The time of painting has come on the Aurora!
I primed the hull white with MIG One Shot primer, then coated the entire thing with two layers of VMC White Grey, following up with VMC Yellow Ochre on the deck and upper works.
The upper mast trunks are left bare because they are going to require further attachments once the main bridge structure is placed.
I've got shading on cruise control with an Army Painter Soft Tone wash, a very nice sepia shade once it dries. Not worrying overmuch on the outcome as most of this will be covered by the self-adhesive wooden deck.
I'm a brush painter mostly because that is what I am used to. Also I can't keep up a separate airbrush station, not even a mobile one I can stow away. But that doesn't mean I don't use masking tape.
'But the paint bleeds over the masking tape this way', newbs would say.
Not if you learn to attach it properly.
First, place the tape and remove air bubbles by pulling your desired finger along, followed by rubbing with a Q-tip. If you do this right you won't scrape off the paint but the fit will be tight.
Second, use overlapping layers of tape. In this instance I used three bands on top of each other, overlapping about two thirds each.
The paint I used is a 50/50 mixture of VMC Bloody Red and Amaranth, resulting in a nice mid-tone orange red. I would have used the original Bloody Red as is, had Vallejo not changed the recipe to something more pinkish instead of true deep red since I last bought one. I'm also out of hull red and thought it would be too dark compared to the upper hull anyway. No boot top on this baby either.
I'll tone down the bright colour with additional washes and weathering, by the way, same thing with the upper hull. But for the moment, let us just sit back and savour the 'toy ship' aesthetic.
The result after removing the tape: minimal bleeding over at places which are problematic anyway, namely the bottom of the protrusion on the bow and the narrow section above the rudder. Nothing a lick of paint can't fix.
The hull is now done for a while. A thing I learned from an experienced modeller, and can heartily recommend: acrylic paint actually takes a very long while to fully cure, at least a week. Sure you can do the next layer in an hour or so in warm weather, but at that point the paint still isn't actually completely dry.
This becomes an issue when applying varnish or any solvent-based consecutive layers. Your matt varnish turned out patchy or semi-glossy? It's because you did not wait long enough before applying it. (There could be other issues, but for me that is the main one.) Your oil wash tears up the paint? Same thing.
So I'll wait one more week before applying a satin varnish, then another before a dark red/brown oil wash on the bottom and a brighter grey one on the upper hull.
Because of the need to apply the wooden deck, I have to paint most superstructure fittings separately. Fortunately the drying time on the hull means I can fiddle with these. The resin 6" gun mounts are painted black, all they need now is some varnish. The rest receives the same treatment of yellow ochre and AP Soft Tone as the main deck.
I couldn't help myself and entertained tortured myself a bit with the aft bridge/searchlight platform/thingy. The QF gun is originally a US 20mm Oerlikon, a 3D printed piece, fortunately of bendy resin so no breaking apart this one! I removed the gun shield and aiming piece from the mount and painted it in the same black brown as the other gun breeches.
The railing is actually in scale to the ship and not 1/350 as most other aftermarket parts I used, however comparing it to the plans I own, I concluded that it is a 2-bar and not a 3-bar rail, so I removed it, and will chop off the bottom before re-attaching.
Fortunately there are only a few places where open railings need to be attached (because of the very closed armoured compartment, a trademark of the pre-dreadnought era), so the PE parts will pop more I hope.
Also the searchlights I ordered are for the WW2 Emden and not the WW1 Emden, which makes them huge, and completely out of scale with my model. A quick search told that the Imperial Russian Navy used 24" searchlights on their cruisers, so I ordered some 3D printed ones (originally for US ships) and hope they fit better.
On the same topic, does anybody need some xbox huge 1/350 scale searchlights? (Don't worry, I'll find good use for them.)
This is not a weird modern art composition that brings attention to the importance of rain forests, although it could be one (and rainforests are important). It's simply the air vents that did not need more filling and sanding. Same recipe, yellow ochre, soft tone wash, and some saturated dark red in the recesses. As these were just popped off the hull, all their plastic pegs broke off, so I'll just snap the end of the paperclips they are glued to and drill equivalent holes for those NEWER AND BETTER attachments pegs.
And the stacks, oh boy, the stacks! I had to wash them and there was some spider's eggs in one. The joys of buying second hand, I guess. The insides and the funnel caps were painted, again, black brown, using carefully placed masking tape for the latter. The results are satisfactory, the bands are in line and there was minimal bleeding through, even though the recess between the stacks' side and the vertical stabilizers (I guess you can call them that) was tricky.
I checked my references and there was no ladder along the funnels to climb them. Judging by the pictures, they were rather flimsy things, so perhaps could not even support a man's weight. It's logical considering that they are large jutting out targets for enemy artillery (not even counting splash damage from shooting up the central bulk of the ship), and it's easier to patch/weld up thinner metal.
Two things remain before varnishing the hull though. One, I have to think about the deck house on the rear superstructure at the end of the upper armored bulwark. The plans I have and the assembly instructions on the Kombrig kit show it flat, while period photos show an upper section similar to the commander's compass house on the bridge. A brief research tells me that the compass house was duplicated on the aft section on most period ships, to serve as a backup if the main bridge was hit. I like the latter idea, but this means modifying the hull. Or I could just paint the upper section of the deck house separately. Is it an issue of the maker of the blueprints misunderstanding the original plans, or was this a later attachment?
And, second, I put the anchor stocks in the wrong direction on the ship, they should be pointing up, not down. It's easy to remedy by just scraping off the parts and gluing them in the opposite direction, but then if I reattached and repainted them, I should again wait for the paint to cure properly. Even a tiny piece such as this can cause the oil wash to react with the layers below and start dissolving them!
Or again, I should just leave them as they are. Am I a maximalist? Can someone build model ships and not be a maximalist? All those questions!
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