For the dark blue pieces, I’ve started with a good layer of Tamiya gunmetal. Sometimes this paint comes out bright, other times dark. I guess it’s a factor on how well the bottle is mixed. This bottle came out bright, but not worries! These leg pieces have some areas that I want to keep in the gunmetal, so I’ve masked them. And instead of using a decal, this section has been painted red with Tamiya clear red, and then I’ll mask it with some thin strips of masking tape before I go with the blue paint. These parts have their gunmetal, but the section at the top should be blue. Rather than mask the main area, I’ll paint (as best as I can) the area that is blue, and then mask that to touch-up the gunmetal. Here’s the first layer of blue paint. I’ve gone with Createx transparent blue. It’s a nice dark blue. It could probably do with thinning, but I need a nice thick dark layer anyway, so we’ll just continue…. Yeah, it looks pretty nice!Unfortunately I ran out of that bottle of Tamiya gunmetal and the new one I opened came out a bit darker. Not to worry though as the 4 pieces with the darker gunmetal are all of the same kind, so it shouldn’t look too out-of-place in the finished build.  All the pieces that are going blue now have their coat of transparent blue on them and are drying over night.Now you know by now that I love the Tamiya clear colours. I use the clear red extensively and I’d use the clear blue more if it wasn’t quite so cyan. When you use it over a metallic for a straight candy-coat, it comes out quite cyan, and that’s not what I’m after. However, going over the transparent blue it helps even out the effect and adds a wonderful depth to the hue. I love it!  Above are more of the pieces with the clear blue layer. Now I just have to wait for that to dry before I top coat with Future Finish and look at an oil wash for details. I think a white oil wash will go well. Once complete if the effect looks too bright and bold, I can always use Tamiya smoke to darken it all down.I ended up using the Vallejo silver for this piece with the blue section masked. With a black oil wash, that’ll really bring out the detail!  And the red masked sections on these pieces came out great. I’m not sure on the decal for the “ball” at the end of the red stripe though. I guess I can give it a go, and if that fails paint in the details myself. Another detail section that will really pop with a black oil wash. And some small details that I masked.Here’s all the leg pieces together. Their masked red detail sections really stand out nicely against the blue. I did a test assembly of these wing pod sections. They look pretty cool, but still need a fair bit of work for the panel lines and decals.This section at the back looks great with the black oil wash applied.

I noticed some minor scratches on the blue paint work, even though I’d carefully top coated everything. I used some Tamiya clear blue to touch up the parts, but it seems to have reacted with the Future Finish top coat in places and gone a bit milky. I’ll let it dry out thoroughly over night and see how bad the damage is in the morning.

It’s morning and the pieces dried ok. I think I’m going to have to be extra careful with top coating and letting pieces really dry before assembling and working with them.