The base color is always sprayed with an airbrush to avoid ungraceful handbrush marks.
The color is of course different from a model to another one but for Star Wars vehicles, it is very often the same : a very clear grey made from 7 volumes of flat white Tamiya XF2) mixed with 1 volume of skygrey (XF19)
To perform the paintjob, I apply many successives thins coats until I get an homogeneous tint.
Before perofmring the paintjob itself of a model, you must apply a primer. There are two benefits : by choosing a sticky paint, you can increase the grip of the later layers and by choosing a very covering paint, you homogenize the color before the final one.
The chrome-sivler X-11 tint from Tamiya offers these two benefits, I use it almost every time.
Once the inclusion resin polymerized (and not “dry”, there is a real chemical reaction), you get a transparent and tough mass which could depict a peaceful lake but not very realsitic. You will have to cover the surface with acrylic medium which will be brush-sculpted to depict wavelets. You won’t get a wild sea by this technique but for a disturbed water like the surface of a lake, it works well. You can see the result in the “battle of Takodana” diorama.
Making a realistic water is not easy. The first step consists in getting the “water volume” necessary. If you want to make a puddle or a small stream, easy. if you want to make a lake or sea, much harder. The best way is to cast some inclusion resin you can find in a DIY store. It’s exepensive and expires very quickly but you have no choice. First yo must mix the two components and cast it in an hermetic form you made before.
