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 This next project, I have been looking forward to for quite a while now. I bought it over a year ago and haven't got around to building it because of all the other models I have. The life of a model maker! 

Anyway, this is an exciting build. I have always been fascinated by space and especially the Moon Landing. It happened before I was born but has always been fascinating to me. So this project is going to be super cool. It's a model over 1m tall of the Saturn V rocket that sent the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and will be the starting piece of my space collection. 

I start this model by working on the first stage of the rocket. The rocket is built in stages. They can be dismantled to show off each stage of launch, so I will be building and completing each stage at a time. 

The first items to build are the massive Saturn V first stage engines. In real life these are huge. I put these together and used modelling putty to fill in gaps as much as I could. Then sprayed with primer. The engines need to be chrome silver so I paint them black. Painting metallic parts black before applying the metallic colour really brings out the metallic look in the paint. This can not be understated. If you are painting metallics, always paint the part black first. 

The fins were straight forward, just two parts to each fin, glued together and primed. Not much to be said about these. 

The main rocket body was a little trickier. Parts of the model was built of rounded plastic parts other parts were flat plastic parts that need to be rounded and glued to retain shape. These were then slid over flaps on the solid plastic parts. It required a little work and a hair dryer to soften up the wrapped plastic parts enough to stretch slightly, enough to slide over the tabs. 

The model parts are already white but I don't like bare plastic parts so I am going to paint all parts except those with pre printed logos on them. Hopefully the white colour will match. I mask up these pre printed parts and prime the body. Right now, it looks like an extra long toilet roll but I am sure it is going to look great very soon. 

Not much to see right now but soon, it is going to start coming together.

Catch me on my model bench stream https://www.twitch.tv/karidoesstuff when I do more work. We can see just how this iconic rocket takes shape. 

(Almost) Complete Arthur Morgan

 With all the parts of Arthur painted, there was just the face to do. I haven't painted a realistic looking face before and I have to say, I still need practice. I tried painting the base colour and then lightening the tones slowly over the cheek bones, jaw, etc. I then tried putting a wash over the face. The results were not as great as I had hoped but after the beard was painted on, it wasn't to bad. Next up, I glued the parts together and sat him atop his horse. 

Now Arthur was all glued together I had to paint the light upon him. I had always wanted him to look like he was looking toward a sunset, so I took the yellow and red and airbrushed the colours in the appropriate areas. I had to then paint the shadows. Using black, I airbrushed areas darker that were not under direct lighting. I also masked up an area under Arthur's hat and sprayed the black upon his face. This gave the impression of a sharp shadow being cast from his hat. 

 

I am pretty pleased with the result although there are parts I could of done better, such as the face. Those will come with practice. 

The overall model is complete but there are a few finishing touches I have to do, such as a base and the reigns. I will come back to those soon. I need to 3D print the base and decide how I wish to put it together. I have an idea for grass etc but need to spend some time thinking exactly how I would like it to look, until then, Arthur sits proudly on my shelf. 

Horse, Pants and Jacket!

 I took a bit of a break from my model bench. The computer I was using to stream went splat and my mental health took a turn for the worse so I had to take some time off. I got back and finished the horse. I had wanted, from the very start of the project, to make it look as if Arthur and his horse were looking off into the sunset. This meant that I had to paint some red sun light on the model. So once I had finished painting all the details it was time to attempt lighting effects. 

I would like to note that not only have I never used the airbrush to paint anything other than flat, continuous colour; such as a car body and such, I have never painted lighting effects. So this was all a learning experience for me. To be able to use the airbrush to paint details, adjust the flow rate and flow width was quite the challenge for my first time but I felt i had done well with it. Now I had to do the same with the sun light. 

Firstly I painted a light sun-yellow glow over certain areas of the horse that would be facing towards the sun, then I had to narrow the flow and highlight with a bright red. I highlighted the mane as well, where I felt the sun would hit it. Next, I took a fine brush and highlighted points where the redish light would of been it's most intense such as on the edges of the bridle and the metal work as well as strand of the mane. 

I am, overall, pleased with the result, although the mane could of been a little more understated but lets see what you think. 

Overall, I think the effect I was after has been achieved. 

Unlike the horse, Arthur is made up of many different coloured components, so I decided not to put him together and paint after construction, like I did the horse. Rather I would keep his parts separated and paint them individually. This meant that, before I primed the parts I had to make sure they would all fit together properly. So I spent some time with the Dremel, grinding away the connecting parts so everything would fit perfectly. 

Once I was happy with how everything would fit together, I primed the parts. After a day of drying they were ready to receive paint.  The first coat is a base colour and this was straight forward. Apart from having to make non airbrush specific paint was properly thinned and a little bit of basic masking, the majority of the work was straight forward, flay paint  and I was able to base coat nearly all the parts in a couple of hours, that included the time needed to unclog the airbrush from time to time. 

 

Base colours painted, it was time for detail work. I replaced the airbrush nozzle from a 0.5 to a 0.3 to give a finer spray and reduced the flow as much as I could so I could get a nice fine line when spraying and used a thinned black paint to slowly build up low lighting from clothing creases and shadows. Once that was done, I turned to adding highlights to the creases, same process just with a lighter colour.

It was then time to use a dark wash on the model. Wash can be used for many things; picking out details, weathering and low / highlights, I will be using it for all of these. Wash is a very think 'ink' of sorts that goes on very watery and flows into places of low relief, thus highlighting low relief details such as seams and joints. It then dries back. The areas that have more wash collected in them, the darker the wash dries. So it can easily be used as weathering. I can paint it over areas I wish to weather and, once dry, it looks like dirt rather than colour. Very handy. I painted the wash into seams etc while also using it to weather areas of dirt was well as bring down the vividness of the brass belt buckle to make it look weathered and used. 

Next step in my weathering is to use pigments. These are a dry 'dust' like powder if differing colours. I work it onto a brush and brush the powder into areas that I wish to weather and blow off any excess. This applies another level of 'dirt' to the model, making to look more realistic. 

Weathering is so much fun, as you apply it, either washes or pigments, you start to see the model get more and more ages or dirty, bringing it further and further into reality. I can easily get carried away with weathering as it really makes the model pop and grounds it. Funnily enough, this is the first model I have ever really done proper weathering. I often used a wash on my planes and cars to pick out details and show some oil stains but with this model, I really worked on the weathering because it is what makes it so much more realistic. 

With the pants done, it was time for the jacket. I first hand painted the black neck scarf and the buttons and then applied the same wash and pigment process as the pants. The finished parts look just amazing!

 

I love how weathering can really bring the model together. The slight changes in colour, the look of dirt and age make it look worn. 

Next time, I will be working on the smaller parts such as the gloves, holster, hat and stirrups. Stay tunes for future updates but I am so pleased with how the model is coming together! 

Arthur's Horse - Mane and Face

 I'm back working on Arthur's horse and this time it was the main, tail and face I was working on. 

The mane and tail were brush painted with a slight off white mixed with a light sand and then given a dark grey wash to bring out the lowlights. Once that was dry, I applied a dry brush of off white to the high points to bring out the details of a light coloured mane and tail. It turned out great but I think it could still be better, so I will work on that another time.

Next was the face. First of all I painted a mix of flesh pink and sand together for the lips and airbrushed a black on the nose and chin to blend in the lip colour. I was surprised how good this turned out. Once dry I applied an airbrush streak of white down the front of his nose as this seems to be common on the Palomino. Again I was very pleased with how this turned out, it looked very realistic. 

The bridle was hand painted in a very dark grey called Grey Black. This gave it a very black leather look. I finished the leather with a drybrush of grey to pick out the edges, stitching and soften the black grey to look a little more leathery. Then I used a flat aluminium on the metal work to complete the look. 

The eyes were painted with a gloss black and a small dot of white added to highlight. These may have to be repainted once I add the 'sunset' light layer over the model. With a brush of back wash to the inner ears, nose and mouth, the face had really taken shape. Now she looks like a horse!

Returning to Arthur's Horse

 Any good model maker has a number of projects on the go. I'm not a good model maker but I still have a few projects on the go. One of those projects is my Arthur Morgan miniature from the game "Red Dead Redemption 2" I revisit this project between major projects as a kind of  'pallet cleanser'. I havent painted a figure of this nature before so it's all a learning curve for me. 

I left the project primed and base coated and now I had to paint definition. The horse needed muscles and colouring. This was all new to me so I used the airbrush to paint black against the low level definitions and then followed up on that with a darker brown on top, finishing up with a few highlights in the relevant areas. 

I was actually rather surprised how it turned out. The paintwork really showed off  the horse's definition. Apart from a few issues with my airbrush, when do I NOT have airbrush issues? The colouring turned out really well. 

Please be aware that only the main body of the horse was painted, the main and tail were just low light painted, ready to receive brushwork. Hope you like the results so far. 

 Not sure what breed of horse this is but I'm sure someone could let me know.

Completed Shelby Mustang GT 350 H

 I left off last time with just a few final painting details to be completed. This time, I just have to put everything together. First of all I wanted to add a little more detail to the engine. Therefore I purchased a few different types of scale cables from Heroboy, especially scaled ignition cables. They are coloured scale cables that you can bend into position to add ignition cables to your models and they look great! While very fiddly they really added something to my engine. 

Those of you who watched my Twitch stream when I put the engine into the car itself will know that I had managed to put the exhaust manifolds in the wrong place. The position was not detailed very well in the instructions and, while they seemed to fit perfectly where I originally had them, they didn't seem to even fit properly in the location they were supposed to go in. A little bit of swearing to say the least occurred while trying to refit them, bit of a bad point to Revell there. 

I had also painted the chrome window surrounds and fitted the windows into the body work. Just adding that chrome and the windows to the body work really started to make the entire model come together. It started to really look like a finished, actual car. 

  Once I put the engine into the chassis I had to marry the bodywork to it as well. This was when the second issue occurred. The chassis didn't quite fit perfectly and took a little grinding and jiggling to fit. Another down point for Revell. That being said, it's not uncommon to have a few issues with fitting parts so overall, it has to be said, this was a pretty good kit overall. 

The interior, chassis, wheels and details added, the car was completed! 

I am very pleased with how this model turned out and really enjoyed building it and adding my own, extra details such as the Hood clips, engine cables, battery connectors. Even with a few little issues, including not including actual number plates, so I had to make my own to fit the decals provided. I am proud of the glossy finish and this has to be one of my favourite builds. 

I put a little video together to showcase the build progress over the time of building the model. 

I was proud of the result and happy to have this to be the first model I built and completed on my Twitch Channel I look forward to broadcasting even more. Thank you for following me and coming with me on this journey, may there be many more. 

Mustang GT 350 H - Finalizing the Painting

Progress has been getting along, albeit slowly. Finding the motivation to work on models is coming back slowly. Having said that, some progress has been made. Once the black was sprayed on the bodywork. I waited till that was dry and applied the metallic black coat. The metallic is a thinner coat so requires the gloss black as a base coat. The gold stripe decals were added using softener fluid and a hairdryer to make sure they covered perfectly. Trouble is i should of sanded the black gloss coat a little smoother as some parts of the decals had a little 'ripple' effect due to the coats below. Although nothing to be noticed too much but a lesson to learn for future decals. Once the decals were dry and fixed, the car received it's Diamond Gloss coat, then a great sanding and polishing finished with a wax using Zero Paints polishing wax to finish off an amazing paint job. 

The metallic shine really shows up and finishes off the colour. 

The hood had clips which were not part of the kit, so I cut the tip of two cocktail sticks off and used scale cabling to form the rings and wires. I painted them chrome before fitting but they will need another coat to finish off the glossy chrome look. I left the clips to dry before folding the wires under the hood. 

The chrome parts were easily painted with a primer and base coat of black and then a couple of spray coats of the World's Mirrorest Mirror Paint and they turned out great as always. This paint is amazing for chrome although fairly expensive. I don't think I will use anything else for chrome. 

A few chrome parts needed a little extra work, for example the rear light cluster needed a dab of clear red paint for the lights. Painting it onto the chrome really gives it a glassy shine. 

As you can see, these look great! I can't wait to see them on the finished model. The grille needed a little extra too. So I coated it with some black wash that filtered into the ridges, making the depths go black and giving the grille that extra realism.

Lastly the wheels needed a little extra. The called for a black centre so I tried to paint black paint in there, however I feel black wash would of worked batter as I had to reapply chrome on the black paint that was over painted. However, with tyres and the centre decal applied applied, I feel they look amazing. 

That's it for now, These details took a good couple of hours but will look fantastic when applied to the model. I still have details to work on but those are for next time. 

Thanks for checking in, hope you keep coming back.