Commander Scale

A productive weekend at the bench.

After looking at the first base coat for a while, I wasn’t completely happy with how it represented the surfaces of the engines. Instead of pushing ahead, I decided to take a step back and rethink my painting approach.

Rather than treating the previous coat as a mistake, I used it as the foundation. I added a subtle re-shading with NATO Black and NATO Brown before carefully building up several translucent layers of a lighter grey. The goal wasn’t to completely cover the previous work, but to create more depth and variation while keeping the shadows and technical details visible.

I’m much happier with the result now. The lighter modulation gives the engines a more convincing sense of scale, and all the scratchbuilt details read much better under the paint.

With the base colour finally locked in, I can move on to what I’ve been looking forward to the most: metallics, orange racing markings, chipping and weathering.

Slowly but surely, this racer is starting to develop its own personality.