More Tekkaman progress and an SD

Mass amounts of painting is happening at the house. Gtetra is over working on the gaplant and I’m busy with the Tekkaman and added an SD Gundam NT-1 “Alex” to the mix. A few months ago, I saw another method for doing marble effects from a Hong Kong modeler Ambroseyin. I’m a sucker for trying out new techniques and I like the marble effect, the only issue is that I have trouble finding a suitable kit do test such off the wall ideas, so what better test subject than an SD kit. So off we go.

Last night should see the last of the masking the Tekkaman kit. I masked all the necessary parts and painted. The masking was carefully removed so as paint doesn’t get lifted and now I have the detail painting and panel lines left before I can call this guy completed.

After painting I have a box of Tekkaman parts that were cured from the previous night’s paint sessions. Combined with the painted parts I got done last night, I got a few sub assemblies. From the September build gathering, I picked up another Sol Tekkaman kit that was snapped and hand painted, which should make for a decent side by side comparison.

Allowing the Tekkaman parts to cure, I move on to the SD Gundam NT-1 “Alex” painting for yet another exercise in paint experimentation. I started this kit a few months ago, just gluing and sanding the sucker. SDs while fun quick little projects have a great deal of seam work and careful sanding is necessary. Since I had been working off and on, I soaked the kit parts in some purple the previous night as well as rinsed and ran them through the ultrasonic cleaner before laying all the parts out to dry.

Last night, I got the base coats of paint on the white parts using a gray from Mr Color, the yellow pieces were base coated in Mr Color White, and the blue pieces and blue areas were base coated with Finisher’s Pure Black.

Following Ambroseyin’s tutorial, I start off with a black base and use metallics. For this technique, any base and any selection of colors can be chosen; but to keep form straying too far from the technique, I’m sticking with the metallic base.

The marble effect is applied by the dry brushing technique to stipple the paint onto the parts. I am using two different brushes, a stiff brush that works well for getting random lines and a soft brush that adds soft marks. The dry brush method for applying the marble effect works nicely.

In comparison to the sponging effect, I have found that I am not left with too many paint points and undulations, which means that I don’t need to wet sand the paint smooth before moving on to the next step. This is a huge time saver and saves against removing too much paint with the wet sanding sessions. Additionally, the dry brushing method is also cleaner in comparison to the rather messy glove involved sponging. However, sponging does still have it’s merits as the texture from the sponge is different from that of the brushes.

I start off using Finisher’s Shields Silver, then followed up with a different metallic color for some variance, Finisher’s Titanium. In hindsight, I should have used something much brighter, but I’m pleased with the end result.

After the metallics are applied and the stamping done, I wanted to add some streaks. This is where I tangent off from the tutorial. Using a fine brush and Mr Color white, white streaks of various sizes, lengths, and directions are drawn randomly over the parts. At first this looks rather odd, but after the next step, I think this effect adds a level of depth to the effect.

Once all the white streaking is done, I sprayed a clear purple that was a mixture of mr color clears I had left over from my Asagi over all the pieces creating a purple tint to the metallic splotches and white streaks. It is a little on the dark side, but I learned a new trick to add to my bag. Hopefully, I can mask and finish this kit off as well as the Tekkaman in time for OrangeCon come Saturday.