---Painting and Weathering the Helmet and Range FinderAt long last comes the main head piece! As usual, I pick up from where I left off months ago with the bucket and range finder painted with the base silver.
But first, here are my references for this two part item.
The silver based paint with a cardboard cover for the visor to protect the interior.
I start off with masking all areas that will be blue on the helmet, including the T-visor area, the side ear pieces, and the back vents.
(Also pictured here with my range finder in the silver base.)
I coat both the RF and the bucket with medium gray MG#7060...
...and then coat both parts with the dark gray MG#7070. After letting the paint dry and cure for about a day, I proceeded to mask all the dark gray areas of the bucket I wanted to keep—the top dome, the back side sans the vent area, and both sides of the cheek area in detail.
The exposed strips of the cheek area will be exposed for the next paint color...
...which will be the white. I'll be using the MG#7010-Marble color. It's a slightly off color white, that has a more flatter look, and isn't a blinding pure white.
Applied and will sit for a day to dry and cure.
And jumping back to the RF, the familiar process takes place with the usual black washing and then carbon scoring.
And after the final matte coating, here are the results for this piece.
Here's a quick view of the bucket after the white has dried and the masking off the areas of the front T-visor, the dome, and the backside.
Next will be the masking preperation for painting the blues...I mask everything in detail that will not be blue, including the white cheek area, the dome and the backside sans the vent area.
The first layer of blue will be a coating of Rustoleum Wildflower Blue. Two hours after the application I dry sanded the blue with a grade green Scotch Brite scrubbing pad to take out the sheen and then did a wet sand of the layer to get a subtle deeper blue effect (probably only noticable to the nake eye). I then continued to allow it to dry and cure for another 24hrs.
The second layer of blue will be Crylon Iris Blue. I did two layers of dusting with this blue shade.
Next, I used steel wool to do some scuff weathering on the blue areas.
Another layer of weathering on the blue areas was applied with a little bit of white washing and dry brushing throughout...
After I applied silver Rub 'n Buff to areas around the T-visor and other blue areas, I proceeded to remove the masking for the white area of the cheeks and did some light sanding with the steel wool.
Next was the unmasking of the gray areas...
Up next was sanding down to the next paint layer on key areas as referenced from the screen shots, and then dry brushing or dabbing light gray paint on the gray areas, especially the cheeks and dome areas.
For the kill mark decals, I used my 1/4"in or 6mm green masking tape as a guide. I cut four 30mm length strips and use them as place holders for where the yellow painted kill marks will be located. It took me a few trys to get them to the correct length and placement per the screen references. I had them placed about 3mm above the lip of the visor area and about 2mm spacing between the marks for each pair.
I then masked around the decals in the negative spacing as so...
I used generic yellow acrylic paint and used a paint roller to apply the color. (I didn't want to paint using a brush as I didn't want brush strokes to be apparent on these marks.)
Dried and masking off.
After I sanded the kill marks with 800 grit sandpaper to weather blend them to the helmet, applied another layer of light gray dry dabbing over the forehead area among other places and then sealed the bucket with matte coating.
The next step was a black wash, but I didn't use a heavy black wash in the traditional sense. Instead, I did a very light wash via using a paper towel and dapping technique. On areas where the black dabbing took away the other lighter gray or silver weathering, I also went back and reapplied those lost accent weathering. A layer of carbon scoring was applied too. And where areas that the graphite was over applied, I restored by subtracting via wet paper towel and also used light gray fuller's earth to get some of the highlights back.
After the final matte seal, I took off the visor backing board and assembled the rest of the pieces of the bucket.
And here are the final results...
All armor pieces now completed!
All set for now!
