With the simplicity of the build and leaving the lack of certain details as-is to facilitate construction time, I spent most of this build on the paint. Black is hard to pull off, and the worst thing you can do to create a black model is to actually use black paint. I went with two shades of dark gray, sprayed in overlapping vertical patterns, then streaked the result with salt and rust stains made from pastel chalk. I bumped up the flatness of the final dullcoat in order to give more of an overall chalky appearance.
The Atlanta was a quick, fun build. I may pick up another of these someday -- at approximately $25, it's an extremely affordable kit -- and tackle the issues I ignored on this one, namely adding the anchors and missing hatches, filling in the over scale wood decking lines, and adding the ship's boats. With it being an odd scale, though, I may just opt to use the David Meagher plans to scratch build her in 1/200 or 1/96th scale. |