Painting the Yellow-Bellied Bug

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At this point, I'm going to pretend that I did the yellow highlights first, then the red highlights later. That's because it's easier if you do them in that order. I actually did them simultaneously, which means they mess each other up...

Thinking "Tiger Stripes"

I thought long and hard about doing tiger stripes on the "inside" sides of the legs, and I just didn't see how I was going to make it look good - given my skill level, and the tiny little legs on this model.

Finally, I had an epiphany - let the sculptor do the work! There were "stripe" patterns on several parts of the model: inside the claws, inside the "feet," inside the mandibles. And there were "fiber" patterns running lengthwise on the middle and upper legs. I figured I could do a striping effect in those areas, and it would accomplish the same effect.

(I also considered doing the tiger striping on the sides of the upper body, which have some very interesting texture. However, I decided not to, as I thought it might make the model too busy.)

So - the first step was to paint the areas mentioned above with the base color, a dark yellow-brown. I happened to use Aleene's Yellow Ochre. It can get a bit thick and dry early, so I added a little FolkArt Extender (which dilutes the paint and keeps it from drying quite as fast). Unfortunately, I should have tested it first - the paint ended up turning ropey, and I was afraid that I'd spoiled the model... but it turned out OK, after a second coat for good coverage.

I first tried to wet-brush the paint so that it went only on the raised areas, but that didn't work for me - so I painted all of the "tiger striped" surfaces. (And a few other areas, by accident!)

I also decided, at this time, that I would do the bottom of the lower body in yellow, as well. This gave the advantage of putting a color transition right where the two body halves meet, which I thought would help hide any fit problems.

Next, I wanted to get some shadow back into those areas I'd just painted over, and I wanted to blend the yellow areas back into the rest of the body. So I applied a brown ink wash, using Higgins Brown. It took two applications, because in some places the ink ran off at first (due to the angle of that part of the model).

The inking turned out darker than I expected, but produced some very interesting effects as the ink dried.

Finally, I was ready to drybrush on some yellow highlights. I briefly considered using a yellow-white paint - which would closely resemble the pictures in the Starship Troopers rulebook - but decided to go with a brigher color to liven up the Bug.

So, very carefully, I drybrushed all of the under-surfaces with Ceramcoat Opaque Yellow. This worked well on the claws and the mandibles, but was troublesome on the "feet" where the detail was quite tiny. On the lower body, I tried to vary the drybrushing to give some transition from black to brown to yellow. I also drybrushed the inside of the fangs.