When last I shared we were at the undercoat and salt weather stage but then I jumped forward in time to the present to reveal things had gone awry, well this is the intervening period immediately after the salt weathring, wherein I realise my initial plan was flawed and seek to fix it, which eventually worked, up until the salt started to show it's presence [did you follow all that?]...
It's always difficult trying to convey colours in my pictures, I make no apologies for using my phone camera because it's a choice between inaccurate colours or no pictures. So I'd rather have something approaching the actual colours than me just trying to explain in words.However, these weren't too far off the mark. As you can see the Hunter Green really isn't the green I was looking for.
Some additional matt black spray helped tone down the red undercoat so I was approaching the green I was after. But it was then that I thought to use my Valejo Dark Green as it just won't work out of a brush.
OK, this look way over the top and the airbrushing is slap dash, so much so you can just see in the right where I got carried away and spilt the paint out of the spray cup! But the hope was some washes might tone it down, or at least it was until I decided to see what it was like with some of the salt rubbed off... I know, I know it's too soon, but better to find out now what it's like than further down the line.
And I'm actually quite glad as this isn't what I was after. Now that may be because I hadn't added any shading to the Red Oxide Primer but to be fair I'm not entirely sure what I was looking for. This isn't your typical salt weathering to reveal rust, it's something else, in my head, slightly obscured by all the other detritus in my 'mind palace'.
So I thought sod it, lets remove all the salt and boy is it a bugger to get rid of. I managed about 90%, which is OK because if it won't come off with a toothbrush scrubbing then it can stay, because I do like the gritty textured finish [oh the naivety]. I may try and do that on the next one...
Now it messed up a lot of the airbrushing but that wasn't really a problem as after I took these I gave it another coat of Hunter Green and returned it much to the point that we began this post.
In the next update I set about doing my normal efforts, adding a shadow wash and then drybrushing it with results I was really happy with, particularly as the bulk of the flat surfaces ahd been done and only another se tof light highlights were required and then it was all the details like metals and lights, cables, banners etc. followed byt the actual weathering powders. So it was progressing really quick with still a fair bit to do but most of those things were fun and interesting, that is until the salt showed it's ugly face.