Painting your Kit - Basic Tutorial

UPDATE 12-06-09 : Painting the hguc Zaku

I have a new setup for painting the hguc Zaku, but it is the same 1 year old AB that I have and a new Tamiya basic air compressor. I have been using my Tamiya HG III dual-action airbrush for exactly a year now and I have no complaints...simply a good looking and awesome piece of tool.

Anyways, I figured I could take photos of the simple painting of my hguc Zaku...I did encounter a problem though...the industrial grade lacquer thinner I used for cleaning the AB had a chemical reaction with the mr. hobby paints. The stubborn and lazy me continued to use the AB even if the paint is sputtering paint already, the gelling of the paint at the tip of the AB caused some pebbly/sandy texture on some parts. The good news is, I plan to weather this kit and being a Zaku, the texture gave it some kind of character. I am pretty sure though that applying waterslide decals would be so difficult due to the sandy texture. Anyways here are some pics...

barbecue/satay sticks for mounting the parts individually...and of course, styropor to place the sticks with the part attched to it...

Blu tack for easy mounting of some parts, blu tack is reusable...before buying this new pack of blu tack, I used my old one for a year...painting roughly 15 kits.

attach blu tack to the stick and the unexpose side of the part to be painted...

You could also buy alligator clips ( in electronic supply shops ) and attach it to the satay stick, I only have 30 pieces of this though, so most of the parts are mounted with blu tack...

OR you could use small double clips, but they are a bit more expensive than alligator clips...

Here are the parts before painting...

I ran out of industrial grade primer ( Bosny grey primer ), so instead of buying one I used a Bosny Flat black as the base coat. Primers adheres a lot better than hobby paints, so applying a base coat will make your paints more sturdy than painting without primer. After priming you should also check for unsuccessful seamline removal and some unsanded sprue marks...when everything is nice and smooth, then you could now paint the colors...

The paint that I used are just leftover lacquer paints, i do not want to spend paints for a relax build...cheapo me...

and a Tamiya stirrer, you could also use leftover sprues for mixing paint...I just like 'em branded.hehe

Here are the parts after 3 hours of painting...

I then sealed the colors with " future " for panel line washing later...

The parts after future, you can see some flooding in the corners, but the great thing about future ( unlike hobby grade gloss paints ) aside from being so darn cheap, is that it has a " self -levelling " property...future levels itself nice and smooth once it dries ( of course don't over-over flodd the parts ). BTW, I also sealed the dio with a fresh coat of future.

I am currently drying the parts under the sun, and hopefully after blogging and eating lunch it will all be dry and ready for panel line washing, decalling and some weathering...Next part...weathering the hguc Zaku and some final touch ups.

UPDATE 12-06-09 : After 3 hours...enamel washes...

Hello again, I've given the kit an enamel wash but yet to do some weathering with it...I made a huge boo boo and scratched the paint of the left upper leg...anyways here are some pics...

Tamiya enamels and Zippo lighter fluid was used for the wash...

and also some cotton buds to clean up the enamel wash.

Enamel washes brings out details and are relatively very easy to do...here is the pics of the process...

apply the wash all throughout the part, I do this kind of wash whenever I want the final finish looking a bit weathered ( which is always the case )...

then clean up with cotton buds dipped in Zippo lighter...I think I over cleaned it though...

I used flat brown for the majority of the kit, but I used flat black on the dark gray parts and exo parts...here are some pics of the kit after the enamel washes.

As you can see, it is too clean for my taste...I over cleaned the wash with cotton buds...I will need to weather this later to blend with the dio...but then again, it could be the Zakus first sortie. I plan to weather at least the feet parts and lower leg parts with Tamiya weathering master later...

END of wip, I will post the finish kit soon...THANKS for viewing! : )