Humvee Base Work, Vegetation

The road surface has had some weathering added using oils to add dust and muck to it. I'll add more effects later but today I've cracked on with the vegetation on the bank. I'm using various bits from my collection including some shrubs I picked up at last years IPMS Belgium show. 

I'll be adding some carved plants from plastic sprue and sorting out the rubbish as well this evening. Once all the plants are in place I'll give them a quick blast of matt varnish to tie them in with the base before continuing with the weathering.

Corolla Coming Together

The corolla is coming along well and the body shell, wheels etc have all been gloss coated using a lacquer varnish. Now I know why I don't build cars, the bloody paint stinks!  The gloss didn't come out as smooth as I had hoped for but then I'm a novice at this gloss coat game.

I will let the body cure for a week or so then cut it back with polishing compounds or maybe a bit of T-cut. Then it will be a monster decal session and more bloody gloss! The chassis is now all done and everything is fitted. Looks great but you can't see much and I suspect even less will be visible when the body goes on. Oh well at least I know it's there and I enjoyed painting it up. 

Humvee More Base Work

Yesterday I worked on the humvee base after adding some fence posts made using some plastic square stock and fixing in place on Friday. Firstly I painted the bank just using a brush and tamiya flat earth, no need to spray here so no masking as well which speeds things up slightly. Next a quick bit of masking and spraying for the white line.

I then ground up some cat litter and scattered this around the edges of the tarmac & fixed into place with VMS sand & ballast freeze. This was followed by a couple of washes using oils. More will follow to build up the effects on the bank and road. With the fence test fitted I now have a good idea on how much rubbish and junk I can get behind the fence as well.

For foliage on this base I'm just going to use grass tufts and some small plants and bushes I've got instead of static grass. As I want a neglected bit of ground not a field of similar, also there will be lots of crap lying about as well.

Churchill Figure Painting

The figure for the Churchill is now all painted and very nice he looks too. Tamiya have done a brilliant sculpting job on their figures of late and this one is really nice. Considering it's only 1/48th scale it's very finely done.

Humvee Base Work & Crocodile Detail Painting

The main groundwork for the humvee base is now done and here I used VMS smart mud XL. Much easier to use and shape than a plaster mix on slopes and being coloured helps stop any annoying white areas show up later on. In fact smart mud is quickly becoming my favourite method of adding terrain to my bases. The road surface was then added using the AK interactive terrains asphalt. It was really easy to use and more importantly to smooth the surface to a good uniform thickness.

Now it's dry the surface has a very fine texture and a really nice colour, just like a real road strangely enough! Next I need to decide on the fence location, I'm thinking on the top of the slope at the moment and probably chain link too. 

The Churchill has also had a bit done on it in the form of most of the detail painting. I also did a little bit more experimenting regarding adding highlights to the main colour and found that tamiya XF-23 light blue did actually lighten the base colour. So I sprayed a very small amount onto the model just to add a little bit of variation.

Humvee Base Work

I've now started working on the base and I'm using one of those deep picture frames which I found in a shop called "the range". I've just turned it upside down and used foam board, cork sheet and polystyrene to make up the basic ground work. I'm thinking of adding a fence to the bank and then adding lots of rubbish against it. 

Brian has told me that when he was in Kosovo rubbish was very much in evidence everywhere. In fact he said dead dogs where also a sad feature of the environment at that time. I won't add a dead mutt but I can certainly add lots of rubbish! The cork sheet will become tarmac so I've got a couple of products to try for that. AK terrains asphalt & puddles should fit the bill nicely. I'll add a couple of pot holes too I think. 

Humvee Lights & Glazing

All the lights and glazing have now been painted up where needed and fitted. So next will be some tamiya buff and pigments to finish it off. I'm also preparing the base for the model and will be starting that once the frame is varnished to my satisfaction.

Tamiya Corolla Further Work & Real Colors Test

I've now done almost all of the interior painting and decaling and also just finished spraying the glazing. Looks pretty good even with the decal seat belts I think. Now I just need to steel myself and get the bodywork gloss coated ready for a rather large amount of decals!

On the Churchill front I've attempted to lighten the mix with flat flesh in my usual way to add highlights to the model but this has not worked as I expected. Starting off by adding only a small amount of flesh it mixed well but once sprayed was actually darker than the original coat. It also really changed the colour which suprised me.

After a bit of head scratching I tried white but the same thing happened. I was thinking of using sand or buff but I think this would not lighten the colour. I have no idea why it won't lighten as both gunze & tamiya are compatible with the AK paints. Perhaps the S.C.C 15 is a more complex colour mix than I thought. So decision made, I'll just add highlights etc during weathering with oils if I can. 

Real Colors S.C.C 15 Olive Drab Test & Humvee Matt Coat

Today I have been testing the real colours paint on the Churchill after giving it a blast of grey primer. The first thing I noticed was that the real colors paint smells a lot stronger than my usual tamiya and gunze paints. Also the thinner has a very strong whiff so the two combined have a very strong odour. The paint thinned down very well with the real colors thinner but you will find that any paint left over from mixing on your stirrer etc will not come of with water.

It has no effect on the paint. However the thinner cleans it off no problem. Onto spraying now and I found it went through the airbrush beautifully. I thinned it down to a milky like consistency, the same as I do for tamiya & gunze. It went down very well indeed drying almost straight away to a lovely matt finish. The colour also built up very quickly to a nice intensity. 

The specific colour of S.C.C 15 olive drab was used by the British during the latter part of WW2 and has been subject to many discussions and paint mixes over the years on the web. As ever colour is a knotty subject especially as we all perceive colour differently, however this gives you an excellent starting point. As a side note Mike Starmer did work with real color on this and other British specific paints in the range.

 I'm not an expert but to me it looks very good indeed. The pictures show it straight out the bottle without any of my usual fading added. I will however add some fading later using tamiya flat flesh so the experimentation continues! So what do I think about this paint? Well I'm very impressed, it performs as well as my usual brands and looks really good. The only negative is the smell but a mask will help eliminate this anyway. I'll definitely look at getting some of the other colours in the range to add to my paint armoury.  

Onto the humvee now and after some dark pin washes & a further filter I've sprayed the matt on using VMS matt varnish. it looks a lot more subtle now, perhaps too much so but I can remedy this with pigments and good old tamiya buff next! 

Crocodile Extra Armour

I've now added the extra armour using the red zebra spare links. I really like the look of this now, looks very war like. I'm now not adding any stowage to the top of the fuel trailer so the model's gone off for a wash before primer.