Inventory

Though no time for modelling, last weekend I started to infect my son with the hobby. As a first step we counted and checked the Vallejo paint stock and ordered them by color. None of them seemed to be dry, Norbert shook them all by one. Next time we try painting, I hope :)

New project, new phone

Half year pause and I'm right back. The no-time-problem worsened a bit with a not-too-serious Skyrim dependency (a cool fantasy game) but I still do some modelling sometimes. However the question of when to shoot and post photos has been solved with my new phone. Takes nice pictures and can publish post easily. Who said it's not a perfect world? :)
I started a new project the Flakpanzer 38(t). Though not too much will be seen of it, I upgrade the interior a bit mostly based on my imagination and a few reference photos found on the web. PE is Griffon.

Midsummer's winter

Miniart's diorama base is quite OK, lots of sanding and filling but hey, life ain't easy (... for a boy named Sue as Johnny Cash sang). But the door was definitely ugly so I decided to replace it with some DIY wood. The raw material was from the local McDonalds.

Glued with Superglue and sanded a little bit. Later some left-over PE material was also used...

The latch was soldered from brass rod (the only difficulty level of soldering I can cope with...) and starts to look like a real door...

Weathering was done with gouache paints (mostly browns and some black plus light greenish wash on the underside). The strap was "rusted" with Model Color paints.


As I plan a woman standing in the door what else could be more useful to put next to it than a broom? Made of toothpick and hair of painting brush.

And finally that's where the project stands now (some more snow applied with vegetation and slush on the roadside):

And for the next few spare hours...

The Magic-tracks were from the Panzerjäger I Ausf. B kit because the kit's original tracks (on sprue) took not less than 8 hours last time to cut & sand before gluing together. I'm not a time-millionaire...

Winter base

I give no sign of life. But still alive and definitely do some modelling - approximately half an hour in two weeks. Not much. But the Miniart base was primed (black...) and then painted and weathered. Not finished yet and in reality the colors are less bright. The snow was a mistery especially the wet, muddy snow on the roadside - it is not finished yet, I will do some more touches using pigments and acrylic resin, paints and glosses and of course sodium-bicarbonate. Also there will be some dried vegetation but not too much...

Nothing serious...

A magyar nyelvű olvasóktól elnézést, hogy mostanság csak angolul írok, de egyszerűen nincs elég időm két nyelven hosszabb postot összedobni... az angol nyelvű olvasóktól pedig elnézést a pocsék nyelvtanért... rég volt már az a nyelvvizsga, ugye :)

I made no progress on any of my models lately. This weekend I've been improving my figure painting skills. My first problem was/is the skin color - as a dummy solution I bought Panzer Aces skin tone set and tried. And they worked quite well however my wife mentioned that the figure looks a bit too "reddish" in reality (a bit too yellowish on the picture, btw). This was also the first time I've tried Archer's dry transfers for the uniform patches. I loved it - I plan to buy a set for the Gaz-AAA crew as well - the current one is good for only the panzer troops...
The other problem was that the flat black uniform was shiny. After two light spraying of flat coat - still shiny...

Getting dirty...

After using a wide range of browns and some gloss cote to achieve wet look the underside of the hull looks this way:
Not much will be visible, and more gloss cote will be sprayed when the wheels and track will be assembled.
The uppe structure was washed with very light browns, also treated with ProModeller's weathering wash (Dark Dirt), and when dirty enough, I made streaks of pure white and so on. I don't really remember to the steps as this was made in my free 10-minutes in the evenings in random style :) The spare track on the front was painted brown (Vallejo German Camo. Blackbrown) as a base and different Mig pigments and chalk powders were used as rust. The muffler was an other experiment with Panzer Aces rust colors and light orange - I was also satisfied with the result. Still lots of tiny steps to achieve the final stage. And still lots to do on the dio base which still stands on my shelf painted with the black primer...

A white lady

Little time in the evenings and the vehicle starts to look like a whitewashed something. I applied the decals from the leftover-stock and the unit sign (towed gun battery of the 14th Panzer Division - only a fictional vehicle but who cares? I'm not a history expert with tenthousands of original wartime photos. Unfortunately.) from Mig's dry transfer set. First of all I used gloss cote and then the decals and when dried a light gloss cote again to seal them. There was no real need of Mr Mark Softer but I used it... just in case.


Then I hairsprayed the model lightly (this time only once) and waited 20 to let it dry. After that I sadly realised that my Gunze flat white bottle is almost empty so changed to Vallejo Model Air white. It tends to clog the airbrush so I often washed the needle-tip with a brush damped in alcohol. The white was sprayed unevenly and unfortunately on one place a bit too thick layer. It's a proof: I must practice much more.

And now the fun part. Using a stiff brush, the scalpel blade, a toothbrush and my fingernails the chipping started. Smaller, bigger chips unevenly trying to do it on places where the whitewash is logical to be more worn... First stage:

Some drybrushing with Humbrol dark grey:

At some places the base grey was toooooo dark so I filtered and washed the whole model with diluted white oil paint. And the even-more-fun part... Mixing the "pasta" to begin the heavy weathering of the lower parts.

This pasta is to give the "thickness" and not to give the color - that will be build up in several steps. Now we are here and waiting for the next weekend... brown wash, rust, dust, mud-splatters, and so on... There is still so much to do.