The figure has now had about a weeks drying time so the oils are now fully dry. I'm now starting work on the flesh areas after painting up the trousers. It should look good under a matt coat.
I've also had a much needed top up of my Vallejo paints and also bought some decent brushes. I went for the new Fugazi series from Broken toad as they where a reasonable price and look to be nice brushes. I also bought a little treat in the shape of a Gecko models cruiser tank A9 Mk1 CS. It's not little that's for sure with the box packed with parts!
Today the model has had a very light dusty filter added followed by some pin washes. As you can see the details have really popped very well. I'm not going to add much more to the model as I feel too much would spoil it. The figure has had a coat of vallejo leather belt followed by some raw umber oil paint which was then removed with a soft brush. This was followed by some burnt sienna to start the shadows on the leather jacket.
With most of the tools fitted I sprayed the model with gloss varnish then added the very colourful markings. The only tricky one was the front hull roundel which struggled to conform to the hull due to the manufacturers plate. So I just removed the top portion of the decal and mixed up suitable colours from vallejo paints and carefully painted the missing section.
I really like the colourful camouflage and vivid markings on this, you certainly can't miss that it's French!
Whilst starting to paint the tools for the model I was unhappy with how the spade, hammer and axe handles looked due to the fact they had a solid rear section. So I decided to remove the handles and backing and after a bit of a clean up new handles where fashioned from plastic rod. They now look much better I think. So I can now get them painted up.
The camo scheme is now all done on the model. In the end I opted for brush painting as masking seemed a real chore on such a small vehicle. So I mixed up some colours using various vallejo paints to roughly the same shades as the tamiya ones in the painting guide. Each colour was laid on using three thin coats which worked very well.
Finally a fine brush, black and a steady hand were used to add the distinctive black bordering to each colour. I'm very happy with the result and it only took me most of today!
I've now started painting the tiny terror by first spraying the lower hull with tamiya XF 58 olive green. I did add a couple of drops of Xf15 flat flesh to this to slightly lighten it. I then sprayed X F21 sky onto the turret and areas on the hull. I then changed to vallejo 977 desert yellow and hand painted those sections on the turret before lining the borders with vallejo black.
I'll give the turret a quick coat of gloss next to stop any paint lifting once I mask it prior to spraying the rest of the pattern on. The hull will be tackled in the same manner. My reasoning here is that by painting the two lightest tones first it's much quicker than trying to add a lighter colour over a previously painted dark one.
The benefits of building such a small uncomplicated model are that it takes only a short time to wash and then dry the parts before primer. Hence why I've been able to get it all sorted in one afternoon.
Also as luck would have it I've actually got all the paints needed for the five colour camo scheme in my paint supply as well for a change. I'm thinking of tackling this the same way I did the Somua back in 2015. First spraying the lightest colours then masking as I go along to the final colour of olive green. Of course the model is half the size of the Somua so it shouldn't take too long.
