Painting…
With primer applied and major defects repaired, painting has begun. My objective all along has been to paint this thing the way I want to, not really referring to the films for guidance. It’s a fictional spacecraft, after all, so there is no “wrong way” to do this.
I imagine a vehicle of this size to be plated in various metals and alloys, so I’ve decided to use metallic shades, preferring Alclad II paints as they are easy to apply and stand up to masking. Once the various non-metallic paints were applied to certain areas (yellow, gray, black, etc.), I started with stainless steel and a mix of steel, stainless steel, and gold titanium for areas composing what in the film is referred to as the engineering section. I want this to be darker than the overall scheme and feature a substantial amount of panel detail. The photos show the process of masking after application of stainless steel. Once the darker mixed shade is applied, the entire section is masked off so I can spray the entire ship with the overall shade of polished aluminum. Panel detail will be done using third party masks and Tamiya tape, and I think a slightly darker shade will be used (maybe polished aluminum with a different concentrations of other colors for interest).
As for the deflector grid, I'm not entirely sure how I will provide that detail. Panel shading is likely to be the method I use, but after the fact the effect may be too subtle. A graphite pencil might be a good way to emphasize this type of detail. Note I masked off the grid along the edge of the primary hull, a real pain in the neck as it is challenging to make the lines parallel.
I'm a little annoyed by the orange peel paint problem in certain areas, but I have a remedy for this down the line.
