15 Years

Today marks the 15th year since I started painting miniatures.  It's been a long road with its ups and downs, but overall an amazing journey.  My skill has increased, and the more I paint the more I learn.  I've met many amazing painters and have listened well to their lessons.  While I've been having a hard time building up the motivation to paint I think I might be finally starting to get back into the swing of things.  With the Robotech Kickstarter in its final hours I decided to finish my Zentraedi Battlepod, and I want to share it with you.

For the first pic I have the Battlepod in the base colors I planned to use:



Not a bad start, and if I really wanted to paint things in large quantities I could probably leave it like this so it'd be good enough for tabletop.  However I wanted all the nooks and crannies to have definition.  Using Games Workshops Nuln Oil, which is a very thinned out black wash, I gave it a once over.



As you can see even though it's pretty thin the black wash still makes it look really dirty.  This is exactly what I don't want.  I started to put more and more white on, but it takes a lot of precision to keep the definition while still getting nice white areas.



That looks MUCH better.  I'm loving the wet palette, but using it with white is requiring multiple layers.  Anywhere from three to five layers.  Here's the reason why:



White is a difficult color to get a solid coat of.  Even a very thin layer of a black wash can be difficult to coat.  It takes about three to five layers to get everything nice and clean.  When I went on to to lighten up the black I had put on earlier, the grey only required one coat.



There has to be a better way to get the wash on without requiring fine precision to clean things up.  I have a friend who is showing me a few tricks to try out next time I get my hands on some more Robotech models.  Until then, here's the completed product: