HG Ball

14 Sep 2023

This is the first painted kit I’m really proud of. Hopefully the first of many! Warm tones and orange are a “ground type” look to me – though I guess a ground-type Ball doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to put a spare set of legs on one.

Maybe a space-type ball would have more of a clean but dry-brushed “sand-blasted” look from all the debris floating in space? This kit is a twin set, so excellent for trying things out.

I used Vallejo Model Color for the first time, and was very pleased. I was starting to get the hang of brush-painting the Tamiya acrylics, but being able to wet-palette these paints makes working in repeated quick sessions much easier. Also, I really like a lot of the colours straight out of the handy little bottles with no blending required – this is Silver Grey, Light Grey and Bright Orange.

The weathering was done by physically chipping and wearing at the paint in places, particularly on the grabby hands. Streaking and “fake” chipping effects were done with Real Touch gundam markers – they do activate the paint underneath, so an intermediate topcoat would have given a margin of error. I’ve tried a few metallic markers, but they wipe away too easily for this type of workflow.

Further streaking and panel lining was done with heavily-thinned Tamiya acrylics, after an intermediate gloss coat. Applying waterslides over all this was really annoying, so I only did a few that I scavenged from the RX-78 3.0 sheet.

Also: A big sheet of coloured paper from an art supply shop is a pretty cheap upgrade to the whole photography business.