Shellback
Thank you !
Yes , the camo was sprayed freehand using Tamiya paints sprayed thru a Badger 150 double action . The biggest hurdle to work around was that the paint dried and built up in the nozzle on the end of the needle . I had to constantly clean it with lacquer thinner .
That's a sign that you didn't thin your mixture enough.
As far as the finish, both models are really nicely painted. The ambush scheme on the E100 is perfectly done, and the Maus' intricate lines are very competently painted. No complaints there.
As far as the weathering goes, here's my take on it. This may or may not help you now, but may give you something to use for the future?
In my opinion and modeling methods, you should try to start your weathering WITH the basic base coat. I'm a huge proponent of what is known as "Scale Effect"-styled painting. What that basically means in figuring into your base coat the effect that an object as huge as a real, 1:1 tank is going to have on light diffusion, and therefore, your eyes' perception of the actual perceived color.
In my opinion, your base coat of the Tamiya Dark Yellow is much too dark. It looks like you sprayed it right out of the bottle, which is much too dark. Most German armor modelers that I know generally agree upon a ration of at least 50-50 White (or Buff)-to-Dark Yellow. You should have a light tan color, which will darken even more with a standard raw umber wash. I go even further and add about an 80-20% White-D. Yellow "highlighting" coat (also called "post-shading) over the initial, diluted coat to give a very light, sunbleached look to the finish.
Here's a link to my E100 finished in this method. This page is the coat without weathering; in the next page, the finished results with weathering, You can see in the camo that there is post-fading in the camo scheme.
The weathering can be done in stages, with any number of methods. Here is my Hetzer weathering tutorial, which is good for Dark Yellow German models. Notice the shade of Dark Yellow in this case--nearly a bright tan, but notice how it darkens in the subsequent stages. This is also available as a Finescale back issue in the December 2008 as a full article.
You might also check out the June 2010 issue in which I did an article on using MIG filters to modify and weather an SDKFZ 251 here.