The Paintshop: Subaru Impreza by MSC

Next on the "Paintshop section", one of the earliest models which served as test bench for... not running as it should, but for some advanced painting techniques.

While not the first ever, this Subaru was one of the first models where I used the previously presented washing technique. However, it was the first time I've ever applied it on a rather dark base color. Here's the result:

The idea of the "Bosch" livery was actually brought up by the use of the additional headlights... the thunders just came next to fill in.

The base color was painted using a non-modelism designed acrylic spray that actually is very kind on the plastic! It's brand is PECOL and the selected RAL is 5010.

As you can see, I always try to pay attention to detail when I paint my cars. I find this MSC production amazing, the level of detail is really very high, so I've tried to pay homage the best I could. It even crossed my mind to fully light up the car - no less that 8 leds were required for the front only! Maybe for another project...

I've started this post describing this model as a test bench for painting. Along with the now habitual washing to bring up the depth level of the model, this time I used another technique: glazing. This was used on the thunders, to avoid the direct contrast between the dark blue body color and the white/blue tone of the thunder. While this process is not strange to oil-based painting, using acrylic paints like I do limits the diffusion process between colors, as the paint dries up too quickly. This PDF illustrates just that.

I've started painting the thunders (listening to "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC - bad pun!) using Vallejo's "sky blue", then applying a 2/3 "sky blue", 1/3 white and just a small drop of glaze medium to paint over the blue thunder (another bad pun?). The glaze medium did increase the drying time and after half hour I've layered it again, this time with a 1/3 "sky blue", 2/3 white and the extra drop of glaze medium. The final result was quite interesting, even if the paint still dried too quickly for what was needed, the objective was still achieved.

I would really love to end this post with the test drive of this model, but somehow, I'm lacking the courage to take in to the tracks now...