Can't thank Gary enough for sending this body to me. Really pulled me out of a creative funk. I had not been painting much of anything for a long while and getting a box with this and the Camaro in it really was the inspirational pick me up I needed at the moment.
I have to say, this livery is super simple and I'll likely be doing this in a rainbow of color combinations as I don't really need much from the decal set if you paint on all the stripes. Naturally for this one I went with something in Gary's traditional color wheelhouse. I had meant to actually paint on all the stripes but got ahead of myself and already laid down black before I realized I had forgotten to ask off all the green.
For this one I tried Tamiya mask tape in 2mm and 5mm thickness for curves and have to say, it does go around curves very well. The only trouble I had with it was user error in that the black went down really thick and I waited a bit to long to pull up the tape and tore the edging roughly and had to go back to a lot of places with a Gundam paint pen to fix a lot of egregious areas.
I also used the Molotow chrome paint pen for the first time on an Autoscale and while I'm sad I can't air brush with it, the finish is amazing but delicate. I only wish it came in 1mm tip to get much finer with detailing but this allowed me to actually do chrome bezels around the headlights and the various release pins on the body! I have to say, it turned out fantastic and hope that some day I can get to airbrushing with Molotow.
Very nice. Your blending of paint detail and decals is great.
I bought a refill tube of Molotow Liquid chrome, but I'm too much of a cheapskate to use it in my airbrush, that tube was $35! But, I really like being able to dribble a few drops into my paint palette and use a fine brush to paint with it. I've thought about getting a Molotow pen, but they were out last time I was at the store that sells them. Did you add fog lights, or do they come in a white body kit? Thought I saw that as a solid panel on the regular Autoscale.
The fog lights are molded in, I chromed them with the pen so it stands out. I wish the pen came in 1mm tip but oh well. Hitting the headlight bezels turned out to be a very nice little detail that I otherwise would not have done.
For future versions of this livery, I intend to do all the accent color in paint and leave decals to graphics only. This makes it so much easier to adapt to custom color combinations.
Another thing I did to break up the monotony of the black was to use a dark grey for vents and deep recesses. I was hoping for a dark metallic but happen to be out of that bottle of Tamiya at the moment.
Looks great Arch! Nice contrast, great design. Hopefully that nice bright green makes it stand out enough on the track if this one is raced.
Superfly, you are correct, the autoscale has a flat panel over the fog lights. I wonder why they bothered with 2 versions and molding? I need to order one of these white bodies. Although it would probably just be added to my obscene backlog at this point. I moved, and I really need to get my paint booth set up at the new place, but there are a million other projects always on the list . . .
I had not noticed that but your right, on the Autoscale the fog light cover is painted solid. Weird, it looks so much better with it transparent. The upside to a the whitebody is I guess that it allows you to choose which direction to go with it.
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