The Millennium Falcon

Although my Millenium Falcon is landed with it’s feet and ramp down, I have decided to paint the back of the ship to show the engines fired up – may be the engine is being turned over prior to take off!  The engines are normally shown as blue (except in Bespin, where they glow pink for some reason) so I planned to use my airbrush to create the graduated blue flash going to near white in the centre.

I had a few problems with the palest ice blue and white paints. They were both very thick paints, and I had to use a lot of thinner to get them to go through my airbrush. They were so thin that instead of staying where sprayed unknown to me they ran down the sides of the painted hull.

this is not that major a problem – there are few problems with paint that cannot be rectified with a bit more paint.

To finish the blue engine glow I stippled on the central white stripe with a brush, then once this had dried went over the edges of the white with an electric blue airbrushed paint layer to graduate the white edges. To get rid of the blue streaks on the hull I used chocolate brown (as it covers well on first coat) then once it was dry merged this into the existing paintwork on the hull with a light drybrushing of bone white, followed by a lighter drybrushing of off white on raised edges that would catch the light. I also added a brown shadow to the underside of the rear engine flaps. Problem solved.

As a precaution against further mishaps I have given the engine glow a quick thin coat of yacht varnish, which will also give it a nice glossy sheen as well as protecting the paint.I

Once the varnish is dry I will be able to make the covering mesh that should finish the engines off nicely.