Warlord Titan – More caution stripes!

For some reason, I got it in my head that the carapace top between the reactor ridges would be cool as black/yellow caution stripes.

Of course it’s one of the hardest areas to mask easily, but I couldn’t get it out of my head, so here goes!

First, about 45 minutes of careful masking with Tamiya masking tape.

Then about 30 (or was it 50?) light coats of Wicked Golden Yellow. If you spray this too thick it pools up and dries unevenly, so many many thin coats is the name of the game.

Hit the knee pads while I had the paint in the cup.

Completed base yellow coat, drying overnight.

Sprayed 3 layers of liquitex Glossy varnish so the base yellow would be less likely to come up with the masking tape.

about 20 minutes into the stripe masking job. Because of all the rivets I was sure I was going to get ‘leaks’ of black paint under the taps, so resolved to lay down very, very light coats of black (which dry upon contact and are less likely to ‘run’ under the tape.

and more masking

and more masking

and then paint! about 10 very light coats of Vellejo black primer.

The moment of truth when airbrushing over masks/stencils is removing the mask. Will the paint peel up? how are the mask edges? any leaks? Basically, any black paint over yellow is almost impossible to repair because of hour transparent the yellow paint is… it’d never truly cover the black and look smooth.

Fortunately, the paint stayed down nicely because of my varnish, and the light coats of black paid off, no issues at all with the stripes! yay!

peeling away more mask, still looking good.

stripe mask completely removed, looking good so far!

So I applied 2 coats of varnish, so the masking tape I have to put on top of the whole area when priming the rest of the model silver doesn’t pull up the yellow/black I just spent so much time laying down.

So, in my jubilation, I pulled off the ‘outer mask and pulled up some of my caution striping in my rush. NOOOOOOOoooo!

So, another quick mask

and many layers of Createx wicked yellow

and it’s more or less repaired. There’s a bit more color saturation and an textured edge on the joint, but better than primer grey!

And that is a day of painting. So. Much. Masking.