38(t) Oil Fading & Matt Varnish

Finally got the matt varnish on this evening after a few sessions of oil fading. Again keeping it subtle I mostly worked on fading the horizontal surfaces using light grey oils. This has lifted the areas worked on giving more interest to the monotone colour. A few days to cure now before pigments & final assembly.

Tamiya 38(t) Start Of The Weathering

 Today the model has had a couple of thin filters and pin washes added to start off the weathering process. I'll add a slightly darker pin wash in the morning and once that's dry start the oil streaking. I'm not going for a heavily scratched or chipped vehicle here as I want to show a relatively new arrival on the eastern front. 

I also bagged a rather nice kit from airfix today whilst out shopping. It's a re-box of the thunder models kit and looks to be a simple and fun build. It was also cheap as chips!

38(t) Figure & Darkstar Metallic Paints Test

 Following a suggestion from my old mate Soapy I added a final black wash to the figure before matt varnish. This helped darken the final appearance of the uniform so I'm much happier with it now. He just needs his binos added to his hand and he's all done. 

For some reason I've always had a bit of a block when it comes to black uniforms. best practice on some more soon! I should also be getting some washes & filters onto the tank as well this weekend.

I've also been playing with some new to me acrylic metallic paints from a company called Darkstar. Today I did a little experimenting by first painting a bit of cardboard with black primer then starting with a brush painting test. The colours from left to right are, bright steel, graphite, pewter, copper & brass. I applied two coats with a brush using water to slightly thin each colour. The paint went down really well and the colours are very intense. 

Below this I sprayed the same colours using a couple of drops of Darkstar thinner. The paint sprayed really well and the tones are nice and strong. Some more experimenting needs to be done regarding mix ratios and airbrush pressure but the initial test results look very promising. All pictures below have not been edited so you can see as close as possible how they look.

I'm rather impressed with these paints, the pigments look to be very fine and the colour intensity is very nice indeed. They can be mixed easily with each other and they clean up with water. Darkstar make 27 different metallic colours and they don't cost the earth as well. You can check them out here, DARKSTAR

38(t) Figure Done

 I've now finished painting the figure with just a matt varnish to add. I think I should have used a darker grey base coat on this as now the uniform doesn't look that black. Perhaps it will darken enough once the matt coat is on. 

38(t) Figure Painting

 A spot of figure painting now whilst I contemplate the weathering of the tank. This time I started with the flesh areas before moving on to the uniform. As usual vallejo colours have been used and for the uniform base coat I went for 862 black grey. This has been followed by pure black for the shadow areas. Some highlights will be next but just on the very top of areas that catch the light.

38(t) More Work

I've now added some highlights to all the raised rivets & bolts using a light grey. It's hardly noticeable in the pictures but I've kept it subtle. Followed by some detail painting it's now ready for a gloss coat. 

38T In Panzer Grey

After a slight delay due to airbrush issues I've now sprayed the model using tamiya colours. Good old XF 63 German grey was used with a drop of black added for the first coat. This was followed by German grey with a couple of drops of XF 82 added and sprayed quite thinly in the centre of panels etc. Finally some white was added to that mix and again sprayed into the centre of panels which gives just enough contrast. I'll add more fading later with oils during the weathering process.