by Wes Hawkins
Start Over/W.A.D. Productions

Greetings everyone!! If you've read my past articles, you'll notice I'm a figure painter at heart, but I could not resist the idea of painting the Derelict Spacecraft from the film "Alien." This will be my first venture outside of the figure genre so strap yourselves in. This will most likely be a bumpy ride!

I consulted the Internet for pics of the actual filming miniature and other sources of the derelict. The ship appears to be mostly dark with several highlights of grey and white. This is because the ship is fossilized. I decided to go a different route and try making the ship look as if it has not been on the planet long enough to fossilize, but was in the beginning stages.

To do this, I chose to use Com-Art's Colors Metallics and also photo black and 10% neutral gray. With this wide variety of colors I should be able to come up with something interesting.

Here's the ship with a coat of primer. The gray coat will go a long way insofar as making colors more subtle is concerned. Since the fossilization process will make the ship look a little gray here and there, a total coverage of other colors is not needed.

All paint will be sprayed using my workhorse airbrush: the Iwata Eclipse HP-CS. Here's the ship after a coat of Opaque Metallic Bronze with some shadows added by using Metallic Copper.

The piece after some highlights of Opaque Metallic Gold and Opaque Metallic Silver.

Now, here comes the interesting part-the grays! To achieve the desired effect, I will use Com-Arts Photo Gray colors.

Spraying thin lines straight up and down on the piece, I started with Photo Black and worked my way from dark to light starting with Neutral Gray 60% and continuing on with 50%, 40%, and 30%, being careful not to completely cover each pre-sprayed color. By leaving a hint of each previously sprayed color, this aided with the fossilized look seen in the film.

The finishing touches are 20% gray and Photo White. I went back once I was finished and gave the whole piece an overspray of Photo Black to blend everything together.

To sum it up, I've used virtually every paint known to mankind, but the Com-Art paints made this project a one-day task, due to ease of cleanup and their ease of spraying. Color change was a snap with the simple shooting of thinner through the brush to prepare the brush for the next color. The Metallics and Photo Gray colors complemented each other well on the subject matter. Give Com-Art a try. You won't be disappointed!

Reprinted with permission of ARTtalk.com