I'm sure I'll keep scribbling on them as they sit around, but for the most part I got them all finished up (the paint work at least) tonight.
These are the primary thruster (the caterpillar drive
)shutters. I'm imagining that these slide open along a radial track and tuck up inside the body. As such, they might get a little burned and sooty along the edge closest to the operating thruster, and somewhat scratched up from being opened and closed. This weathering would be fairly specific and would not match the surrounding panels which would be more burned in line with the thrusters, so I wanted to mask them out to get a nice crisp panel difference to try and tell the story.
You might notice that the first one's painted a bit weird, from the chipped edge it looks to slide outward, in which case the burn is on the wrong side. I figured that it made more sense to have the chipped edge opposite the burn, so I fixed that on the others.
I then back masked the shutters to do the burn on the rest of the saucer
Layering for this is as follows:
1-Grey Scotchbrite. I scuffed the whole thing up in line with some grey Scotchbrite. This makes it look more like it's flown through a few sandstorms or planet rings and it it helps the pastels I'll be using later stick. If you have areas that you really want to grind some color into you might scratch those areas up a little extra.
2-Silver Sharpie. This is one to use sparingly, I dabbed it very gently along the leading edge of the Caterpillar shutters, on the very bottom centerline of the belly, along much of the leading edge of the saucer, and I used it to color the 4 hatch handles on the topside. This one takes some faith because it will look like crap right away, but that's what the pencil's for.
3-Pencil. If you do it when the Sharpie's still a little wet you can draw the silver puddle out with the tip of the pencil a bit and make the silver dab look not so much like a dab, and more like a scratch. Even with dried silver, scribbling over it with pencil will turn it from cheesy silver paint to something that looks a lot more like steel, it seems to flatten it out and give it a much higher quality shine. I used the silver Sharpie where I wanted the paint to look like it had chipped off, but pencil by itself works really well to put a nice worn shine on any edge. I pretty much ran the pencil down all the grooves.
4-Pastels. The Nupastels pictured are the ones I used along with a pretty stiff bristled brush to put in all the burns and grime.
5-Repeat. Go back and reapply whatever needs more or was muted out with the following layers, I would be hesitant to use the sharpie at this stage unless you're really going to re bury it, or if you want it for top level effects which I'll talk about in a moment.
You can also see some of the eyeshadow stuff that I used to make some grimy foot traffic dirt on the floor. I'm on the fence on this stuff, I don't really like how it applies, it does stick better than the pastels, but I think I still prefer pastels.
Here you should be able to see some of the blaster burns I did. I used the pastel stick to do this (previously I shaved the stick to make dust that I applied with the brush) I actually drew the burns right onto the panel with the stick. At the center of the burn where I wanted it to look like it burned through the paint I put a little dab of silver Sharpie and drew it out, or drew over it with pencil. I really like how they turned out.
I think this ones still showing a little white around some of the directional thruster jets (puffers) I'll have to go at that with the pencil some more. Burying those in enough pencil graphite had them looking just like burnt steel, the pastels took some of that away. I can fix that.
