Guys: Here’s some WIP pic’s of my T-55A. It is my build for the Cold War GB but I thought I’d share it here in armor! This is a great kit, the fit is superb and except for a bunch of ejector marks on the bottom of the fenders it is molded exceptionally well…VERY little to almost NO flash. This is an OOB build except for some Eduard Zoom PE deck screens. OOB means SANDING, which I did plenty of to hide the seams on the fuel drums and gun barrel. I’m trying to step-up my building skills and take the time to sand all the seam lines from both the molds AND after gluing part halves together. I also spent time puttying where needed. It about doubled my typical build time but I think it was worth it.
Turret read for all the detail, barrels ready to sand, gun barrel clamped and drying…then MORE sanding[|(]:
I knew it would be tough to reach some areas with the base color so I chose to spray flat black first. This will add depth to the Olive Green, add shadows and it serves well as a primer to help me check for errors:
Here is the base color and post shading completed, this picture is a bit yellow for some reason, I’ll check my lighting for the next post…the actual color is Tamiya Olive Green XF-58:
While this looks very cool (and I’m glad to see you’re working on it!), are you 100% SURE you loaded XF-58 into your airbrush??? [%-)] That looks awfully un-green to me…
SMJ, I was just thinking of tackling this one next…although I don’t wanna do it OOB. I’ve done a couple of builds OOB lately and I could really use a good, over-the-top superdetail project next.
Are you gonna do yours Russian, Czech, East German, what?
Oh yeah, some good old Ruskie heavy metal. Will be watching this one with great interest. I’ve built a few T-55 kits so far, but have yet to get to this one. I have it in the stash along with some minor P/E, an aluminum barell, and Friul tracks.
I’ve always been a German armor fan , but the russians are begining to take over … Looks great so far … I have this kit too and can’t wait to start it . Looking foward to seeing this one completed .
No, its not just you. It looks like two distinct shades of light brown to me, but maybe that’s just the effect of the background or something along those lines.
Russian…there are two options available, I chose ‘A’
dupes: If the color looks off to you I probably should check to make sure it’s Olive Green…[;)] Yep, DEFINATELY XF-58…the lighting is AWFUL though[yuck]! I was trying to recall what I did wrong, I think it was leaving the fluorescent light on. I’ll be adding a WIP soon and get it corrected.
Guys: Thanks for the comments, glad to see you’re following along. I knew the photo was bad…but whoa…it must have been real bad to call it brown, sorry about that. I’ll be adding a WIP real soon with better lighting…
Nice to see you stretching your legs into new territory! The flourescent light is your likely culprit, it does funny things to the white balance on cameras if it’s not taken into consideration because of the spectrum it emits. Most cameras have an auto-WB mode that can handle flourescent, but if you’ve got a mix of flourescent and incandescent and/or natural light, colors will shift in dramatic ways (and without requiring any fumes or drugs in the process!).
Guys: Here’s the latest on my T-55A. I applied 6 layers of oil washes, 2-burnt umber, 2 raw umber, 1 black, and then 1 more burnt umber. Then I mixed up a lighter version of the XF-58 base color with oil paints for drybrushing (is that new to you guys?) I tried this because the acrylics, when drybrushed, dry too quick, clump-up and don’t spread evenly. Anyway, after about 4-6 hours of intense drybrushing I was real pleased with the results. The oils worked great! Some additional local washes and some more drybrushing to depict the exposed steel I’m to this poiht:
I expect to add more highlights of light green, more steaks of oil paints, more local heavier washes, some thin rust washes, etc. I like the results so far but it looks a bit too monochromatic…thoughts…comments…
SMJ is just tryin’ to be accurate.
