Home » The Rest » HGUC Galbaldy Beta Build Part 8: Painting II

Share This Post

Gundam | How To Guides | The Rest

HGUC Galbaldy Beta Build Part 8: Painting II

Hey, Gunpla fans! This is part 8 of the Galbaldy build series. Last time, we began the painting process by spraying most of the main colors. Today we will be spraying some more color and a gloss coat to protect our work.

More masking

Just like in the last update, we need to do a bit of masking work, mostly on the magenta parts. The vents on the back of the legs will require some extra effort, since the edge of the area we are going to mask off is on a recess. Fortunately though, we made this crevice more defined in the early stages of this build. As a consequence, finding the edges and accurately cutting is going to be far easier.

For starters, I lay down a strip of masking tape. Then I press the edges down with a skewer. This step is very important since we need to mark exactly where the edges are, in order to make cutting easier. Next, I go along the recess with a brand new blade. The sharper, the better. We want to be able to cut it without applying too much pressure on the part, as the blade might damage the paint underneath. Once I’ve gone over all the edges I peel off the tape and repeat the process on the other half of the vent.

I left the vents on the top unmasked because they’ll be painted the same gray as the large ones

Light gray

I mixed Mr. Color #31 Dark gray (1) with some #1 White and sprayed the resulting color on the vents and a few other parts.

This shade looks almost like a primer gray, and I think it works very well for things like vents or inner frame parts.
I let the paint dry for a few minutes and then removed the masking tape.

Reaping the rewards of masking! It may be tedious to do sometimes, but seeing the crisp color separation on the end product always feels satisfying.

Dark purple/wine color

For the darker armor color, I went with an estimate of 35% #110 Character blue, 25% #158 Super Italian red, 40% GX #2 Ueno black. The result was a very dark, deep purple, more saturated than the dark green we mixed for the shield.

Smaller parts

The screw details were painted with #8 Silver. It’s a light, neutral color that works well with this sort of detail part.

For the monoeye I mixed Character blue and #172 Fluorescent yellow. As I said in the last post, I want the monoeye to stand out, which was also why I decided to not paint it red or pink.

Handpainting details with brushes

Next we are going to use fine brushes to handpaint some details around the model. These are high quality paintbrushes, ideal for this kind of work. The one with the thicker handle is so precise that I feel I’m using a ballpoint pen. Absolutely excellent when painting small areas.

I began by brushing Model Master gloss black on the monoeye visor. This is an enamel, which means we can clean it up without affecting the underlying coat of lacquer paint.
The paint was thinned down with Testors enamel thinner. It shouldn’t be too thin, as we want to have good coverage; but we want to change the consistency a little so we don’t end up with visible brush strokes all over the part.

I was careful when painting around the outer edges, since those would be harder to clean up than the central parts. Given the convex shape of the monoeye, the excess paint near the crevices will be easy to remove with a cotton swab.

Let’s go with something trickier now. I will paint the screw details on the legs with Testors Aluminum. Just like the gloss black we just applied to the monoeye visor, this is enamel paint. We want to make sure our mistakes are easily fixable, so I stick with enamels or acrylics when handpainting details.

I slowly build up the color, always keeping very little paint on the brush. We can always load some more if necessary.
This color separation adds a great deal of interest to the model. It gives the impression that the Galbaldy is made up of many parts of different sizes, materials and colors; like in the show.

Giving the beam rifle some extra color. I mixed a dark gray for the central panel and painted the small rivets aluminum. For the cable behind the scope, I mixed Model Master Insignia red and Testors Gold. The result is a slightly metallic and desaturated orangey red.

Inking wide panel lines with a marker

The recess between the two halves of the leg is way wider than most panel lines. In order to ensure it’s completely filled in, I used a Real Touch Gundam marker. I’m counting this as detail painting rather than panel lining. We’re literally painting a surface with a marker, so it feels quite different than standard panel lining.
The Real Touch markers have a thick and a fine tip. For this task I used the fine tip, after disassembling the leg for easier access to the recess.

Gloss coat

To conclude, the next step is to spray a top coat to protect the paint underneath. I used Model Master high gloss clear, which is an enamel.
I thinned it to the consistency of milk, with the same Testors thinner we used when handpainting.

As you can see, the finish is nice and shiny. This provides a good base for the decals we are going to apply next time.

Look forward to part 9, where we will make quite a bit of progress.
See you next time, and until then, happy modeling!

HGUC Galbaldy Beta Build Navigation
Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910 11 12 13

Share This Post

Gunpla modeler and student from Rivera, Uruguay. Constantly seeking realism through creative techniques. Totally not the only Guncannon fan in the southern hemisphere.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.