Pink Panthers, and a few Dropships

I have a couple of Galactic Knights Carnivorian Panther Class Cruisers that I'm try to finish up and get off my workbench. I've been meaning to post some pictures for a while, and a recent post at Super Galactic Dreadnought prompted me to action.
While I had my camera out, I also snapped some pictures of some AeroTech Union and Overlord class dropships that I have been wanting to show off. With a little help from Picassa, you can see these pictures in the embedded slideshow below, or you can see the full size images in my miniatures gallery.





For the Panthers I employed a non-standard method for painting these. It went something like this:

1. Start with a black primer coat.
2. Drybrush a dark grey, then gradually work up to lighter shades.
3. Accidentally splatter with Pink Paint. Really dump it on.
4. Wash off most of the pink paint, and spread the rest around a bit.
5. Accent with magenta ink.
6. Highlight with Metallic Inks, as shown here.
7. Apply matte varnish.
8. Apply a flat black glaze to "deep" areas to further knock down shininess and bring up the contrast.
9. Add lettering in white ink for the ship names (in process).
10. (next) Mount on Ninja Magic flight adapters?

Since these are "Panther" cruisers, I decided to name them after cats I have known. The first is "Telstar" after a big black cat we had when I was very young. The second is "Boris" after an even bigger black* Maine Coon who has assisted in the development of Squadron Strike (Boris allows Ken to type, sometimes). 

* Boris informs me he is actually a mackeral tabby.

The AeroTech dropships were an experiment in how much I could do with metallic inks, and I am very pleased with the result. I started with a black primer, and applied a number of thin layers of silver ink until I got a solid tone. Some highlighting with copper ink, black ink on the doors and some black-lining the details finished them off nicely. These came out with a much better metallic look than I get from metallic paints.