Nova A - All Painted Up And Ready To Go (Part 2)

In my last installment, I went through the steps I used to base coat my converted Battletech Nova miniature. I also showed a little bit of the NMM work I applied to the model. This post will cover the finishing work I put into the project, along with some of the problems I ran into along the way.

With all of the paneling blocked in with green and yellow, and with the metal parts shaded into a more or less final NMM state, I tackled the project of shading all of the armor panels. This is, without a doubt, the longest and most labor intensive stage of most Battletech jobs. If nothing else, Battlemechs tend to be painted in relatively few colors compared to a fantasy character or similar model, leading to a lot time spent shading one panel after another with the same set of colors.

 
On the positive side, you can pretty much just mix up one set of shade colors and go to town for hours working on one or two models. In this case, I continued with the Reaper Warm Green triad, blending from Pine Green up through Pale Green. The very brightest highlights also include a touch of white to lighten the color even further.

Nova A - All Painted Up and Ready To Go (Part 1)

Back in January I posted a conversion build for a Battletech Nova Omnimech miniature. In fact, it was the first in my ongoing 'Battletech Conversions' series. After the build, I left the project languishing on a shelf for months, waiting for inspiration to strike. When I heard about a new Iron Painter contest on the Battletech discussion forums, I decided to dust off my creation and give it a brand new paint job.

The paint scheme I chose is the canon Jade Falcon "Delta Galaxy" paint scheme from the Battletech Universe. It's a strong scheme based around yellow and green, and I've been meaning to expand my collection of Clan miniatures for some time. Now that I have a prototype, I'm hoping that I can find the time to fill in the rest of a star around this model.

Of course, if you're not a Battletech fan, you can just ignore all that and read on to find part one of my painting odyssey.

Bones Follow-Up

I spent a little more time playing with my sample model. After applying a little more paint, I decided to take it seriously and remove the mold lines from the model using my hobby knife.

I am pleased to say that I was able to scrape away the fine mold lines away quite easily using a sharp hobby blade. One hidden bonus of the Bones material is that, even though I had already started painting, I was able to patch up the color on the model immediately after trimming the lines. Thanks to the Bones plastic, I did not have to go through a new priming and prep phase.

All in all, not bad for five minute's work.