Re: District 9 Assault Rifle Build (3D kit)
Well, it's been a long night. It's 7.30AM and I haven't been to bed. Won't bother now... bring on the coffee! Funny, a week or so ago I said to my wife - "Another day should finish it." Ha ha, I've dropped at least 30 hours on it since then. Soooo underestimated this project.
I was really looking forward to weathering this. Weathering is the fun part right? Not this time! Originally I was going to just use acrylics for weathering, but after watching Bill's build using oils, I figured that was the best way to go. I'd recently finished my Riddick boot knife which I weathered first with acrylics (which was a failure), then oils which worked a treat. So I was feeling confident with the oils.
First, lay black into the crack...
Then use the access paint by wiping it around for weathering the flat surfaces...
Immediate disaster! The oil paint immediately absorbed into the base paint on the gun. By absorbed I mean it would sink into the white (or orange) and immediately stain it. So you couldn't move the paint around to thin it out or even feather it off. I was just there! My first thought - "oh man, I'm gonna have to repaint the gun!" followed by instant nausea.
A couple reasons why this could have happened...
First I didn't clear coat the gun before weathering. I didn't think I'd need too. The white base colour has a nice shiny finish, so I thought the paint would just slide over it. The irony of this mistake... while weathering the gun I had one of Bill's "live in the workshop" videos playing. It wasn't actually live but was the live video Bill recorded when weathering this very gun. It's about 3 hours long. So I'm weathering away listening to (and occasionally glancing at) Bill weathering this gun. Anyway, he gets an hour and a half into the weathering process and says - "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I didn't clear coat this before weathering. But I should have, so don't make the same mistake I did." ARRRRGGGHHH!!!! Ha ha. You have to laugh!
Secondly, my plan to tidy up the over-runs in the base colours was to lightly sand the overruns out. As i did this I thought, why not give the whole thing a light sand, just to weather it a bit and take the shine off. But doing so definitely made the weathering paints "grab" more.
Thirdly, Bill uses a water-soluble oil paint. I'm just using standard artist oils.
Not sure which of those 3 were responsible for my dilemma, most likely a combination of all 3?!
Ok, so now what? Well, I tried using an acrylic rather than the oils. To my surprise, it did exactly the same thing! (So maybe number 3 is irrelevant.) Same problem, the black immediately absorbed into the white. And there's that nausea again!
My saving grace - During Bill's process he mentions going back and using mineral turpentine to wipe away excessive weathering paint. So I wiped the oil with turps, it came off. Yus!!! So I thought why not try the acrylic, so I wiped the acrylic with the turps and it also came off. Yuuuussss! Now when I say it came off, the bulk of it came off, not all of it by any means. And of course the more you wipe, the more you bite into the base colours. But at least now I had a way forward. So I took a deep breath and committed, wiping the whole gun down with black acrylic, then going back and wiping away the bulk of it with turps. At first it was VERY heavily weathered. I'd always planned to have heavy weathering, but not this heavy!
So I continued to wipe with turps which left the gun looking nice and grubby with black in the corners, etc. I then went over the whole thing with a watered-down dark brown acrylic which I had far more success with. It would wipe on and off pretty much as I have expected.
After going over the whole thing with the brown I then grabbed some yellow oil and dabbed it in places, then wiped either with a cloth or just my finger. Again, this worked as it should. It would smear and leave a nice yellow stain. Then I'd leave it built-up for highlights and alien "goop". The scope pieces were done in a semi-gloss black, so I weathered them with the yellow which dulled them off and also left highlights in the corners, etc.
And all night later, the weathering is done! I'll leave my comments to the end and let the pics do the talking for a bit...
Ok, so it's heavily weathered which is what I wanted. But overall I think it looks like I just threw the weathering paint on there. I wanted the weathering to be far more clever than this. More deliberate. I certainly don't think the finish reflects the hour and hours that went into it. Which sucks! But it is what it is.
Next step is to clear coat it with a flat clear. I won't stick the 24 nozzles on the gun body until after it's clear coated, as clear often turns silver into grey. On that note, I'm thinking I'll have to mask the dark grey metallic on the large cylinder as the clear with dull it. Actually, for some reason it already went quite dull after painting. Maybe the air temperature in the basement is too cold. So maybe I'll just clear coat it, then respray the grey metallic. We'll see... I need more coffee....
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Wow that's looking great !! - have you cleared in Mat? or are you weathering first then going over it in clear?
I REALLY don't want to talk about it! Ha ha ha ha...