Losing grip – Facetime!
After showing off Massimiliamo’s work in my last column, and still suffering nightmares from my own recent debacles, I have felt a need to redeem myself in regards to my hobby skills. No, I am not a great drifter, and yes, I am better with words than with wires, but I am enthusiastic and actually do have some skills that relate to this hobby. Time to show off. A little, but still.
First, allow me to digress. Familiar with Hegel? A German philosopher, and the man behind Hegelian dialectics. It sounds complicated, but can be deftly explained using this column, and the two previouos ones. First, a thesis is presented (my mess). This gives rise to a reaction, an antithesis (Massi’s masterpieces), that negates the thesis. The tension between the two is then resolved by means of a synthesis, something slightly different, sort of a step forward and in between the thesis and antithesis. In this case, by presenting the interior of my Axial SCX10-3. Way better than the mess, but yet something differing from Massi’s drift bodies.
While I haven’t gone to town on the interior in general, I did put a bit of an effort into painting the driver’s head. I dare say that not many an SCX has a driver guy painted to this standard, but I would be most happy if you proved me wrong by sending some pictures or links to me (martin at bigsquidrc dot com).
Was this effort necessary? Certainly not. I don’t even know how much of the detail will be visible behind the polycarbynate windows, but probably not a lot. But I don’t care. I have considered removing the left window to make the head more visible, but that would also mean removing some protection from that face. Inevitably, dirt and branches would get in and scratch of his eyes. Rather, I will keep him well protected behind pulled up windows. A bit of a secret, told only to my two million readers, that a well painted face adorns the interior.
Yada yada. So, how did I paint the face and interior? Using airbrush (Iwata Eclipse HP-CS, 0.35 needle) and Hobbynox paints. First, a black basecoat, from the underside. I then cut and peeled off the protective plastic film from the seats, roughed up the surface of them with a bit of steel wool, rinsed off, and laid a black basecoat from the top. On this basecoat, I could then use Vallejo model paints. While they won’t stick very well straight onto lexan, they do stick on top of other paints. First a dark, brownish red, then some careful shading in the recessess, and then a soft highlight with a slightly brighter red. Same method with the driver’s trousers, but in blue. I then peeled off the remaining protective film to paint the driver’s shirt. I gave this a basecoat of Hobbynox intercoat, basically a transparent varnish that proved a good base for the Vallejo paints. Then a basecoat, followed by darker and lighter tints for shading and highligts respectively. To be honest, I would have preffered a green shirt, but didn’t have any green at hand, so it ended up grey.
For the face and hat, I used the same method. Glued the face, scratched away mould lines, basecoat of Hobbynox white, and then a detail brush and acrylic colors for the face. In order to give it a bit of life and color, there’s a hint of blue under the eyes (he just sits in the car all the time, never gets to lay down, does he?) and a touch of red around the nose. I first painted the hat in a light brown, but this didn’t contrast enough with the face, so I did a quick repaint in grey.
Stickers on, attach steering wheel, done. Less than three hours, start to finish. Unnecessary, but fun, relaxing and satisfying. That’s what I’m in the hobby.
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