How to do pre-shading and highlight on your gundam

Before applying any color paint be sure to spray a coat of primer(i use mr hobby 1000 grey primer),this will help the paint to stick better to the surface and also reduce the risk of "flooding"(too much paint at one area causing thick and ugly paint marks).(Primer also help to find faults on your model)

Base paint-This will be the first layer of color paint and it's usually a darker tone of the final color.For example,if you want to paint light green on your model,your base color would be dark green.

For this piece here,I used dark grey as base because I will spray dark blue next.

Shading-How well you shade,comes with practice.The more you practice,the better the result.Shading is basically leaving a darker color tone on the edges.Make sure that the top color is vivid.(For example,when spraying white,there will be a lot of instances when the white is a little grayish. Thats because the white coat is not thick enough or the base coat was too dark causing the white parts to look like very light grey parts.)

Blending-This is an important step to blend the darker parts with the original color,and to do so,we need to thin the main color more by adding thinner.Spray it at a distance,and see the base color getting closer to the main color but still remaining its darker tone.

Highlighting-Add white paint to lighten the color tone more.Lightly spray this at the center of the pieces,do not go too close to the edges or it would erase the effect of the previous shading.