Billiam

Being a Battletech player I've painted many mecha miniatures. I decided to give the Ursa a basic, parade-style paintjob. I used a green/purple paint scheme from the cover sleeve of Ral Partha's Free Worlds League paint set as inspiration.

First off, I decided to put the figure together without modifications. I assembled everything with epoxy -- it went together really well. I then built up a fender washer with epoxy putty for a base and just crammed the mini into it. It gave the effect of the suit sinking into the sand. I also sank some railroad modelling stones into the epoxy before it hardened. The nice thing is that when the putty hardened, the miniature was stuck fast. I then glued some sand over the rest of the base and primed white.

The rest of the job was pretty straight forward. The purple areas are Ral Partha (RP) Regulan Violet, followed by shading with RP purple and black ink, and highlighted with RP Oriente Purple. The green areas are RP Legionnaire Green, RP Dark Green ink as shade, and highlighted up Legionnaire mixed with some yellow and white. The weapon feed and guns are done with RP Steel, shaded with black ink and highlighted with RP Aged Metal. The one conduit is RP Gray and the windows/screens were a new metallic, RP Arcadia Blue.

The search light kinda gave me fits. I decided to go with a light blue and then paint over it with thinned RP Polar White, a metallic off-white. I then highlighted with more Polar White at full strength.

The missiles (at least _I_ thought they were missiles) on the right side of the body were a dilemma. I wanted to use an off-white with red striping like I normally do sci-fi missiles. But then it wouldn't look like part of the overall scheme. I decided to live with it -- missiles are expendibles after all, so why would anyone bother with color coordination?

The base I painted RP Dunkel Brown with khaki highlights. The rocks were painted black with red brown highlights. I wanted to give it the look of Mars landscape and that was the closest I could match (special thanks to NASA for providing the Mars images).

Billiam