Space The Final Frontier

No, this aint' Star Wars. It's better.

Work in progress pictures of my Battlestar Galactica kit, it is made in 1:4105 by Revell with molds from Moebius Models, who design a lot of starship kits based on the remake of the Battlestar Galactica tv show and other science fiction series.

The 2004 remake of the classic Battlestar Galactica show, get some background informations about BSG in this PDF, is my favorite tv series ever, I could write much about it, and I was lucky when I got the Revell version of this modelkit for a low price at the bay, even when it was already started and 2 small parts were missing.
It was built but then I stashed it, I had other kits to finish on my priority list.

The first thing I did last weekend was to give the kit a layer of primer, for this I use some cheap stuff from the discounter, this stuff is pretty good but needs some time, I gave it 24 hours to dry.

The next step was adding grey, first a complete base layer, then I highlighted the armourplates with a lighter grey. After this I gave the kit a good layer af matte varnish, normally you use glossy varnish, later more on that.

And I absolutetely recommend using a airbrush for kits of this size.

This was followed by a premiere, for the first time I used a selfmade wash based on black oilpaint mixed with lightergas. I read so much about this that I had to try it for myself.

In German it would be easier to describe this than in my crappy English. If you want to try it for yourself , just look for tutorials on youtube.

Usally you need to use gloss varnish for a protective layer, the glossy surface protects the acrylic color from the solvent of the wash and of taking the oil color, but I used matte varnish because I wanted give the whole ship a dirty look.

You can find much better tutorials on this but all you have to do ist to apply the wash, wait some minutes and then start to rub it off with papertowels and cotton swaps.

Depending on the pressure and the rubbing  you will get the result that you want. The final step before you continue to paint this thing is to add another layer of glosscoat, because the oilcolor will not dry completely, it will cause a mess if you do not do this. Use only matte clearcoat if you want the colors to get dull, I used matte because I wanted this effect.

After that I applied some generic grey, not completely, only a very heavy highlighting. This is the actual building state of it.

A detail shot of my Revell Hind kit give you a better view of the look of the highlighted panel lines. The rest of the black was rubbed away. It is not perfect and I may redo some spots, but for my first real try (with glosscoats) of this technique I am pretty satisfied with the result. More on that and (of course) the Hind will come in future posts.

The big advantage of this is that the oilpaint will not completely dry, you can pause whenever you want, all what may be needed is some lightergas to get the paints wet again. And will need a proper stock of cotton swaps since you will need a lot of them.

The base of the stand was painted in Antikbronze, sealed with glosscoat and then I added a layer of oilwash. It was the first time I used metallic color through my airbrush, I had some concerns about cleaning the pistol after that. Maybe I will redo this thing, there are 2 spots that I messed up.

Beside of finishing this kitten, this weekends task is to finish the Galactica, instead of the red decal stripes I will use paint for them, this will definitely look better. I have to go through my source material since I have questions about coloring of some of the details.

At the moment I am preparing some posts, they will appear this weekend.

So say we all.