Enter keywords or a search phrase below:
Thanks everyone,
Stik - Wow, great looking figures as well as the vehicle
Yea the figures are tough. But, I started doing them without realizing how hard they are. Maybe that helps, Just do it before someone tells their point of view. I think I'm getting better at them.
What I'm afraid about them is changing their positions.
What would be a good color to dust on a vehicle for dust. I'm still not sure about the mud I have on the jeep. Is it too much?
Anyway, Thanks again
A.K.A. Ken Making Modeling Great Again
For a good all around dust color to airbrush on, Tamiya Buff of Deck Tan, highly thinned works real good. Or Model Master Raw Sienna for a darker dust shade.
F is for FIRE, That burns down the whole town!
U is for URANIUM... BOMBS!
N is for NO SURVIVORS...
- Plankton
LSM
Brandon D,
I didn't even need to see who was building the F4U to know it was you. Great job as always sir.
Sorry I'm a little behind on checking in on the builds here.
Ken,
cool looking little jeep. I've always wanted to do a Jeep build.
Stick,
Sweet job on the figures. That's my next hurdle in my learning curve, figures.
Steve
Building a kit from your stash is like cutting a head off a Hydra, two more take it's place.
http://www.spamodeler.com/forum/
Ye, for the dust look, Tamiya Buff works very well.
I am a Norfolk man and i glory in being so
On the bench: Airfix 1/72nd Harrier GR.3/Fujimi 1/72nd Ju 87D-3
Thanks guys,
I like the looks of the buff color, but, wouldn't a bombed out city (Berlin 1945) have more of a whiter color dust?
Use Deck Tan. It's a nice sandy gray and lighter than Buff. Perfect for concrete & masonry dust.
Thanks Stik
ComArt from Iwata is an airbrush ready acrylic paint you can crank down to 10 psi for some serious misting for dust, concrete gray dust, sandy dust, and Grafenwoehr training area "plasma miasma dust".
Никто не Забыт (No one is Forgotten)Ничто не Забыто (Nothing is Forgotten)
I always equate Germany with mud... No matter what time if year... Clingy thick stuff... Good old German mud...
Its that time again. While I have been doing a lot on the build, progress is not that much. I managed to get both front and rear compartments finished. You can see how short the front section is.
I then got the canopy's on and wings fitted. The front canopy was a real struggle and has taken most of my time. It simply did not want to fit and the normal canopy glue did not hold it in place. So I had to use CA glue on one side, hold that in, then repeat on the other, and hope it didn't fog. Despite buffing and dipping in future, the clear pars are not very clear. I also got the front masked. Again, its clear that the Dragon kit is smaller, I had to fill some gaps with Tamiya tape.
And that's it for now. Before i add any more, I am going to concentrate on cleaning up the various seams and joins.
Nice looking 61 Bish,
That's such a cool looking plane.
Thanks Steve. Ye, it is a rather nice looking aircraft.
Your doing a bang up job on whooping that ornery little bugger into shape. Great work Bish.
"Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did". George Carlin
I agree It's a good looking plane Bish, and you're doing a great job on it. Were they all painted Black?
stikpusher I always equate Germany with mud... No matter what time if year... Clingy thick stuff... Good old German mud...
Stik I was doing some research earlier and came across this video on You Tube. about the Battle for Berlin. There is one part where the Russian tanks tried to climb a heights to get into the city and the hill was steep and the muds really bogged them down. In case you haven't seen it, I posted the link to it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtZh7ruOYMU
I'll have to take a look at that video after work when I have a full size monitor. As far as P-61s go, early production P-61As were painted OD over Neutral Gray. Only later on did they switch to overall black.
Thanks guys.
Stik, ye, the Print Scale decals I have also include some OD A's. The monogram 48th kit gives you the option of an A or B and I think the A there is OD. Don't see them built in that colour often.
Things looking ship shape on the GB. Thought I'd report in.
The Cyber Hobby Stalin has proven a real problem child. Among other woes (I'll cry tears when I write a build log) the kit came with no tow cables and one shovel. Got extra tools and gear so that will be okay. But the pics I saw of tow cables on big Rooskie tanks showed them to be very stout. I took a few days to find the exact right size of plastic tubing and run down some metalized twine from Jo-Anne's. I took the easy way out and looped them through a single ferrule – it would have been more accurate I think to have made individual metal caps for the cables but after spending a day trying it I couldn't see how it was going to look good and have a big enough hole to fit the attachment points. The thread is neat – I think closer to scale than simple braided thread and it has just a little memory so it doesn't just lay curled up, but is also far flexible than guitar string. Here they are prior to painting (they won't go on until close to the end)
This big boy is going to Pomerania with Zhukov – figure some time in March. In early February the Red Army smashed the Vistula Line, and with Germany's main armor in Hungary, there was almost a clear line to Berlin. This caused the first postwar historical dispute between Russian Generals. In his memoir Chuikov claimed his spearhead could have stormed Berlin and entered the city in early February. Zhukov claimed that his forces had run out of supplies and when counterattacked by Guderian in February (Operation Solstice: a pitiful failure according to Guderian), Zhukov was ordered by Stalin to move north and clear the Red Army's right flank. Hmm. Maybe. Or as Chukov suggested, Stalin didn't want the war to end in February – he wanted his Army to push as far as possible into the Balkans (note that in February the allies were still far from the Rhine – the German collapse in the West soon after the allied crossings caught Stalin by surprise). If so Stalin threw away nearly a half million Soviet casualties for basically nothing because, as Stalin refused to believe, the allies did not intend to move past the agreed upon zones of control. Anyway, a wave of Soviet troops, armor and aircraft moved toward the Baltic. A very ugly campaign ensued in a very dreary terrain filled with mud, marshes, huge forests and a few dozen major towns and the capital city of Konigsberg. When the move north began Europe was finishing one of the coldest winters in history so winter camo was the order of the day for both sides. By late February and early March nasty rains from the Baltic accompanied the thaw. Therefore I'm trying to emulate a IS2 fighting somewhere near Konigsberg in March. I may be mistaken on this but I think that many of the whitewashed tanks would have have had their winter camo wear off. I know a lot of fine modelers use hairspray technique for showing faded whitewash, the effect to my eyes suggests the camo chipping off – I'm after some more subtle – the stuff steadily wearing off. Little like this: To do this I used two different acrylic products that both allow one to remove with a smother effect. It's not even, but you don't see big chips. One is True Earth Whitewash which is a very odd (and expensive) product. You paint it or spray it (I did he latter) and begin to remove it with a wet brush quickly after – after about half an hour it's beginning to dry. The other is Iwata Com.Art opaque white. I really like Com.Art and think it works for this wonderfully. The nice thing about Com.Art is that once it dries, you moisten it and take some more off. Or, if you've taken a little too much off or an area looks too regular, you can add some fresh dots and stump them together and you've got more white. Here's what it looks like (the turret is mostly True Earth) after the whitewash has been worn down a three filters added. This is going to be a difficult kit to photgraph – although I applied matte varnish over the entire vehicle before shooting. I'll be putting on a satin finish on the top eventually and I think it might look a little better. To my eyes all the photos are a little too white, although the pic of the turret is very close. Way more to go. Washes, some chipping and some very heavy duty pigments. And unless I regain my sanity, a base emulating a nice tidy Prussian village that's had the hell blown out of it. Eric (PS: I think terrain in Berlin would have been black, an ugly gray and lots of mud. A horde of tanks do nasty things to city streets. Not to mention shell holes. The Germans kept a big Church intact in ruin in the heart of Berlin – it's black. And a little scary.)
This big boy is going to Pomerania with Zhukov – figure some time in March. In early February the Red Army smashed the Vistula Line, and with Germany's main armor in Hungary, there was almost a clear line to Berlin. This caused the first postwar historical dispute between Russian Generals. In his memoir Chuikov claimed his spearhead could have stormed Berlin and entered the city in early February. Zhukov claimed that his forces had run out of supplies and when counterattacked by Guderian in February (Operation Solstice: a pitiful failure according to Guderian), Zhukov was ordered by Stalin to move north and clear the Red Army's right flank. Hmm. Maybe. Or as Chukov suggested, Stalin didn't want the war to end in February – he wanted his Army to push as far as possible into the Balkans (note that in February the allies were still far from the Rhine – the German collapse in the West soon after the allied crossings caught Stalin by surprise). If so Stalin threw away nearly a half million Soviet casualties for basically nothing because, as Stalin refused to believe, the allies did not intend to move past the agreed upon zones of control.
Anyway, a wave of Soviet troops, armor and aircraft moved toward the Baltic. A very ugly campaign ensued in a very dreary terrain filled with mud, marshes, huge forests and a few dozen major towns and the capital city of Konigsberg. When the move north began Europe was finishing one of the coldest winters in history so winter camo was the order of the day for both sides. By late February and early March nasty rains from the Baltic accompanied the thaw.
Therefore I'm trying to emulate a IS2 fighting somewhere near Konigsberg in March. I may be mistaken on this but I think that many of the whitewashed tanks would have have had their winter camo wear off. I know a lot of fine modelers use hairspray technique for showing faded whitewash, the effect to my eyes suggests the camo chipping off – I'm after some more subtle – the stuff steadily wearing off. Little like this:
To do this I used two different acrylic products that both allow one to remove with a smother effect. It's not even, but you don't see big chips. One is True Earth Whitewash which is a very odd (and expensive) product. You paint it or spray it (I did he latter) and begin to remove it with a wet brush quickly after – after about half an hour it's beginning to dry. The other is Iwata Com.Art opaque white. I really like Com.Art and think it works for this wonderfully. The nice thing about Com.Art is that once it dries, you moisten it and take some more off. Or, if you've taken a little too much off or an area looks too regular, you can add some fresh dots and stump them together and you've got more white. Here's what it looks like (the turret is mostly True Earth) after the whitewash has been worn down a three filters added. This is going to be a difficult kit to photgraph – although I applied matte varnish over the entire vehicle before shooting. I'll be putting on a satin finish on the top eventually and I think it might look a little better. To my eyes all the photos are a little too white, although the pic of the turret is very close. Way more to go. Washes, some chipping and some very heavy duty pigments. And unless I regain my sanity, a base emulating a nice tidy Prussian village that's had the hell blown out of it. Eric (PS: I think terrain in Berlin would have been black, an ugly gray and lots of mud. A horde of tanks do nasty things to city streets. Not to mention shell holes. The Germans kept a big Church intact in ruin in the heart of Berlin – it's black. And a little scary.)
To do this I used two different acrylic products that both allow one to remove with a smother effect. It's not even, but you don't see big chips. One is True Earth Whitewash which is a very odd (and expensive) product. You paint it or spray it (I did he latter) and begin to remove it with a wet brush quickly after – after about half an hour it's beginning to dry. The other is Iwata Com.Art opaque white. I really like Com.Art and think it works for this wonderfully. The nice thing about Com.Art is that once it dries, you moisten it and take some more off. Or, if you've taken a little too much off or an area looks too regular, you can add some fresh dots and stump them together and you've got more white. Here's what it looks like (the turret is mostly True Earth) after the whitewash has been worn down a three filters added.
This is going to be a difficult kit to photgraph – although I applied matte varnish over the entire vehicle before shooting. I'll be putting on a satin finish on the top eventually and I think it might look a little better. To my eyes all the photos are a little too white, although the pic of the turret is very close. Way more to go. Washes, some chipping and some very heavy duty pigments. And unless I regain my sanity, a base emulating a nice tidy Prussian village that's had the hell blown out of it. Eric (PS: I think terrain in Berlin would have been black, an ugly gray and lots of mud. A horde of tanks do nasty things to city streets. Not to mention shell holes. The Germans kept a big Church intact in ruin in the heart of Berlin – it's black. And a little scary.)
This is going to be a difficult kit to photgraph – although I applied matte varnish over the entire vehicle before shooting. I'll be putting on a satin finish on the top eventually and I think it might look a little better. To my eyes all the photos are a little too white, although the pic of the turret is very close.
Way more to go. Washes, some chipping and some very heavy duty pigments. And unless I regain my sanity, a base emulating a nice tidy Prussian village that's had the hell blown out of it.
Eric
(PS: I think terrain in Berlin would have been black, an ugly gray and lots of mud. A horde of tanks do nasty things to city streets. Not to mention shell holes. The Germans kept a big Church intact in ruin in the heart of Berlin – it's black. And a little scary.)
A model boat is much cheaper than a real one and won't sink with you in it.
Nice work Eric. Strange it didn't come with tow cables.
Bish Thanks guys. Stik, ye, the Print Scale decals I have also include some OD A's. The monogram 48th kit gives you the option of an A or B and I think the A there is OD. Don't see them built in that colour often.
The one of the left here is in OD over Gray. The other two in overall Black. The lower surface ID stripes make this photo being after mid summer 1944, so apparently the change over was in that time period.
EB, your IS is coming along quite nicely!
That looks great Eric, very Russian.
Your IS tank is looking great so far Eric. Sound analysis and application. Weathering is top notch so far.
I appreciate the fact that you always seem to come up with some new product, or at least one I'm not familiar with, and describe what it is, how it works and how you used it. That right there is some good stuff.
Well we're on the subject of winter camo, YouTube has two very worthy offerings on the subject. (I also recommend the Tank Art volumes by Rinaldi - all of my copies are in CA unfortunately.) There is a full reproduction of his DVD (53 min) "Painting Winter Camouflage with Mig Jimenez " and a shorter piece that I just stumbled on that shows clearly the two different effects gained by water based whitewash vs the standard "hair spray" technique - very different indeed and you can chose for yourself what looks right: "Chipping Fluid Vs Washable White. Winter camouflages" (15 min). Nice to see he recommends finishing with a satin finish above the hull - rarely mentioned in my experience although it was championed by the pre-heavyweather guru Tony Greenland a few years back.
Wish me luck.
ooops. The full Mig Jimenez video mentioned above is not the commercial DVD that I have - it is a live film of Mig exploring the issue at a modelling seminar - not as slick but this guy is good. He could make a better model tank than I could using color crayons.
PS: his commercial about Acryclic Weathering is on YouTube in entirety. Extremely useful for people like me that much prefer the ease of clean and lack of smell with acrylics - he uses no enamels or oils at all and comes up with a really spiffy tank. I will be using only enamel streaking for the IS2.
Eric - All of the pics I seen of Berlin in 45, show a whitish color to everything with very little black in color. This is even the few color photos there are. The photo's I'm seeing are in Google images.
Also, can you post a pic or a link of the "Church in ruin" I haven't come across it yet.
Thanks
BTW Your tank is looking good.
Okay, I may have found pics of the church. If it's the Kaiser Wilhelm church. then I found it. Is this right?
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche: an Kufurstemdam (the center of former West Berlin). Remember it well because I passed it every day for a few months. I don't know why Berlin would have been covered with gray dust: heaven knows a lot of concrete was churned up. The April 45 battlefield was already a ruin - the Brits in 44 and the USAAF in 1945 had pulverized the place with incendiary bombs a big part of the mix. The center of the city got it worst, and that was where the last part of the Battle took place (Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Zoo and Hitler bunker) so maybe the city had an excess of ash. But Berlin was made of brick and concrete. Near the frontlines there would have been clouds of dust coming from Russian artillery/tank fire in addition to a blizzard of everything else lethal. The battle also took place over several days and he area was muddy (see Seelowe Heights): I'd guess the area was an incredible combination of everything that could be atomized- brick from the buildings and many streets, mud from things being blown up plus tanks driving over it. I can't imagine it looking like the inside of a Smokey Joe. There are some incredible photos taken by the USAAF of Berlin within days of VE day and it shows a great city in ruins. (Not entirely though. German Army HQ (OKH) was in the middle of allied bomb patterns and was never touched. In 1972 it served as the city offices for the Bonn governments city offices. I did some reading and found out that Stauffenberg had been executed in the buildings parking lot. Went over on a Sunday afternoon - not a soul in sight - and there was a plaque noting that he had died at my feet. Berliner's didn't brag about it but there were ten Soviet divisions within 20 miles of that building - it would have been the target of the first engagement of a conventional war heading toward the Fulda Gap. Counting all the beans there was one division of allied troops (including about one third of West German "police" who had a surplus of every bit of military equipment south of heavy artillery. Bad place to be a criminal. Odd place to live in 1972.)
EB Thanks,
I didn't know about Seelowe Heights. I thin I'm pretty well educated on WW2, but there are many things I don't know. I think it's impossible to know everything about it.
My Diorama will take place In Berlin in July 1945. That's why I've been focused on the inner city destruction
There are more books in the Library of Congress on WWII than any subject in the humanities or social sciences - so yea, nobody has it all. And a lot of questions remain unanswered - I'd like to prove that Stalin lengthened the war two months (losing half a million Red Army soldiers in the process) for booty in the Balkans. There are many others.
As far as the look of your dio goes, there are a lot of color pics of postwar Berlin taken by US photographers. Parts of the city were ruined by the land battle, but bombing would have created more damage all around, and bombing causes fire, so I suppose ash would have been everywhere.
The old German Reichstag building has been turned into a history museum. When I was there they had a section on Berlin during the war and the post May 45 pics are very grim. Could be online.
Grim huh? I found a couple of pics last night of a dead German soldier. What was left of him was his waist and below. Then a couple feet away was his head; sitting upright on some debris. A part of me wishes I hadn't seen that, but the other part is like Damn, Wonder what kind of gun did that.
Any way, I got a mostly destroyed house and 4 more figures for my dio today. I found 100 loose bricks on eBay yesterday. When I was at my local hobby shop today. I walked out with out any Brick Red paint. Oh well, I guess I can wait till next week to get it.
Here's What I did tonight.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.