Dr. Cranky

Love your style, buddy. Great stuff. Keep the eye candy rolling!

That looks very cool so far.

Thank you all. Yes, it's a fun build. Stay tuned in for more progress . . .

Build away, buddy. It's one of the best happyness-inducing hobbies out there!

Here's another tutorial I found that might be useful although this kind of snake skin is done with a different kind of netting material, which is very cool too, and the results are fabulous . . . http://www.xmodsforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2304

Here's some progress on the interior, which I wanted to build as clean and as smooth as possible . . . the only after market parts are the steering column and the steering wheels, made from aluminun by Don Kerns. Innitially I wanted to print up some snake skin for the seats, but I decided to go with flat white in order not to compete with the paintjob.

LOL!!! Remember this is the brand new chopped resin from Norm Veber . . . it sells for 25 bucks . . .

The headers are the ones that come with the kit. I just stripped them and painted them again. The spark plug boots are watch parts. Thanks for the kind comments.

Thanks, Peter and Marcos. Peter I like your idea of using red. You might get a lot of mileage out of incorporating the interior color as an accent on the body color. I hope you give the technique a try. Of course I am always on the lookout for fabric and materials that can be used as templates for airbrushing. A trip to the fabric store will yield a great crop of possibilities. Happy painting!!!

Thanks, Mike. The trick has always been to spray water the right size for the scale.

Thanks, everyone. Speaking of the water effect . . . here's how I do it. First you put down the base color coat, then after it gasses out I spray a coat of clear . . . wait for everything to dry. The gloss coat is going to make the water bead up perfectly. If you don't use the gloss coat, the water dropplet will be irregular and will run together. When the drops bead up the way you want them (smaller is good for 1/24th scale), the you take the contrast color, say white or yellow and spray it on the panel at surface level keeping the airbrush at a 90 degree angle. Spray at a distance of at least 12-15 inches. Make sure your air pressure is low, around 10 psi. Dust the paint on at first, but then add enough so that you begin to see the highlight and the shadow on the drop. Use care not to shake or make the water move. After the contrast color goes on, you can use a hair dryer set on low and from a distance of about 20 inches, dry the paint. Once everything dries, clear coat. Do not touch the drops until they've been clear coated. I like using candies to bring out different tones to the drops . . . That's it.

Beautiful work so far. I can't wait to see more progress.

I really like the depth in the paint, and the color too. Great job so far.

I like the way it is turning out. Great colors and details.

Oh, I should mention that the body is a Norm Veber resin body that is one of the nicest, cleanest chopped 32s . . .and it fits the kit's frame perfectly.

Thanks, Clay . . . I really appreciate it. One of the things that is not showing in the photograph are the couple of coats of Duplicolor Clear FX flakes . . . which is going to make this sucker pop once it is cleared and seen in the sunlight.

I'm excited because I think this sucker is going to be real shiny when I buff it out . . . and the ultra shine is going to contrast nicely with the metallics of the engine and the wheels. The interior is going to be white with some Tangelo accents. Some techniques evolve slowly the more you air brush, and this one is yet another fun one to try and do in different colors. It'd be great to try it on a 59 Impala or a larger vehicle . . . and like painting realistic flames, you can try so many different colors.

Back to the snake skin technique . . . So I wanted this thing to be as bright as possible, so I used Plastikote white primer, about four coats of it . . . . Then on the body I put down a couple of coats of Passion Purple (all colors are House of Kolor) and then blended Planet Green along the edges and on the top I added these lines . . . After the paint sat for about 15-20 minutes, I taped off the top and held the mesh down with tape . . . you gotta make sure the mesh is straight and that it lays flat against the body so that the dark diamond shapes will come through after all the other colors go on . . . I sprayed splotches of Molly Orange and Chrome Yellow. I used a drop of black and Rootbeer candy and added some dark markings in different parts. You can lay in really well defined markings if you want, but the 32 is a small canvas . . . After those few coats dried, I brought out the white and mixed in a little bit of white with Chrome Yellow and again sprayed in some spots. Allow to dry again, 10 minutes or so . . . and then I fogged in Pagan Gold, and that's it. Remove the mesh after the paint dries . . . and then move on to the next panel.

Believe it or not, all these parts still need to be clear coated and buffed, so the work on this way is far from done . . .

Thanks, maties . . . yes, that's the Revell 32 "Limited Edition" engine and kit. I added a few extra parts . . . including watch parts . . . The finned drums are from Norm Veber at R&MM.

I've tried the water drop FX before with great results, and this time I started thinking I'd paint this 32 with it in mind, and then I came across a few pictures of snake skin samples on Google, like this: And my interest level rose . . . I also went to YouTube and checked out Ed Hubbs doing it on a video, so I got the idea for the colors from him . . . Ed Hubbs is a wonderful painter out there and I like his laid back style. Of course, you have to adapt the technique to 1/24th and no use so many colors, but you can practice on a few piece of plastic sheet just to get the right feel . . . Again, there's no wrong way to do this, and you can do your snake skin yellow, or green, or blue . . . shoot, you can do it any color you want . . .and there's no right or wrong pattern.

Once the engine got done, the rest was just having fun with the airbrush. I started out doing the water dropplet FX and then suddently I thought . . . um . . . it'd be nice to try snake skin . . . (and I will explain the process in a bit--it's really easy and fun).

My biggest fault as a builder is that I paint way too many models and never finish them because I don't like building engines . . . but with this one I decided to get it built first and then go from there . . . so far it's worked!

I used a bit of white too and the pattern comes from a plastic mesh from an onion bag from the market . . . This time I started with the engine just to get the cleanest engine I can build for this sucker, and then work around it . . . using a few after market parts and some watch parts too! I wanted to use different metallic colors . . .

One bite, and you are down for the count! It started with the idea of doing a vehicle that is "reptile" inspired, so I thought of snake skin. I studied a few pictures and patterns and get the House of Kolor paint out and set up . . . just some basic colors like Planet Green, Purple, Tangelo, Chrome Yellow, and some red-orange candies . . . It began with this practice: If you study the patterns on say a python or a rattler, you get these multi-colored diamonds . . . The beauty of it is that there's no right patter. Like realistic flames, the idea is to create your own style and look . . . or at least, that's the story and I am sticking to it.