TigRe-GZ
Welcome to my build page for the TigRe-GZ project. The build is OOB, but the paint will be pretty custom. I aim to document my painting process... perhaps someone out there will find this helpful.
12.7.04 >>
I have prepared everything for priming except for the head... which still requires a touch of paint to the eyes, and perhaps a tad bit more sanding. I like to paint the eyes first - then mask them off during the rest of the painting. I prefer this to trying to paint them afterwards.
Everything else... ready for priming:
Most everything has been primed now:
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For the white, I preshaded a light grey. I didn't want the stark shading, nor the pile up of paint layers required to deal with covering a black preshade with white:
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And the blues, which I shaded with 3 shades of :
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And some greys, 3 shades here too:
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And a shot of the face:
I have accomplished a bunch in the past few days.....
- In these first three pics, I am masking off the arm for painting of the stripes. In order to fix all the seams in this area, the inner arm was built, sanded, painted AND futured prior to masking. I masked off all the white bits, and built the forearm/armor section around it. I had to then glue, sand and prime to prep it.
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- A shot of all the stuff that I am masking... with tape ;)
- I learned something with this project, two things actually. Don't use the putty in the picture on the left. It is Scotch brand adhesive putty, their version of sticky-tak. It is not the same and won't do for masking. Stick with the original. On the left is a shot of my old sticky-tak. It has been used for some time now. I also learned that there comes a time to replace sticky-tak... and this would have been it, had that Scotch crap have actually worked. But I digress, onto something of worth...
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-Sticky-tak is the material of choice for masking my stripes. You take a pinch, about the size of a booger (as you can see on my thumb there) and you roll it into the shape you see in the right picture. The tools are there for size reference.
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- Here is the process for the stripes. I start with a nice base of white primer and add the sticky tak shapes in a somewhat random manner. Ok I admit, I thought a little bit about it ;) Once those are done, black is sprayed above the sticky-tak. More sticky-tak is then used above each existing applied piece, masking the yet-to-be black stripes. With all that black, yellow will be a real bitch to cover that, so I reprime. The tamiya primer isvery opaque, so a couple shots is pretty good. I use very very light coats to keep it thin, so there's no buildup around the masks. I then preshade using orange, and follow up with the final coats of yellow to bring it all together. The last shot has the masks removed.
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