This is sort of a cross post from another forum from myself. I was not asking for advice there and was looking for a dedicated painting forum - this seems to be a good place to start!
History would say that I last painted about 15 plus years ago. I was not brilliant at it, but enthusiastic and did my best!
My son is now into X-Wing so I figured that I would get involved but was a little fed up of the too new and pretty looking ships, so went for some rust buckets which means paint brushes and paints are needed. My vision here is a ship that should have been written off a long time ago and should never be flying but has been salvaged from a junkyard.
So, this is very early WIP as I have not painted for many years. The WIP is more to show the cockpit of the X-Wing which is a black blob at the moment. This will ideally be the last thing that I do, but I need help with it.
As a side note, Tie Fighter is from the core set and simply what I use to splash colors on and see what it looks like before doing anything on the X-Wing. Consider it my lump of plastic to see how paint dries. This does not feature in anything apart from being a palette tester!
The problem is that I need to have a realistic looking cockpit. I am looking to make reflective black glass / or dark blue glass and have no idea how to do this. Any advice on paints or ways to make a window type effect that looks shiny would be well received.
As I am just back into this, to create the battered and rusty look for the X-Wing, I have done the following so far:
1) Sprayed it with a primer. I deliberately did not spray evenly as I wanted more damange. It seemed to work out very well for me and gave me a cracked effect along the ridges of the nose of the craft.
2) After 24 hours, I then painted with Army Painters Shining Silver and let that fully dry.
3) It was then given a wash with Citadel's Agrax Earthshade.
4) When that dried the gun barrels were painted with Army Painter Gun Metal and the tips and rear of the guns along with the cockpit were Army Painter Matt Black while the droid was Army Painter Hydra Turquoise.
Looking to the future, I am building layers up on this and I need to finish with the final cockpit, but have no idea how to do this.
Otherwise, how I feel at the moment the only thing I am worried about is the state of that Tie Fighter. Darth will not be pleased by the time it's finished being messed up to test colors...
Click to see full-sized image