It has been a while since I've had a chance to sit and write a painting article. Hopefully I can rectify that. I've done a couple of Star Adder mechs lately so I'll do a couple articles on them and I'll start with a pair of minis I painted in 2013.

Star Adder schemes are pretty straight forward. They typically are black and dark blue with one or two colors as trim colors. They tend to be very beginner friendly to paint. This early version uses dry brushing along with base coating as your primary techniques. All of the paints mentioned are from Vallejo's Game Color line unless otherwise noted.

I started out with priming black like I do with most of my minis. I did base coat everything with another coat of Black just to ensure consistent coverage and color. Next I did a dry brush with a mix of 1 part Black with 1 part Cold Grey over the entire mini. This should lighten the whole thing and make the recesses stand out. Lastly, I did a little light dry brushing with Cold Grey mostly targeting surfaces that would receive more light, such as the head and shoulder area.

Now we need to start working on the dark blue. The blue isn't just limited to trim so you will want to find plenty of areas to get redone in blue. I started by applying a solid layer of Night Blue on all of the surfaces. Once the Night Blue is done, I came back with a layer of Imperial Blue. This layer covered about 80% of the Night Blue you had previously colored. Just remember to think about what would receive more light and the lighter blue should go on those surfaces. Lastly, I used some Ultra Marine Blue to either dry brush or edge some of the raised surfaces. Not much of this will be needed to make the blue pop.

Now that the main colors of the minis are done, we can move on to the trim. Epsilon calls for silver and dark grey trim. Silver is easy and it doesn’t really need a second color to go with it. For the grey trim, I used Cold Grey with some edges painted using Stonewall Grey. I used Glorious Gold on the cockpit.

As I mentioned at the beginning, it is a really simple paint scheme. The darker blues are very forgiving for newer painters.