Federation Commander

Hi.

I'm looking for advice as to how to detail around the raised areas on the engine pylons of Federation ships. I am finding that no matter how careful I am, it's really hard to get a nice neat white spacing line between the raised areas.

I'm using a spray primer and spray basecoat, so it's not gonna be easy to match the color with some ordinary white paint.

So how are you guys getting nice and neat lines?

Also, the reference guide says that those raised areas should be Blue, but is there a commonly held "official shade" of blue? I don't think I like the blue I have, but fixing it is going to be pretty hard so I'm stuck with it on the one mini.

Not sure how much help this will be, Bill; but...
I use an expensive airbrush to base coat my minis. By thinning the regular acrylic color to the proper consistency and spraying it on - I get nice, even coverage and still have the matching shade in a paintable format for touch-ups.

I also use a small brush and a lot of patience on the raised areas thereby reducing the need for touch-ups (but if needed, they can be done as I air-brush the regular shade of white for a base coat).

As to shades of blue... every one is different. I use a cobalt blue base coat and then highlight with cyan. I start atthe forward protion of the area in question and allow the highligths to trail off. This gives a cyan color towards the front nad a deeper. more cobalt blue towards the rear of hte area.