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Painting the Engineering Section
06 September 2006
After having successfully painted the neck for my model, it was now time to begin the painting in earnest. This time, I sought to apply my aztecing technique to the engineering hull. Before I could begin masking the Aztec, however, I had to properly mask the whole assembly. This included the opening on the bow where the deflector dish will be fitted, the opening on top where the neck attaches, and the warp grills. As I mentioned during the article on assembling the engineering hull, the masking tape I used (the blue Scotch painter's tape) pulled some of the black paint off the grills. This necessitated a touch up when the masking was removed, but it didn't turn out to be the end of the world. Once the masking was done, I first primed the whole assembly with grey primer, followed by a couple of coats of flat white. I mentioned in my last update on painting the neck that I felt like I didn't put enough coats of flat white down to cover the grey, and as a result the Aztec pattern came out a little bolder than I had planned. To correct this issue, I put down a few more coats to get a better covering. The picture below shows the model with only one coat, and you can see how the grey is still peaking through quite a bit.
Left: Prepped
& Ready!
Right: This is how the model looked after priming and one coat of
flat white.
Once the flat white was on, it was time to do the aztecing. At this point I had only masked the neck, so this was to be the first major bit of aztecing I did on the model. This process turned out to be fairly straightforward but time consuming. The engineering hull's Aztec pattern is much less defined than that of the saucer, so there is more room for interpretation. Furthermore, the pattern is made up of a lot more smaller shapes than the saucer pattern. Once I got all of the masks on, it was actually a bit of a struggle to keep them on long enough to spray the gloss white! The masks have a fairly low tack, and while this helps to prevent them from peeling up any paint, it also means they like to pop loose. This is especially true anywhere the masks have to follow a sharp curve on the model.
Left:
Aztecing the warp engines was a bit tricky,
since there is not a set pattern. I like my solution!
Right: This took a while. All those little bits of template
(shudders).
After laying down a few coats of gloss white and un-masking the model (a process that takes almost as long as masking it!), it was time to do the detail painting. This included painting the non-lit grill areas of the warp nacelles gloss black, and parts of the warp nacelle pylons dark grey. My painting on these areas came out fairly well, but there are a few touch ups I will need to do later. Also, looking back I think I should have used a lighter shade of grey on the pylons, especially on the leading edges and bases of the pylons. It doesn't look half bad as-is, though.
Left: Here
she is, unmasked! You can see some of the subtle aztecing in this photo.
Center: I painted the
non-lit warp grills gloss black. I hear they were actually a dark metallic
purple on the studio model!
Right: Here is another shot of the detail painting.
Once the detail painting was done, it was time for a little decal magic! Using the same decal set I used on the housing for the navigational deflector, I decaled the "strong back" and pylons. In order to ensure that the ink of the decals wouldn't run, I put several coats of sealer on them. I was particularly worried about the strong back decals, as they are rather large and have to be done as one piece in order to look their best. The detail in these decals is amazing, and they look great. By using them, I've been able to capture a more accurate look than I could with masking, with less time and effort involved.
Above: I really like the way the strong
back decals came out!
After decaling the engineering section, I attached the previously completed navigational defector to do a lighting test. I was very happy with the result! The only disappointment is that one of my pylon spot lights has mysteriously developed a short or broken connection, as it no longer lights up. Unfortunately, it is too buried in the model at this point to fix, but it is a minor problem overall.
Left: Looking
good! It is very satisfying to see the model progressing so well.
Right: This extremely low light shot shows the spotlighting effect
better. This pylon spot on the other side is the one that is broken.
This pretty much wraps up the major construction process on the secondary hull. There are a few cracks, gaps an seams here and there that I plan on addressing later, once most of the handling of the model is done. Likewise, there are a couple of rough edges on the detail painting that need to be addressed. However, now that the engineering section and neck are largely complete, it is time to turn my attention to the saucer!
Andy Rucker