Yes it’s time for a WIP once again. I have been pretty slack at these, but since I will be painting a red kit again, I thought I would document it for my future reference. Today we’re going to be working on the MG Testament Gundam.
Red has always been a funky colour for me to paint, for the last few years I’ve felt that using a black preshade gives shadows that are too dark and adding white makes it too pink. I’ve somewhat settled recently on adding yellow + white for an orangey highlight, but this only really works on kits that aren’t predominantly red. After all this time I’ve yet to find a time-efficient solution for this, but if this works out I’m one step close to being able to build a Sazabi.
Starting off these primary red parts with a white primer base.
Trying something new, instead of a black + starter white, I’m going to preshade these parts with Mr Color Hull Red.
I thought I’d try to be smart and try a pale orange starter white at first, in the end I ended up putting a white over as well to help blend in the Hull Red preshade.
Piece on the bottom had a coat of Mr Color GX Harmann Red sprayed on.
This part is always scary for me because it feels the red can lose alot of it’s lustre at this point. Maybe I should’ve stopped at this point, but the piece on top, I first sprayed a highlight of Harmann Red + Yellow + bit of White, and then a post shade of Hull Red on the edges again, and then another light coat of Harmann Red. Yes it looks like the red lost quite a fair bit of its deepness, but I also feel that the colour would be a bit too dark without some kind of highlight on top.
Most people say “it looks better in real life!”, for me I actually think it looks better in this picture. It’s hard to tell since today was one of those “four seasons in a day” days in Melbourne and the lighting was all over the place.
As a final step, I thought the red was still a bit bright (in person), so I hit it with some Mr Color GX Clear Deep Red.
Anyway that’s the red done, as usual I can’t say I’m 100% happy with the results. As for my experiment, the pale orange “starter white” did absolutely nothing and I can probably skip this step next time. Also, it might be worth trying something other than the starter white, maybe a pink or an orange instead.
