You're welcome!
Yes, all of the models were primed with Tamiya gray primer from a rattle can. One usually reads that gloss black is the best undercoating for silver paint. In this case, I did not do that.
Yesterday's foul weather left this after the front went through. The iPhone 7's camera captures these kinds of colors and lighting much better than my iPhone 5 did. It doesn't over blow the reds. I locked the exposure in the clouds themselves and even with this you were able to make out features of the houses. First the eclipse and then this. Nature can be a blast when it wants to.
Today's weather was perfect for outdoor spraying so I finished the rest of the rattle can work with the last of the metallic finishes and then the white. I'm not a fan of spray can painting and usually will have runs where I don't want them. Can't control the flow like I can with an airbrush. If you catch the run quickly, you can smear it with a gloved finger and then re-spray gingerly and hope it levels out. It came out reasonably well.
I decided to paint the exposed steel Japanese Defense dark green. It's a pretty good color that's close to the green of Sinclair Oil which is the company that I'm having own this facility. It goes with my Sinclair gas station and I have some decals left from that project that will go onto the big tank.
Steel painting started with the load rack. I didn't mask this since the supports are going to be hand painted concrete and the angles that I was able to hold the air brush, I kept most of the overspray off the metallic-painted decking and any that got on the supports would be painted over. The tricky areas were around the drop-down loading platform and steel support structure for the loading tubes.
Any incidental overspray will be touched up by hand brushing. I'm painting the loading tubes themselves that same lighter green as my prototype photos. The nozzle on the end is coated with liquid mask and will be natural aluminum when the mask is removed. In the above picture you can see the other small tanks that were sprayed white.
The deck and all the exposed steel WILL need to be masked to prepare for painting the yellow railings. I'll do that tomorrow.
For the tank platform, again I didn't mask for the steel work since I'm going to touch up by hand AND will have to mask for the railings. Behind it is the masked flare tower waiting for its railings to be painted too.
Next up was the spheres. First I had to mask the entire sphere so I could paint the exposed steel. This took a lot longer to mask then paint. After shooting the green, I then started masking for the railings. This was painstaking and slow, but will be worth it. I spent almost an hour masking this tank and didn't finish. I'll finish up tomorrow and shoot all the remaining railings.
I could have left all the steel gray like galvanized, but I wanted to add some contrast to up the interest and make things pop looking at it from a distance. After struggling hand painting the railings, air brush, even with the time consuming masking, is the only way to get a smooth and precise finish. It's really fun to be painting this stuff... the end is near.
