First resin kit finished!

100% hand-painted! Yes, it's possible to get good results without an airbrush as long as your paints are thinned so they level evenly. This is Mina from Soul Calibur, on clearance so i thought it suitable for a test article.

Woohoo! Check out my first resin kit project fully painted and assembled! If you don't know resin kits or garage kits are typically japanese models, 1/8 scale, hence they are quite a bit bigger than your typical table-top miniature figure. I got this one on clearance to test if i would be able to paint resin kits reasonably well without an airbrush before spending more money on an expensive Ah! My Goddess resin kit which i really want to paint. I think it turned out pretty good! But i did learn a few tips for resin kits which differ from normal miniatures painting techniques:

side view, balance is pretty good.

- Use a bigger brush, it's faster and reduced brush strokes. For miniature painting, you usually only need size 1, 0, 3/0 rounds. For my resin kit, i used mostly a size 4 round for most of my detail work and a size 6? filbert for large areas (legs/arms/blade). I did go down smaller size for the eyes, but i found the larger brush had better snap and was easier to control.

- Use 'cheats' to make it easier on yourself and tools other than brushes. It's hard to freehand long, straight lines. I didn't realize it till the end, but i could've used masking tape to make the white boarders of the dress cleaner. But i did use it for the green detail at the bottom of the dress. Also, i used a Sakura pigma micron brush pen for the eyes.

- A major difference from regular miniatures is that typically the resin kit is painted un-assembled, that way it's easier to reach all the nooks and crannies. You assemble before hand and pin pretty much everything (which turned out to be pretty easy), then i took it apart, hot-glued each piece to a bamboo skewer stick, and used that to hold the pieces for priming and painting. Hot glue is pretty secure and comes off cleanly when it's time for final assembly. If the model pose is not too complicated, you can also partially assembly then paint, whatever seems reasonable and makes it easier to get the job done.

-Although shading and highlighting are not as neccessary for resin kits due to their larger size, doing so still adds an extra oomph to the finished model. I did some for the red cloth, gold, and hair but not so much for the skin, except around the fingers. Most commercially painted resin figures don't have shading/highlighting but it does look better with it.

i added just a tad of pink for the lips and some blush on the cheeks. Warrior women don't need a whole lot of makeup. Note her eyes do have dark brown iris', highlighting in hair, and the freehand painted symbol on her bandanna.

I also learned something about time management since this is the first model i completed under my "one hour painting a day" resolution. It took me a solid week to do this model which some days i didn't get to paint at all and on the weekend i painted for like 5 hours straight (part of the time spent trying to resuscitate some old paint i bought on clearance). I'll get faster as i get better, but it's important to set a limit on how much time goes into a project. I could keep making it better, but my goal was to finish before leaving for thanksgiving. So i gave up shading/highlighting the skin, which i think is fine. I think this is important to any project you do, at some point you have to say this is good enough and move on the next project. Also, to balance time spent on a hobby with other activities (like music and working out).