UPDATE JULY 8th
OK, the mandibles are done! I'm finished with all the "red" areas now using the same technique previously described. As well as the lower right cheek, using the darker version of the Lark gray.
Killstripes! Man, after reading some of the frustrations people have had with these, I was a bit leery about doing these, but here's how I did it.
I started by scaling up the template found on TK-409's website until it was the correct size, then began masking them off with some blue painters tape. I stuck the tape down on a glass table top to reduce the stickiness, and masked off all 14 stripes. I just used the tape to form simple rectangles the proper size (by scaling up the referene pics I'm using, I came up with stripes that are about 25 millimeters high.) Once the basic shapes of the stripes were taped off, I used the Winsor/Newton masking fluid once again, and painted on all the chipped/missing areas on the individual stripes. Once the fluid was dry, I double checked the edges of the blue tape, burnishing down the edges really well with the back of a paint brush, and began painting them.
I used Polly Scale UP Armor Yellow, applied with a dense white make-up sponge. No airbrushing, spraying, or hand brushing! I saturated a section of the sponge and dabbed a bit off onto a paper towel, then dabbed the yellow onto the masked-off stripes. I didn't even worry about getting a good coat the first time, just wanted to get a yellow base on. After about 15 minutes, I repeated the sponging, getting more yellow coverage. Waited again, etc. and repeated this about 5 times, until there wasn't any more green showing through. I've used this sponging technique on many models before, and it gives a nice subtly "uneven" effect, unlike airbrushing.
After the Armor Yellow was dry, I ground up some pastels on a piece of sandpaper. I used a generic orange, and a darker reddish orange. I took an old, stiff 1/2" brush and used that to apply the pastels. I used the lighter orange and put that over all the stripes, then used the darker shade to go over that, slowly applying more reddish orange the further back I went. All the reference I've seen seems to show the stripes gradually getting a little "redder" the closer they get to the back of the helmet. Once I was satisfied with the tone of the stripes, I carefully removed the tape, pulling most of the masking liquid off along with it. Any remaining latex I removed afterwards. Since I burnished the edges of the blue tape, there was virtually no bleed through underneath, much to my relief. There were literally only 3 tiny areas that I fixed by gently scraping the yellow away with an old X-acto blade.
And here's the new pics!
Eric
