Well, she’s finally finished. The kit is made by Bronco, and went together fine. I ended up spending way too much on this one in aftermarket, by using a metal barrel, metal MG barrels, 2 PE sets (overall and fenders), a resin mantlet cover (although I wasn’t satisfied by the canvas texture and tried to simulate it myself with tissue paper and glue), and workable indy tracks. I also scratchbuilt a few details here and there, and snagged some stowage items from my spares box.
I airbrushed with Games Workshop Acrylics, and weathered it using oils, pigments, and anything else I could find on the workbench/floor. Any comments, questions, advice/criticism welcome.
It was well worth the time and monny for the AM stuff. Who makes the PE sets? I’m thinkin about picking one of thouse up after seeing how good thay can look!
Thanks. Both PE sets are by Voyager, I got mine at Lucky model. The overall Pe set also includes a resin mantlet cover replacement, but it wasn’t very accurate, which is why I bought the Lionmarc one. It’s also got some resin hatch replacements, tow cables, PE storage bins, exhaust…etc.
Thanks! Those words mean a lot, especially after seeing that M20 of yours… I agree, I’m also not happy with the canvas cover. I have almost never seen fabric represented in 1/35 realistically, but I didn’t like the way the tank looked without the cover. If anyone has advice to help me replicate the canvas more realistically, I’d love to hear it.
Great work, and the weathering is great, and the raw umber wash really shows, just one thing, is that a tarp on the front of the turret/ and its quite bright.
I think my camera settings are a bit off, the canvas tarp doesn’t quite “glow” like that in real life. It could probably use some toning down anyways, but the real color is closer to this:
Hey Ian, it’s surely a gorgeous build, but I agree on the canvas cover–I would definitely take a second stab at it–maybe you could simulate the correct general shape with milliputt putty and then either texture it by pressing sandpaper into it?
To be perfectly honest, it detracts so much from the finished model that if you can’t redo it, I would recommend just removing it until you come up with a better alternative.
Yeah that sucks, but I really feel it is a major distraction from an otherwise beautifully finished and weathered kit. [sigh]
I’d love to just remove it if I could, but unfortunately, that isn’t an option. If you look at the pre-paint pictures, the whole grey resin chunk would have to come off, the entire front of the turret. I had to cut some of the original turret off to make room for the lionmarc mantlet. Even if I did still have the parts, it would be nearly impossible to match paint shades/weathering with a new piece. I’ll have to try and find a way to cover up what I’ve got already. [sigh]
Hate to sound like a broken record but the first thing I saw when I looked at the tank was the “glow” on the mantlet that is the cover…it doesn’t do the rest of the tank justice…the build is outstanding otherwise…at first I thought you had molded it yourself but in the last pic I see that it is AM resin…I have had pretty good luck painting simulated fabric but it can be tough…I think a more “muted” color would go a long way in knocking down the glare…the color almost looks like dark vanilla when it should, IMO, be more of a khaki-drab color…of course, it is your choice as to wether you feel it is worth repainting—you need to be happy w/ it. Very nice work overall !!!
I concur with everyone else. I love the worn dusty look. I do find the top of the turret excessively worn on the front edges. Makes her look pretty neglected and I’d think the Brits would take pretty good care of their armor. Sorry for the nitpick, otherwise I really love it.
Thanks to both of you for taking the time to respond.
Manstein-- I think the actual physical shape/form of the canvas cover isabout as good as I’m going to be able to get it, so I’m hoping that a duller, grayer tone will fix a lot of the problems. Does anyone have good color frefferences of what the canvas should look like? Canvas I’ve seen ranges almost from, as you described, vanilla, all the way to almost a dark grey, to bleached white, and more.
Tigerman. I see what you mean. I was trying to get the worn, but not chipped looked I saw on the engine deck of SMJ’s SU-?. I did go overboard, but it was such a simple effect, by drybrushing dark brown/black artist oils, that it was hard to know when to stop.
I’ll take another stab at the color, depending on how my day looks, if I can find some good color references.
Hey Ian great looking comet! You got the weathering down to a T, it really looks awesome. The tracks look great too, and I like the dusty look of the wheels. You also did really nice color fading on the green. Again yea the tarp is a bit bright, mayby some dark washes could help it? And I know exactly what you mean about the dark brown oils, I did the same thing on my tiger (with enamels not oils but same technique) and its really easy to go a bit overboard with it. Still though thats a great looking tank, I know I will try to replicate the look of it on my future builds.
Just one question, how did you get the tracks to look the way they look? Or in simpler terms, what did you do to the tracks to get them looking so realistic?[?]
Mikael: To be honest I can’t really desribe how I did the tracks. If I try to follow a step by step on tracks, they never come out looking as beaten and worn as I like, so I just keep hitting them with layers of paint and pigment until they look right. That said, as far as I can remember, these are the steps I took:
Airbrushed black, just as a primer coat so everything would stick better.
Slopped on a bunch of earthy dark brownish paint, sort of in a heavy drybrush fashion.
Drybrushed heavily with lighter shades of tans and dusty colors.
Hit them with Rusty colored pigments
A coat of sand/dust pigments
Drybrushing with bare steel/metal color
Another coat of dusty pigments
At this stage, just give them a BUNCH of dark brownish (I used some sort of umber or sienna or something because I liked the tiny red hue) and black washes to make the dust look worn in and caked on.
Hope that helps a bit, I find that almost all the tracks I’ve done require slightly different methods to get them looking how I want.
Awesome job on the painting and weathering on this beast Ian i really like it a lot there is so much variation and tone it just pops right out at you i must however concur with the comments on the canvas cover thats the only thing keeping this one from being perfect.
For rust pigments, I use “Colchester High School Art Supply’s Chalk Pastels” [:-^][:D] My school has an enormous bin of old broken chalk pastels in the art room that no one touches so I helped myself to some little scrap pieces, and ground them into pigments. For dust, it’s a mixture of more home-made crushed pigments and MIG.
WOW!
my man.
color/shading might help.