Dropzone Commander - PHR (Part 3)

So with the troops finished, it was time to start on some vehicles. As dropships are the bread and butter of Dropzone Commander, I thought it was probably best I get the trio of Neptune medium dropships painted first.

I found inspiration from some other folks who did pre-shading, basically follow the panel lines with a dark colour like black, and then gradually build up the colours on top. This leaves a very subtle shading effect.

The Neptune below has had Menoth White Base spray painted over the black pre-shading. You can see by following the more prominent surface areas, the base colour is less intense around the panel lines and on the sides.

Here are the remaining two Neptunes. I admit I'm not terribly accurate with the airbrush in following the lines, but luckily this technique allowed me a lot of slack to be messy.

The Neptune below has had a few coats of Menoth White Base, but there's still a few more coats to go till I get the desired opacity.

Here are the trio of Neptunes with Menoth White base built up over the black pre-shading.

It was at this point I decided to go and magnetise my PHR force. Usually I would want to do this before painting them... fortunately it was pretty easy to drill a 2mm diameter countersink and glue a 1mm x 2mm magnet in place.

The next step was to complete the base colours with a highlight of Menoth White Highlight airbrushed on the most prominent parts.

The next step was to paint the metal parts. The initial large area under the Neptune was airbrushed on, after carefully masking with cling wrap and masking tape. I use Vallejo Model Air Aluminium as the base colour for the metal.

Here I've done a test run using Nuln Oil wash over the metal to see how it turned out. Fortunately it looks ok, so I'll run with that for all the metal parts. My other option was to use an oil paint, but the Nuln Oil wash is much faster.

I will do the wash in several stages, to avoid it running all over the model (turning a model around when there is a pool of wash in a recess is not something I want to do again... I ended up having to re-spray the beige colour on part of a Neptune because the wash ran along to the other side when I flipped it over forgetting the wash was still wet).

The photo below shows the Neptunes with the Nuln Oil wash in the turbines and the back grills.

I used the Vallejo Air Aluminium to pick out the remaining details. The paint is fine to use with a brush I have found. It is super thin, but can be used like a normal paint.

So not too much to go, probably just a burnt umber oil wash to pick out the panel lines, and then spot colours for the sensor arrays. I'll probably add a bit of a brown colour to the exhausts as well.