It was an uphill battle

My friends, this stowage gave me a hard time! Most likely because it was my first time painting resin stuff (alright, I painted the two large tent rolls on this model in the past, but that doesn't count 😅), but hey, I feel like the result is mostly-somehow-probably-partially presentable. 

First lesson learned: no, it's utter nonsense to paint the stowage after pre-weathering. I needed to apply a layer of chipping fluid and dust mixture over all of it, so yeah, way to waste a ton of time. 

Second lesson: VMS Flat Varnish rocks, the stowage remained glossy after the chipping fluid, but the varnish worked like a dream. 

Third lesson: using enamel washes is a huge help! Now I don't know if this is considered cheating, but if it works, then who cares, right? I used Dark Brown wash (the same I used on the model) to outline the strings and folds. But just the deepest, most shadowed stuff! Everything else is done with acrylics since the lights and shadows need to be smooth. 

Fourth lesson: first few tarps were painted with glazes, so I applied the lights and shadows in a single strong contrasting layer and then toned them down with a base coat glaze. This however proved to be inefficient on resin stowage since it has tons of wrinkles and the glaze just tends to pool in them. So I switched to the "old school" way of gradually building up the contrast with acrylics... and then outlined the deepest stuff with a wash like I already mentioned.

Last lesson: that huge green tarp on the fender is cursed! No matter how much I tried it still looked like crap, probably even worse than on the "old" version of this model. It just has a very weird shape which makes it hard to paint. Pre-dusting combined with some enamel stains made it somewhat more interesting though... let's just pretend it's a dirty, greasy tarp, okay? 😁

So that's about it... It's all superglued in place, which means we can move forward... next on the menu are some enamel earth tones on the lower hull, which might be pretty straightforward considering most of the heavy lifting was done with an airbrush. 

The model will be finished soon!