Many thanks guys!
That sounds like a great trip Devin!
Small will definitely be easier indeed. Also, make sure you can take the model out of its box quickly and easily, so show the security staff (transparent plastic boxes can be helpful for this reason too). And make sure it is attached firmly inside the box in a way that the box can be turned upside down without damaging the model. If you do that, everything should be fine.
Now, finally an update, after some Covid-downtime, and some Flickr stuff.
I�ll be concentrating on the hull of Victory for some time.
Weathering was started with some different coloured filters.
I�ll show it in much enlarged close-ups, so hopefully you�ll be able to see the effects.
This is the basecolour I started from:
First, I applied a mottling of different coloured filters. It is a bit like the �oilpaint-dot� technique, but I apply them thinned like a filter:
First I flood the surface with clean White Spirit. Then I apply more or less random smudges of different coloured oil paints, which have been thinned down very much with White Spirit too. Then I blend those smudges with a clean brush, wetted with a little White Spirit. I take care not to mix all the colours together, because that would result in only one dirty brown.
For colours, I used an olive green, a red brown, a yellow and a blue. The idea is to change to basecolour subtly towards these different parts of the spectrum.
This is the result. The idea is to break up the plastic toy-like basecolour, creating some colour-variation.
This doesn�t work very well on very dark colours like (near) black). Those need light tones to break them up. So I repeated the process with two warm dusty tones: a light one and a very light one. I also applied it to the yellow and red areas, in order to unify everything a bit further. I blended some of it in a vertical streaking way, but not always.
The idea is not to mimic dust, but rather a mix of random fading, salt streaks and a little dust.
This effect may look very heavy and exaggerated now. But remember this is a very enlarged photo (a gunport is only 3 to 4 mm wide). And, very importantly, the effect will be toned down by the following painting steps, so we need to exaggerate a bit at this stage if we want it to have any effect on the final look.
After the filters, I also basecoated the shot holes. This was a matter of a fine brush, some Humbroll paint, and some patience. I will still add shadows and highlights to these later on; this is only a basecoat.
The same process on the stern.
Basecolour:
Red/green/blue/yellow filters:
�dusty� filters:
And shot holes:
And the bows.
Basecolour:
Red/green/blue/yellow filters:
�dusty� filters
Shot holes:
Again: the photo�s are close-ups. This one give more or less the �feel� of the entire model:
BTW, don�t pay attention to the area below the waterline; this will be very much overpainted later on.
! Thank you for sharing your technique and Bravo as usual 
