A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

Two years ago, I bought the GHOST from Star Wars REBELS for the X-wing miniatures game – not because I played X-wing, but because I wanted to have a cool model of that ship and completely repaint it to match its screen counterpart. And this month, I finally got around to finish repainting it.

Since I approach my Star Wars miniatures and models pretty much like historical miniatures and models, I surrounded myself with loads of reference material for the GHOST, because I not only wanted to get the colours right, but also meticulously recreate the type of texture which is so iconic for all Star Wars vehicles, as well as all the specific dirt, grime and combat scars which give the GHOST personality.

I started by undercoating the whole model with a mid-light off-grey and gave it an even coat. Then I used an almost empty rattlecan with a matte off-white and used that to give the whole model loads of teeny-tiny unevenly distributed sprinkles. With that done, all panel-lines were thinly filled with Nuln Oil. Next, I applied all the different colours and darker greys to panels and/or in patterns as specified in my reference material.

Now came the part which was both fun and very, very tedious: Painting on uneven tiny geometrically patterned rectangles and short broad lines in a slightly lighter and a slightly darker colour all over the ship, with some areas leaning more towards the darker tone and others more to the lighter tone.

After that, I had to apply smudges and dark, almost black battle scars as well as some subtle streaking. At that stage, I also painted the glass-parts of the various canopies, the guns and the engines. The engines got some subtle, uneven edge-highlights, and the dark canopies excluding that of the docked PHANTOM in the back received transitions into a vibrant dark green towards their edges.

Finally, a very light off-white was applied roughly and unevenly to all edges to create the effect of some glints and chipped paint. Some of it was extented into some panels to create further scratches.

I think I got very very close to the original digital model with this one and I’m very proud of the result. In my opinion, the use of an airbrush and smooth transitions which we miniatures-painters usually prefer do not work on a model like this which needs to look rough and beaten, but still hint at neat evenly-applied paint from when it left the factory underneath all that dirt and grime, and I believe I managed to do that. 🙂