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.

Whitewash

I tested the hairspray method and it worket quite well. Two layers of hairspray went on the wheels leaving 20 minutes of drying between. Though I think it was equivalent of three layers as I sprayed it from a short distance...

Then Gunze Flat White followed...

When the white has dried (30 minutes) I scrubbed the wheels with a short-bristle brush and the result was satisfying.

At some point I scrubbed it too strong and the primer became visible but as the wheels will be heavily weathered that won't be a problem. To avoid it on the vehicle I used gloss cote (that is also good for the markings...) to seal the base color. And also will use less hairspray and lighter coat of white as can be seen in the discussion here. By the way the base color was lightened a bit with panzergrey + sand + white (well... I think it's absolutely not visible on the photo.) Not too much. But feels better now :)



Next will be the markings and the hairspray method on the vehicle. Maybe next weekend...

Priming, mess and hairspray...

Months passing by and I'm slower (in modeling) than ever. Though my new workbench is still beautiful, huge and messy with plenty of place to store my things and if the bench was not enough than I could put everything on the shelves... as seen below:

This weekend seems quiet (I've been waiting for a weekend like this for such a long time...) and finally I could do some modelling. I continued the Panzerbefehlswagen IB as it is quite close to finishing and I need the sweet taste of finishing a project. :) I primed the model well before we've moved to our new house...


Now I painted it to panzergrey (used Gunze's No401 paint without any lightening as I plan to paint a heavily whitewashed vehicle so this grey will be hardly visible). I love the tone and texture of Gunze paints by the way. Or have I mentioned that yet?

Of course the wheels and other small, later-to-attach stuff was painted as well. Next will be some gloss cote and than the hairspray + whitewash. Though I'm bit afraid of that as I've never tried and the timing will be also interesting as I would need at least 2-3 undisturbed hours to complete the hairspray + white + washing back procedure.
The base is also in construction. I glued the Miniart base together (quite fair amount of sanding was needed but it'll worth I think) and primed with Vallejo black primer.

I'll do the door from wood just for the sake of mimicking reality. I'm in trouble with the "meaning" or the "message" of the dio as it is quite small and I'm quite without fantasy (this time). The vehicle will be one of the Pz's used on the back lines for command tasks. Maybe an artillery unit commander's wagen? 1942-43? I have the figure into the turret:

I plan to cut the radio stuff from it and would put binoculars in his hand with a map. Absolutely flat and "fantasy-less" idea. Maybe a guy in greatcoat beside the vehicle pointing somewhere with his fingers? Ehh... I don't mind if it will be unimaginative. I would like to finish it professionally. To learn how to do whitewash. And snow. And ice. And cold on a 20x20 cm dio.

And not to forget the pre-christmas period when I was waiting for my wife in a huge toy-store (she was buying presents for the kids in the family) - and bought two oldie but interesting kits. Pretending I'm a time-millionaire... This kit was bought because of my wife. REALLY. :) She saw a 250/1 in a documentary film and said that it was a nice vehicle, why I hadn't built that before?

And this was bought just for fun and because it was very cheap...

That's all for today. I hope tomorrow I can try the hairspray technique on the wheels.