Cookie !!

After doing another vehicle, I quickly retreated to a figure for the next project.  The Cookie Monster was done by Monster Dork Studios.
It's a sort of take off of the cuddly muppet we all know. Except this guy looks anything but cuddly.
As a sidebar, there is also a creepy Elmo available... ;)

Cookie came in 7 parts of odorless resin. I know this is an older kit (I remember it being around for a while). With that, the mold seems to have slipped in spots on the body, and it did take a little work to get that line to disappear - nothing big for those used to resin kits - 

From there, I gave him a dark blue base coat. I didn't want it to be just simply blue, so I painted a flesh color and then did the squiggles to show veins and stuff under the skin. This turns out to be a bit of a mistake as we will see later on.

Ugh! He definitely sat in the gravel driveway too long...

 To get him blue again, the Prussian Blue I used shows a bit of purple. This is where I ran into trouble with the flesh. The first few coats of Medium Blue over the flesh showed up green.  Now I have to balance between leaving it a little green or covering over all the squiggles detail. I tried my best at a balance and then after a Matte coat, I started highlighting by adding a bit of white the the Medium Blue - 

More next time. Thanks for looking. 

Red Star 47 Finale

This is the session where I'm finally going to finish this craft. All the decals went on effortlessly, and the weathering was done almost halfway between brand new looking and totally destroyed. ;) 

The front bumper goes on

The muffler goes on as does the vents. Vent color needs to be altered.

 In all honesty, the "ropes" for the steering vanes etc... still needs to go on. There is thread supplied, but I think I'm going to go with some stretched sprue. But I'm calling this one done.
Thanks for looking.

 

Red Star 47 - part 4

Moving along. I'm in the final stages of the build.

The front of the ship on, and the pilot is now enclosed. Lots of detail now hidden...

The first time I ever made grab handles from wire. Only ruined two...

There was no color call outs, just a few examples of what could be done. So I did this.

Lots of TINY PE!

Decals on, weathering started

Thanks for looking.

Red Star 47 part 3

Continuing to paint the sub assemblies, I found a very good reference of fuselage colors - http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/stuff_eng_colorcharts_soviet.htm

This model is a little confusing with it obviously the future, and yet the pilot is dressed as if she (IM says she's a she) is dressed as if it was WW1, so the only thing to do is split the difference.  I painted the bottom of the craft the "Brilliant Medium Blue". From there I noticed I needed to do more building in order to do more painting. 
The first part for today is the steering vanes. The majority of the vanes are resin, but they are clad in rivet clad PE to strengthen it - 

Steering vanes in the back of pic

The PE and resin aren't exactly the same shape so some filling will need to be done.
From there I got into PE mode and decided to finish putting the PE on the subassemblies -

The dremel helped carve the shape of the rear vent better to accept the PE

Rolling the exhaust covers. Glad I kept that bag of misc. metal tubes/rods. :)

Just before quitting I was anxious to see what the cockpit looks like. In my mix and match approach, I painted the interior that turquoises color (or a close match) to what the model Soviet/Russian aircraft has.  Thanks for looking. 

 

Red Star 47 part 2

Moving forward with the build I decide to build this kit in subassemblies, and when I do to paint as I go.  The first I notice is that some of the lights are cast in clear resin. So I give them their Future dip, and then when dry put a little Humbrol Maskol on the lens. I plan to paint the back of the light in chrome. This way when the light is painted the fuslage color, one can still look and see a shine thru the lens - 

 From there I painted the seat a leather color and then the instrument panel. Not knowing what I wanted to do with the interior, I just painted the panel black. This probably will change. The buttons were just white with a blue wash, the dials with white with careful painting of the dial and indicators. The was a square with no detail at all. should it be a speaker? Nope. I decided that somewhere in there is radar, so this will be the radar screen -

Just about to call it quite for this session I test fit all the fuselage parts. The tolerances of the parts was so close that each could benefit from a little sanding.. After a few minutes of that, it all went together snugly. Thanks for looking.

Horten HO VII Finished

This was probably the smoothest going kit I've built in a long time. The plane's landing gear had been painted, so it was just a matter of installing them in the wells, and then to tackle the canopy.

The decals were also a breeze, they came off the backing paper in a few seconds. On the top of the wing there were 2 white stripe decals. I didn't trust the white to be opaque enough over the dark color, so I opted to mask and paint the stripes on. But then when I put the Maltese Crosses on - yep the white was opaque enough.

Usually adding vac form canopies are my nemesis and dread when that part of the build comes along. 
I start all canopies the same way by giving it it's Future dip, and then letting it dry. The dip happened a few days ago, so it was ready to start cutting. The cut went smoothly, and I decided to paint the framework freehand rather than masking. I must say between the paint and fit this is my best one yet.
Thanks for looking.

The Pilot

Coming from western PA, it didn't take long for Industria Mechanika's pilot to arrive.
It's a nice little resin kit in it's own right with 4 parts - the 2 arms, the body and the head - 

Obviously you can do what you want, but I left the pour stubs that's attached to her feet. It makes a nice handle while you're painting. 

Looking at a WW2 uniforms, I copied the colors the best I could using Vallejo's English Uniform for the clothes, and Red Leather the the goggles, gloves and boots. Beige Red is the base skin color.  I wanted to make the life vest yellow, but yellow is the weak spot on Vallejo's catalog (I really need to get the more pigmented Citadels yellows) so I had to paint the vest white. Before the yellow. Eventually the yellow went on - 

The lenses of the goggles are gloss black in preparation for Green stuff World's color shifting paint.
But that's next time. Thanks for looking.