Behold, the acid bath of doom.

I believe in technical terms this is called 'Alkaline Hydrolysis' when applied to humans. Alas, not all builds go to plan and my game has just not been up to bringing my Essex crew up to the plate.

I tried every trick I could but by the time my paint was 'taking' there were so many layers I lost the detail.

So, patience. Patience. And maybe a beer. And some more patience. I'm pretty determined to get where I want to with this build and this is where iModeler spirit really helps. I want to get better and not just settle for completing a build; for me this is very much about learning and as long as you can push yourself and still have fun, I think it's a winning formula.

Oh, and if anyone has any helpful tips for painting 1/48 figures, I'm all ears.

Hi Louis. Thanks for the reply. As you can see, everything just went south with the figures, but thanks for the photo of Paul Buie on the Lexie. I love that photo as it really catches something of those men that hits a note with me. Bravery, honour, duty; whatever it is it's special.

Bernard, I think it was just a mixture of poor prep and bad materials. I stripped the figures and primed the figures well second time around, and the Vallejo paints saved the day. Next time, I feel confident I'll get the look I want. May well have been a bad batch because when I tried a test spray of chaos black, it went on fine.
Thanks, and very best wishes!