Nice job George, great subject and looking forward to your build.

Here’s a picture with the coat of yellow

The mudguard looks wonderful, my friend @chinesegeorge! Popped or not, I personally don't mind as it looks STUNNING! Nice progress with the engine!

The engine parts are generally split into three colours, aluminium, black, and a mix of titanium silverlgold. The aluminium parts I sprayed gloss aluminium from the rattle can. I only have the titanium colours in spray cans so I can’t really mix them, and I am unable to use an airbrush in our current accommodation, so I just used titanium gold. The black parts I didn’t paint as I think Tamiya’s moulded black plastic is OK as it comes (will I get drummed out of iModeler for doing this?). Anyway once everything is closed up they won’t be very visible. Here’s a few pictures, I sealed off the areas with masking tape where the gold and black pieces will be fixed, it saves scraping off the paint before cementing them in place.

Happy modelling.

Beautiful work on the engine, George @chinesegeorge
And I do agree, if the provided black color looks ok, why would you apply another layer of paint.

I’ve been away for the last ten days on a short break to the coast. Everywhere seems so far away in China, a thirteen hour drive each way to what is our nearest beach (and naval base), top security at present, presumably due to the Taiwan exercises. The beaches were really crowded, hot, and humid. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the basic engine painted and assembled.

And the exhaust system added, painted in Tamiya light gun metal with the silencer boxes in silver. I weathered the pipes’ joins with black panel lining. Happy modelling.

Great job George! That Titanium gold looks pretty spot on to me. Ducati has used various shades and colours of gold on their parts over the years. You have to remember that they are Italians, and their creative juices are allowed to change daily if they wish...LOL.

@fiveten @johnb @Rory, hi Spiros, Rory and John, your kind and generous comments are much appreciated, still plenty to do.