Painting a Sith Infiltrator

The Sith Infiltrator was truly interesting to paint. As I've stated earlier, I had only painted one 3D-printed model before and that was a very different beast. A friend of mine bought what only can be described as a female Necromunda Orlock ganger and told me to 'go nuts' and get a feel for how 3D-printed models are to paint. One would think that the experience from that model might have helped with the Infiltrator but sadly no.

The ship arrived at my door as one single white/translucent piece of plastic. At first glance I thought it was very smooth and well made but when I started putting on paint I realised that my first impression was off by quite a bit. Before painting however I washed it in warm soapy water thoroughly.

I had gotten rather detailed instructions from the commissioner this time, the ship was to be grey with blue detailing. So after the primer I started on the basecoat, a 1:4 mix of VMC German Grey and VGC Cold Grey. The blue parts were painted with a 1:4 mix of VGC Imperial Blue and VGC Magic Blue and the middle, with the exposed mechanical bits, and any guns were painted with pure German Grey. I also painted some thinned out Army Painter Dark Tone ink directly into all recesses for shading.

As I wrote earlier, the model was not as nice as I had originally thought. Particularly the underside had parts that were quite rough and uneven. To alleviate this problem I started painting a thick, undiluted matte varnish on the trouble areas to fill and make them smoother. If I could reach, I also gently sanded down those areas. Ideally this would have been done before I even started painting but it just wasn't very visible before I had some colour on the model.

Highlighting the grey was a fairly straightforward business, starting with Cold Grey and mixing in VGC Stonewall Grey. When I had reached pure Stonewall Grey I instead mixed in some VGC Dead White and I also used pure white for the final highlights. The aim was to give the ship a slightly metallic look. Of note is that I painted the windows, or at the very least what I think are the windows, with German Grey.

The commissioner however wished the ship to be a slightly darker in tone so I made a glaze using Dark Tone ink and carefully applied all over the ship. When this was finished I began painting the blue highlights which started with a base of pure Magic Blue that I gradually mixed small amounts of Dead White into. I didn't make these highlights too noticeable as it would have taken the focus away from the rest of the model.

The parts painted earlier with German Grey got a full on NMM treatment to make them as (artificially) metallic as possible, though I of course forgot to take a picture of the final highlights. D'oh! To finish of the model I also did some simple reflections for the windows and made the engines glow a fairly pale blue.

The varnishing stage on this model was a lot more complex than normal. Something I had noticed while painting the model was that the paint was easily rubbed off just by simply touching it. To protect the ship I first manually varnished the entire model two times with the same matte varnish that I had used to seal up the uneven areas. When this was done I sprayed the model with a satin spray varnish which I immediately followed up with another coat of a matte spray varnish. If this isn't enough to protect the model on the battlefield, then I don't know what is.