
It may be obvious that I’ve been putting this off for a while. This is partly because I wanted to look at different methods for painting the ship, instead of adopting my usual approach of dry brushing everything to death. On the other hand, painting means dealing with the Ugly Stage, where the model is covered in moderately appropriate blocks of colour and looks like a toy that’s been painted with a trowel; in the dark; by a raccoon.
I also realised this would require some planning because I’d never painted something this complex before, and I wasn’t sure how or indeed if I could make it work.

Eventually I decided to start in the middle, then work outwards, on the basis that probably made it easier to avoid fingerprints or blobs of paint inappropriately appearing on finished areas.
So far it seems to have worked, and no rogue fingerprints have appeared, at least not that I’ve noticed. Still ugly, though, so it’s time to try out those techniques I’ve been looking at…