Airfix Models - 1/400 scale Mary Rose Starter Set
Not so long ago I found myself in Hamleys in London and to my surprise, they had a scale model section. Amongst the possibilities there was a Mary Rose starter set for not a lot of money. I figured it would be a nice warm up for the Bandai kits that I have sitting in my pile of shame. I decided from the start that I wasn’t going to use the included paints, I wanted to challenge myself to see if I can elevate this beginner kit with my painting skills. So with that in mind, I cracked open the box and set to assembly.
The first thing I did was to ignore the instructions and assemble the display stand first rather than last. This way I would have something to rest the model on while the glue cured. The rest of the model came together fairly easily; I didn’t glue the masts in place in case I needed easier access to something during painting and I left the sails on the sprue for ease of painting. I then primed the parts with grey.
To get things started I used my airbrush to coat the entire hull with Vallejo Camouflage Medium Brown. Once that was dry I carefully washed the hull with Army Painter Strong Tone, its goopier consistency allowed me to get an even coat without any streaks. To finish off the hull I gave the raised areas a drybrush with Steel Legion Drab. For some variety I then painted the masts with Dryad Bark. While I had the Dryad Bark out I painted the stand with several thin coats before using Scale75 Dwarven Gold to pick out the trim.
It was after this that things started to go wrong. If I had been a clever man I might have masked off the relevant areas before painting or airbrushing the white bits. Alternatively, I might have done the white areas first then covered them with liquid latex before doing the brown. I did neither of these things and instead muddled my way through freehanding the white areas. Even using Matt White thinned with some White Artists Ink it took several coats to get a smooth layer. I compounded my errors by then washing the white areas with Apothecary White contrast paint. Despite its name, it didn’t provide all that much contrast and I would have been better off using Nuln Oil. I struggled on, hoping that transfers would cover the worst of it.
The sails started off well, I painted the wood beams with Dryad Bark and used several layers of Army Painter Skeleton Bone to provide a really smooth finish. When it came to the washes I then tried to do the same with Skeleton Hoard contrast paint that I did with the hull with Strong Tone. It didn’t work. Instead of a nice smooth coat I ended up with a ton of streaks. To alleviate this issue, I tried drybrushing some Tyrant Skull in the middle of each sail or sail panel. To my surprise, this worked quite well and I’m rather pleased with how it turned out.
The next step was the silver details. But first I needed to tidy up any areas that I had gotten white on, such as any cannons or windows, as silver doesn’t go over white as well as it does other colours. With that in mind, I tidied up these areas with Matt Black. With that done I used Leadbelcher to paint everything that needed to be silver. The silver areas were small enough that I didn’t think it would make any discernible difference if I gave them a Nuln Oil wash, so I didn’t bother.
With the painting done I could move onto the, frankly, absurd amount of transfers this kit had. To help each transfer adhere to the model, I coat the areas that would have transfers a quick coat of gloss varnish. The transfers weren’t too bad all things considered. The long thin ones were a bit fiddly to position correctly. However, the ones that wrapped around cannon housings were a nightmare. No amount of pushing and pulling could get all the details to line up properly and honestly, in the end I gave up and did the best I could. I suspect it might be easier with some Microsol to soften the transfers. But I don’t have any of that unfortunately. I soldiered on and once I had all the transfers on I gave them all a coat of matt varnish to seal them down.
The last few things I needed to do were to stick the sails on and put the sticker flags on the masts. Not sure why that isn’t a transfer, after all the small fiddly transfers I’ve just done a wavy flag hardly seems all that complicated.
And just like that, my first scale model is complete. It turned out alright I guess. There’s definitely things I would do differently next time. For example, I could have avoided the streaks on the sails by using an airbrush to apply a nice thin layer of Skeleton Horde contrast paint. And ditto for the white areas, masking them off and using an airbrush would have given me far smoother results in a fraction of the time. Lessons to learn for the next project I suppose. And at the end of the day, it’s not like I spent a fortune on this kit, better that I make mistakes now rather than on something I pour my heart and soul into. Like those Star Wars Bandai kits that I have sitting on my shelf. And to be honest, while the lessons I learnt from the Mary Rose are fresh in my mind I may have to make a start on them sooner rather than later…
Obviously, being a scale model this has no bearing on my boardgame miniatures painted this year. So my count remains tantalisingly close to two hundred. Next time baby, next time.
Boardgame miniatures left to paint: 567
Boardgame miniatures painted this year: 199