green fade (reversed on the sections), or a green to (or from) some other colour... Still have to play around with colours, but green is up there...

I still need to practice my OSL, didn't go well last time. Maybe on something smaller. We'll see. I am thinking of maybe some electric arcs...

 Dr H wrote:
colour to colour fades...

Do it for all those little boys who never had enough credit to buy one on GT3.

That is indeed highly ambitious Casey. I like your thinking.
I have tried that effect before...

The one on the left is a green wash over metallic blue. Doesn't really show in the photo and isn't all that obvious IRL.

But if I'm more exaggerated with the colour differences and not try to make it work from every angle (although that's starting to sound like nmm work).

Unless I can find some of those pearlescent paints that I saw on Dstein's latest thread...

Yeh its a toughy, if you can find a video of that TVR Tuscan it gets even harder. That beauty changes is the light like oil. I have no idea how you'd begin to tackle it.

 Casey's Law wrote:
Yeh its a toughy, if you can find a video of that TVR Tuscan it gets even harder. That beauty changes is the light like oil. I have no idea how you'd begin to tackle it.

Oh yeah, I know the effect. I even own a shirt that does it (red/purple to blue).
and paints do exist to do it. Look for interference paints or mediums. Just have to find somewhere that sells it.

Should be able to pick up interference paints at any arty type shop - I get mine from Colemans. And Eldar vehicles are a perfect base for using them with all their curves.

Missed the circuit build, I would have suggested getting a pack of plasticard strips - you can get small bags with short strips at widths of like .5, 1 and 2 mm - would have been good for the cicuitry strips...

Thanks MT. Yeah, I have picked up a couple of interference paints from hobbycraft.
I'm currently experimenting with them to get the best effect (or at least close to what I expect). Got a few more things to try then I might be able to show an update. Any advice you (or anyone else) can give would also be useful.

Still experimenting with them at this scale myself....so far I've had best iridescent effects by going onto black undercoat and mixing with a metallic complemantary colour, for instance mixing metallic blue with interference red. You can use non-metallics but then there's no sheen to that colour when it's visible, looks a bit strange....which may work well for chaos, but not sure how effective it looks .....

 monkeytroll wrote:
Still experimenting with them at this scale myself....so far I've had best iridescent effects by going onto black undercoat and mixing with a metallic complemantary colour, for instance mixing metallic blue with interference red. You can use non-metallics but then there's no sheen to that colour when it's visible, looks a bit strange....which may work well for chaos, but not sure how effective it looks .....

Yeah, a black or dark colour gives the best iridescent effect. I've also noticed that you have to be careful with how strong the colour underneath is, if it's too strong compared to the interference colour you can still see the colour when you should be seeing the iridescent colour, kinda spoils the effect.

It's tricky mixing with my usual paints (as you would expect) as oil (enamel paints) and water (these interference mediums) don't mix well. But it's not impossible so long as the majority is the interference medium. Still need to experiment with this more.
I've also tried mixing in some water-colour paints I have laying about (the thought being they are both water based) and that gives a very matt finish but still has the iridescent effect, maybe a gloss coat will help (still to try).

One of the major problems I'm seeing is that after painting on the interference medium over the other paint, it ends up looking washed out or chalky (as if it's been given a white wash) so black now looks more charcoal for example. But if you mix in some of the paint with the IM then it's fine but you loose some of the interference effect. It's a balancing act I think, just need to play about with techniques...

I've got the Daler-Rowney, Interference colour, Mediums, Acrylic. Green and Violet. They're more for canvas painting but I think they can work if I find the right way to apply them to the surface.

I have also found that mixing the two IM together doesn't really work. May just be the mixing of green and violet but I just get a silvery sheen rather than green and violet bits, mixed too well I suppose. However, one over the top of the other seems to work ok.

Much more experimenting to do.

Yeah, mixing two interference colours seems to cancel each other out, try an acrylic metallic for best results with mixing.

I had forgotten you use enamels, does make it more interesting mixing them

Not tried one interference over the top of another myself yet, I have heard you can get some interesting effects doing that though...

I have the daler-rowney cryla interference colours and liquitex versions. The trick is watering them down enough for this scale, finding using a retarding agent rather than water helps with these.

Yeah, I'm thinking I may have to splash out on some acrylic paints to go with these. Couple more tests and will see.

Interesting effects are what I'm after, mixed results so far...

Yeah, watering them down does cause problems with coverage. Retarding agent will no doubt help with this (which do you use?) and many thin layers is probably the way to go.

I'm going to have to look into this, I don't know much about interference paints at all. Sounds like fun.

 Casey's Law wrote:
I'm going to have to look into this, I don't know much about interference paints at all. Sounds like fun.

Indeed, they are worth a look.

Few more experiments:
As for painting the interference medium (IM) over another paint as a wash or glaze I've been finding better results with matt over gloss paint (mostly due to the paint pooling and not forming an even layer ).

I've also tried using a couple of clear-coat colours I have. Neither resulted in particularly good effects , either too glossy (which may or may not be an issue, and needs further investigation as I tried these on a flat surface not a curved surface) or they completely obscured the colour . Neither could be mixed with the IM at any level (different solvent to the usual enamels), but a clear acrylic paint might be worth looking at to mix with and use as a glaze.

I've also found that certain colours (or shades) work better than others. This is mostly down to whether the original paint shows the IM up as chalky when not showing it's interference colour. Certain greens and blues have worked ok (even a light blue), not found a satisfactory red yet.

Gloss varnish over the matt result of the watercolour plus IM didn't really improve or really affect the result much at all. Maybe more coats would help but probably not worth the effort at the moment.

As for layering one IM over the other, I've had ok results with using a varnish layer between them (that's paint-IM-varnish-IM). Again the gloss was problematic but the matt varnish did not hamper the effect from the lower layer . The interference colours both appear to show at the same time (which is not necessarily bad), this may be down to coverage problems and/or the thin layer of varnish. I aim to try a few different thicknessess(essessess) to see if I can get the interference colours to show at different angles.

I'm going to look at getting some acrylic paints (colours, varnishes, clear colours...) because mixing them with these IM would make things much easier.

Here endeth the lesson.


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and Woo 8000 views. Thank you to everyone that pokes their nose in here. Hope you all stay for the ride.

Ok picture update this time. Painting tests.

These are the paints I have bought for this painting job.

There is a Glaze medium (matt), the two Interference mediums (green and violet) and three Revell acrylic paints in Patina green, Blue and Red (that I might not use here, but got "just in case").

The pictures below show the stages of painting that could produce the right result, but needs much more work on each step to improve the final result.
So, from the top.
1) Grey-scale undercoat.
This is to produce shading for the blue that is to follow. As it turns out I can be more bold as it didn't show as much as I thought it would.

2) Metallic blue coat.
What it says it is... Metallic blue. As you can see, not a great variation from the dark end (right) to light end. Not helped by the light being from the right as well.

3) Wet coat of the mixture of Matt Glaze medium + Interference Green Medium + a little acrylic green (to tint the glaze). Insert = the mixed paint.
4) The above coat, now dry. With the base colour showing.
5) With the Interference colour showing.
As can be seen, the paint mixture is quite pale as both the glaze and interference mediums are white. The glaze medium dries clear though. However, you can see that the mixture needs to be thinned further to avoid the streaking that can be seen here. The matt finish doesn't help...

6) The above after a gloss coat. Base colour.
7) interference colour.
Looks much better now, except for the streaks (that will be fixed with proper thinning).

8) After a coat of the second mixture. Matt Glaze medium + Interference Violet Medium + a little acrylic Blue (to tint the glaze and maybe reduce the green of the previous layer that turned out to not be a problem). Insert = the mixed paint.
9) With interference colours showing.
The mixture was a darker blue than I expected, but that just means I'll use less blue next time. Matt effect again not helping.

10) After final gloss coat. Base colour showing.
11) Interference colours showing.
Not the striking affect I was originally hoping for but if you look closely enough at the last picture you can see both of the interference colours separated in certain areas where the surface is uneven (this bodes promise for a nice effect on the model).
Probably could have used more violet layer as only used one coat compared to two for the green layer.

As I said, a few more tweaks to the method and it could work.

An iridesent sheen to it would look quite cool. You could also make the crevasses in the armor plating and the wires on the circut look like they are glowing with energy or something.

Just a thought.

Looking amazing by the way doc. Keep up the madness!

Thanks da waaagh.

I will have to look into what colour and effects I can use for things like the cables and things once I get this paint-job working. Testing is still ongoing at the mo.

A bit of battle damage or chipped paint wouldn't look out of place to keep that army-of-the-second-law, AKA brainwashed feel.
Up to you.

Yeah, weathering of some description is currently planned. Will have to see when it comes to it.

That iridescent color is awesome. Wish I had a use for it. Maybe in the future a giant plasma coil or some such.

 Theophony wrote:
That iridescent color is awesome. Wish I had a use for it. Maybe in the future a giant plasma coil or some such.

Glad you think so. I'm getting closer to a satisfactory result, thinning and layering experiments are currently underway.

You just have to "make" a reason to use them.

The effect is quite subtle unless it's on a dark colour or (as I'm trying to find) if it's mixed with the right paint...
Don't know what paint they use on TVRs but I don't think that effect is possible on this scale, probably requires a ridiculous number of paint layers that would cover all the details on a model. But I'm going to get as close as I can...


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More interesting results from the interference paints...

From the right (top image):
Glaze medium and Interference Green - 1 layer
Glaze medium and Interference Green - 5 layers
Glaze medium, Interference Green and green - 2 layers
Glaze medium, Interference Green and green - 5 layers
Glaze medium and Interference Violet - 1 layer
Glaze medium and Interference Violet - 5 layers
Glaze medium, Interference Violet and Blue - 1 layer
Glaze medium, Interference Violet and Blue - 5 layers

As can be seen from the first 2 images, I can get streak-free results if I thin the paint mixture enough and multiple layers don't cause problems.
Although, and interesting problem became apparent with the blue mixture; it seriously affects the interference effect and little violet could be seen. Due to this I thought I'd see what the red paint would do. So the lower images have the Glaze medium, interference violet and red paint (2 layers and 5 layers).


As can be seen from the last two images, the interference colours work well with these mixtures and layers.
And the addition of the extra coloured paint does seem to add to the interference layer colour and aid the effect, as was hoped.
5 layers may be too many so I may only use 3 or 4 instead over the metallic Blue.

Next experiment is layering these mixture over the metallic blue to see what effect they have and whether red will work (could produce a nice purple, could look crap).
In other (but related) news I have managed to get the light to dark fade working with the metallic blue.

Well, mixed results continue.
This is painting the interference paints (thinned appropriately) over the metallic blue.

From the top again:
1) grey-scale
2) metallic blue layer (lit from the left)
3) metallic blue layer (lit from the right) Forgive the not very even coating, I can do better than this.
4) After 2 layers of Glaze medium + Interference Green and 2 layers of Glaze medium + Inter' Green + Green (base colours showing)
5) and 6) Interference colour showing.
7) After 4 layers of Glaze medium + Inter' Violet (and a little bit of red on the upper half, not really enough to be obvious) (base colours)
8) and 9) Interference colours showing.



Good points:
The glaze layers can be applied without streaks if thinned enough (any streakyness is due to the grey and blue layers).
The interference colours do show up at different angles. The violet shows up nearer the gloss reflection and the green further away and then the blue can be seen further still.

Bad points:
The metallic sheen of the blue base coat seems to be lost by the final stages. If you look at images 4, 5 and 6 you can see the metallic sheen as well as the iridescent sheen of the green. Contrast that with the images 7, 8 and 9 and you can't see that the blue is metallic.

This could be because there is 10 layers of paint on top of the blue (and only 2 of them are gloss) and expecting it to still look metallic is unrealistic.
I could cut down on the number of layers, but that would reduce the, already subtle, iridescent colours or bring back the streaks from having to use more Inter' Med' in the mixture.

So, maybe I'll just use one IM over the blue at a time and maybe use different colours on different plates of the hull. But a 3-tone paint-job all over probably isn't going to happen.

Lo.
Having decided on a method for painting the upper hull I have been thinking about the lower hull.

I wanted a different colour to the upper hull and was thinking along two lines; lighter colour (as aircraft to camouflage against the sky), or darker (just because). It also needed to be a colour that goes with the metallic blue of the upper hull but not detract or over-power.

Long story short, I went with a dark-ish purple as I like purple, it works with blue and the various warning markings I plan on using AND I could use the interference violet on it...

So, may I present the main colour of the lower hull...


There is more details to be done later. Such as the gems, signs and symbols (possible hazard stripes), the metals (which here are metal coloured, but may change to a bronze/copper colour here and there, which also work with purple) and the front of the Shuriken cannon and sensor things.

Let me know what you think of the colour, it's tricky to photograph the effect but I think it shows in places in the picture above (remember the interference paint shows up depending on the angle of view so the glittery effect moves about ).
Also notice the modified Shuriken cannon is attached (the front end of which may be blue, it may be hazard striped ).

That's all for now, time to think about the upper hull.

Lovin the iridescent work so far. I think purple will be a great color on the bottom as well. Anyone under the models really shouldn't be worried about the color so much as what's inside the model, at least hats what we try to tell our kids .

 Theophony wrote:
Lovin the iridescent work so far. I think purple will be a great color on the bottom as well. Anyone under the models really shouldn't be worried about the color so much as what's inside the model, at least hats what we try to tell our kids .

Thanks Theo. Yeah, it's what's inside that counts, especially in this army. No prejudice in this army, everyone is welcome and what's inside of everyone is a brainwashing implant, everyone's happy....

AND I have an update...

Grey-scale is done and ready for the metallic blue layers.


Hopefully it will show through AND I don't up the blue as I paint it...fingers crossed.

That greyscale is fantastic , I'd be proud of an army like that. Did you finally decide to do the connecting wires with paint instead of wire o plasticard?

Thanks again Theo All done with a brush, took two days of painting sessions to do...

Yeah, going to paint them on as wires weren't flat enough and cutting card or plastic thin enough proved difficult. Far easier to paint it (probably, may change my mind when I get to it but the decision is made).

Great work H! Looking forward to the blue.

 Casey's Law wrote:
Great work H! Looking forward to the blue.

Thanks Casey. The blue will be the important layer where it can make or break the look; really needs to be a smooth, even layer. Will test the ideal paint thickness before committing to the model.