1/72 Star Wars Red Five and Gold Leader WIP

I've been working on these two models for about two weeks now. Each has presented a few challenges and opportunities for learning. Take a look at the photos and comments below.

This is the first image that I shared, at this stage in the process I had painted the entire kit with a mixture of black, dark blue and smoke grey as a base shading layer. 

After the shading layer a mixture of white and grey was painted somewhat inconsistently over the entire model to create a base color. 

The belly of the fuselage had the most noticeable inconsistent finish. Because the intent of this model was to paint multiple colors and weather the base coat didn't need to be consistent. 

The nozzles, gaps in the wings and the back plate were painted with a mix of warm grey, whites-silver and black.

This was my first attempt at painting the unit markings on the wings and colored panels. Ultimately I was unhappy with how inconsistent the markings truned out. I stripped only these ares by using a toothbrush and alcohol to massage the paint off of the end of the wing tips.

This photo occured after I had repainted the wing tips and followed up with another round of masking. This time I used a ruler instead of trying to use the decals as a template. 

And here's the result along with some salt chipping. In hind sight the left wing tip was chipped too much.

Here's how the X wing looked in its nearly completely painted state. This is also the last good photo I have of the kit before "the accident".

Here's little Luke. I painted the figure entirely white, masked the head and painted the body orange. Everything else was hand brushed with Vallejo acrylics.

Here's the kit post accident and weathering. I accidentally left a bottle of rubbing alcohol out on my desk after painting little Luke. When I walked by I accidentally knocked the bottle over and splashed the kit. The alcohol "burned" the paint in a lot of areas. Some of it turned out okay and enhanced the look in someways. I did my best to cover it up with hand brushing, chipping, washes and other techniques. My original intent with this kit was to do a cleaner version of Luke's X wing, but ultimately the design was much dirtier than intended.

Like the X wing the Y wing started with a shader coat to give it depth.

WIP content on the Y wing is going to be a bit light because it was a quick build and I didn't photograph much. Here's the principle paint job on the model. Masking the yellow lines on the nacelle domes was difficult due to the soft curve. I ended up using the included decal to mask in the right shape. They actually left pretty clean edges too.

Like the X wing the Y wing will receive a weathering treatment to make it look for realistic.

Like the X wing I used Tamiya's panel lining solution for all of the panel lines and sunk detail. I followed this up with a few layers of Vallejo's dark grey wash and chipping using Vallejo black and grey.

By comparison the Y wing looks pretty clean when placed next to the X wing. I still need to topcoat the kit and hand paint the pilot before I can finish this one off. Stay tuned.