At the risk of bringing up some painful memories of this kit

, just bumping to ask two questions about your paint, because it looked terrific.
Well thank you. It's not where I wanted to finish - but I set this project aside because I cannot remedy the curve or the light leaks without a very intensive and serious expenditure of time. So I set it aside as "done" as best as I am willing to go.
For the shoe polish, did you use the waxy cakes of polish and just mix some with water, or was it another product?
I used Kiwi Black Leather Dye liquid in the bottle. 2.5 oz. It has a sponge top after you open the clear cap. Just shake and press the sponge tip down onto a paper towel or plate and the dye fills up the sponge. I dab the tip numerous times to expend the dye into a little dressing cup and usually end up with some foamy stuff that I then thin a little bit with plain water. I mix it with a brush until it is the desired translucency. This stuff is great for washes and I usually thin it pretty good with water to achieve that. However, since I decided to do the panel lines as a dark wash on the bare plastic, I did not thin it with water as much as I normally would so the panel line would be black and sharp and only diluted by the primer when it was coated later.
I did these panel lines on the bare plastic because the dye and water on the very thin micro brush would run well down the length of the panel lines. Because it is dye and not paint, this WILL discolor the white plain plastic, which is why I chose to use dye instead of just an acrylic wash.
Also, for your base coat I believe you said you thinned the Stynlrez. Makes sense as it sounds like the white primer in particular is pretty thick, however the little I've read on modelling sites suggests that the paint does not like thinner at all, and to only use it straight - if indeed you did thin it, what did you use to do so safely?
I poured the white Stynlrez in a mixer jar with a tight lid and added several drops of Pledge Floor Care/Future and several drops of windshield washer fluid to get it just a bit thinner than it comes out of the bottle so my airbrush could evenly spray at 28 PSI. Shook it exceedingly well and used a dropper to dump the primer into a gravity fed brush. Stynlrez already has great leveling properties on it's own and I did not want to lose any of that in thinning it so I added the Future floor care to ensure that would remain but also increase the drying time a bit so I would not get any orange peel. The windshield washer fluid has a good proportion of alcohol to keep the primer thin in the cup but evaporate quick enough when sprayed so as not to inhibit dry time.
I hope you have better luck with your build than I had with mine.