Vindicator #1 - Day 7

Well, my predictions from day 6 turned out to be a bit ambitious.  Didn't get the shading washes started, didn't do the rust streaking and I certainly didn't finish the metal parts.  A bit part of it all was the fact that I may have been pushing myself to hard to make up for lost time earlier in the week.  So I slowed things down a bit and took some time to re-asses my process.

On the plus side, Karitas left me some food for thought in the comments.  The part about my pre-shading being largely unnecessary will save a lot of time and frustration in the future.

Moving on- I may not have met my wild-ass projections, but I got a ton of work done.

First up for the day were the decals. It's important to get them on before the weathering takes place so that they'll get worked into the overall effect.

Masking with some frisket and tape.

A nice white background sealed to make it glossy and, thusly, better for decals

success!

I gave the decals some time to dry, sealed them and then moved onto the biggest part of the weathering - the chipping.  Using a mix of GW Dark Flesh and Black and some old pluck foam inserts, I chipped up the edges to break up the color and provide a sneaky replacement for line highlights.

click for full size

I ended up going pretty heavy on the chipping but I stand by it for aesthetic purposes.  Plus, I want to give the tank a very heavily used feel and because without the heavy weathering effects, the green is just too much.

This is the point where I ran into the fact that I just hadn't thought my process out fully.  My original intention was to do the oil washes and most of the weathering.  But it dawned on me that the metallic parts and the details would need to be in place before that in order to prevent them from drawing too much attention to themselves.

So I masked off some of the larger areas and sprayed them Boltgun metal while I did the treads and scored a twofer.

You can see that I also started in on some of the other details as well

 The rest of the metal bits will be hand painted - and I even got a start in on that.

Dozer blade lookin' mighty fine so far

By the end of the day I was here (again, the pictures aren't the best representation of reality) - all the white details painted up and a good chunk of the metallic base coating done.

I've still got a bunch of areas that need to be hit with Boltgun Metal (really not looking forward to the wheels) before I even get to the washes that'll complete the metal bits.  So that's probably what I'll be doing in the foreseeable future.  But once that frustration is over, then it's a short little jaunt to being complete.