Painting Battletech Miniatures, 4

Things continue to come more and more together. Now the details are getting their first sets of highlights and painting of the bases has begun. For the bases, they basically are composed of gravel flocking material used in model railroads, glued to the base using a thin CA glue. The final product can be a couple of different appearances, based on how you paint them. So, to show how it can be different, each base is likewise different. For the Raven's base, that was made using sculpty and flattened out to make a road base. There are other examples of doing this in this blog, so I'm not going to spend too much time on how that is done.

Firefly
The Firefly (below) got the first round of paint for the base and the deep red accent panels got their first sets of highlights. Wet brushing used once again for the red accent panels, and you can see how the color shifts from darker red in the middle to a brighter red at the edges, much like the panels and such on the Raven or the blue part of the Firestarter. As for the base, it was a dry brush of a dark green. Then I added dabs of dark red (the same red used on the Firefly's red accents) around the feet. You'll also notice that in a couple of places I dabbed dark gray. These will look like rocks later.

Firestarter
The Firestarter (below) is likewise getting some initial base colors for details. Many of them, like the hose/coils around the arms are based in black. I'll use dry brushing later to give them some color, but for now, they're just black. I also paint the cockpit glass black for details later. This base is pretty much built the same as the Firefly's, but will be more of a sandy color, versus something that looks more like a lawn. Dark gray was added here, also for rocks, but they'll be somewhat different color compared to the Firefly's base.

Thorn
Not much to highlight here, as the 'mech (below) is supposed to be white. However, there are places, like the actuators for the legs that I paint flat black. They'll receive a dry brushing later much like the hoses on the Firestarter. This base is like the Firefly and the Firestarter, but will be almost completely grass, with just a couple of rocks thrown in. Cockpit is also painted black.

Raven
This one received a couple of additional highlights of the light purple for the edges. The cockpit and the lasers on it's right side are painted black. This 'mech will have a road base, so I brushed dark gray paint across the base, always using brush strokes in the same direction. he intent is to give the ground a bit of an imperfect feel, much like pavement we see everyday. We'll highlight it more later and add road stripes.