A catch-up on my last batch of mechs. The whole process ended quickly and cleanly, which is shocking given the absolute horseshit I had to deal with. First, let me go over the mechs.
My buddy had a single 1st Somerset Strikers from the 90s and was hoping I’d be able to paint up a lance to match it. I gave it my best shot; black primer, dark grey overbrush for the mid-tone so the black looks like shadows, then mid-grey drybrush for easy edge highlights. The green pattern is variously described as “lightning” and “lizard skin”, so I started with a rough white underpaint to ensure it’d pop, then a green horizontal sketchy brushstroke across the pattern. I managed roughly what I was looking for. Then I struggled a bit getting a black-primed flag into a white-ish colour and freehanding Adam fucking Steiner’s complicated fucking logo. And then blue cockpit glass. So, obviously, not the easiest attempt, but my buddy’s delighted with them and they do match the original.
Then Liao. This was… I posted my Liao recipe when I painted the urbanmech last year. I followed that recipe and I got a different colour. So then I used a mason jar of simple green to strip them (more on which later) and experimented with sepia and white mixes. I got “close enough” that you can’t tell the different, and I was cursing a lot, but the end result is pretty adequate. I do really like the colour; it’s a khaki but with the green patches it looks green and gives me some interesting nature vibes I might try on a 28mm ranger some time.
Finally, Diamond Sharks! … yep. Prime white, airbrush pure cyan, some drybrushed edge highlights, white underpaint for the green patches because cyan is a strong pigment, and some orange cockpit glass. Felt kind of simple, actually.
So here’s what made these lances/stars take three weeks instead of one. First, that Liao lance needed stripping once I realized my recipe was wrong. I’ve only ever stripped old models before so I was pleasantly surprised by how easy the fresh paint came off. Then I dropped a half-full bottle of magenta ink off the top shelf while trying to cap it one-handed and it bounced off of every possible surface on the way down. That took a couple of days to calm down from and clean up. But, failure doesn’t mean the end of things, just a different path to the finish. That’s an important lesson I try to emphasize because a lot of people taught me the opposite when I was a kid and it took a long time and heavy therapy to figure it out. These were frustrating and added time, but they didn’t stop me from getting a decent job done. I paint for fun, so I don’t have time limits except what I invent for myself.
