When a good friend offered me a model of a Venator Star Destroyer that he had designed and 3D printed, I thought it would be a good chance to test several Gaahleri products that I have recently received as samples to review.

So this model has been painted using mostly Gaahleri products. As Gaahleri focuses on airbrushes and related stuff,  a couple of different products were used with paintbrush.

The list of equipment and materials used is:

• TurboX Mini Compressor
• Seeker Airbrush
• Kaleido Primer Black, White and Grey
• Kaleido Satin Varnish
• Kaleido Red acrylic paint
• Kaleido Metallic Colors
• Vallejo Model Color paints
• Oils

Some items on this list have already been subject of specific reviews like the Seeker Airbrush, Kaleido Primers and Kaleido Varnishes.

The model is printed in a few parts, mainly the two large halves, engines and guns.

After gluing the two halves of the kit and adding a few other parts like guns and twin bridges, I proceeded to primer everything. I used Gaahleri grey for all the Destroyer using the Seeker airbrush attached to a TurboX compressor. I used the 0,5mm needle for wide coverage and set maximum pressure. The Seeker performed very well, spraying evenly and without clogs, while the compressor sent a steady supply of air enough for the task. Despite it has no tank, the hose can absorb the minimal pulses. As the compressor starts only when the airbrush trigger is pulled, there was no overheating.

The primer was smooth and did not hide any detail, with a good coverage of some white putty I had used on the grey resin. Then I sprayed a subtle layer of white primer from top to create a cenital light effect.

The engines were still apart at this stage and primed in black.

Next step was masking for the red areas -it took me some time, given the small size of the model!

Here, the stripes are not yet masked. That was the hardest part.

Then, I applied Red from Kaleido basic colors range. Again using the Seeker and TurboX, but lowering the pressure to avoid any accidental overspray. This paint  did not produce any clog and covered the intended area smoothly. The paint layer was very thin but still completely opaque.

Some areas where painted in a couple of grey shadows, this time using Vallejo Model Color paint, as Kaleido is designed for airbrush and this had to be done brush-painting.

Finally, a satin varnish coat was applied, in order to have a base for the oil wash. 

The engines were painted with the metallic range of Kaleido, using a base of Gun Metal  and some titanium on the nozzles for the long ones and steel plus dark gold  on the short ones. I like the effect of these metal colors, quickly applied with airbrush and varying the coverage and shooting angle.

The starship hull received a dark grey wash over grey areas, and dark brown over red, cleaning the excess of both afterwards.

The wash was heavier on the engines, again using a very dark grey.

So I call it done.

Conclusion

It was a nice experiment, other than masking the whole process was quite quick and was finished in a couple of days. Having the right tools and colors at hand definitively helps, and all Gaahleri/Kaleido products performed excellent for their respective tasks.