Well, I want to thank you guys for the encouragement and kind words. It seems some are sincerely interested in a step by step on the CM base color technique so I put one together on the fly.
Well, thanks to my friend Steve at Celtic Werks, an N.V.A. T-34-85 is born! The inspiration is that of the North Vietnamese. The N.V.A. used these as well as other Soviet Block vehicles during the siege at Kontum 72' & other battles as well as for traning purposes.
So here is the basic step by step for application of the AK Interactive Color Modulation Set 4BO Russian Green.
I began with a T-34-85 that I rec. today from Steve.
First step is to Prime with AK-003 Grey Primer. As you can see, all surface details like the sand cast textured hull are very well preserved.
The first step in the process is to give some emphasis to the natural shadows of the vehicle using Russian 4BO Shadow.
Next is to blend the shadows into what will be the base color with Russian 4BO Dark Base, being carefull to blend the shadow and avoid the upper most surfaces. After this stage I usually leave the lower hull alone for a natural darker appearance to the lower parts of the vehicle.
In the middle stages of the base coat, I have brought in the Russian 4BO base color. As before, care must be taken to blend the previous steps with the base color.
Here it starts to realy take on some character. Russian 4BO Light Base is applied to the upper horizontal surfaces as well as used to blend the previous darker shades.
Now we can realy bring the vehicle to life! Russian 4BO High Light is used to accent the upper most horizontal surfaces and areas that would be in direct light. ( Providing the vehicle is right side up!! )
Here is were each of the previous steps realy come together to give dimension to our base coat. The model has already taken on life and character and we have not even started to weather yet! Russian 4BO Shine is used to show direct reflections and to highlight some features. At this stage, all of the previous colors have been used to pick out small details with a fine brush. Again, generaly going dark from bottom to light up top.
"Field Applied" stencil N.V.A. markings have been applied using Vallejo Acrylics & the entire model is given a few fine layers of Satin Varnish applied at about 18psi. with a Badger Velocity. It is critical to get a high contrast and generaly paint darker vehicles fairly light as the weathering process will darken up all of our work significantly. This paint job was done in 3.5 hours including taking the photos.
With all the Russian-Soviet Client State vehicles available to us, this set will come in extremely helpfull.
I hope this has answered some questions. This piece & the Dunkelgelb Panther will be used for weathering demo next weekend. Will follow up with weathering pics. if you guys are interested in seeing how weathering will continue to alter the appearance of the CM base colors.