Thanks so much, Phil! Much appreciated! Check out my Leopards, just finished! :)

How did I miss this one when it was finished?

Very nice. I like the little detail touches like the primer red on the inside faces of the roadwheels and the horizontal scratches on the turret bin.

Great work, as always.

RBaer

Doog, I like your style.

Finestkind.

Doog, I like your style.

Finestkind.

Thanks, Axeman, and Hugo--I appreciate the remarks. :)

No books yet, Hugo. Finescale owns most of my published work.

Karl

the more i see of your work,the more impressed i am,the tanks great,but the crew are phenomenal.....thanks for sharing your art!!!

O M G... Karl, you always create amazing builds!!

Im speechless as for the quality and realism of the model.

I would be so afraid, very afraid to be in a contest with your models....no chance at all.

Have you written any books? This is publishing  quality.

AMAZING, JUST AMAZING!!

Thanks, Chris! I haven' decided the next project yet--I have some traveling to do, and am just wrapping up a little project that I have delayed. I'll post pics when I"m done. Kind of a surprise. :)

Thanks, Sprue!! And thanks for following along!

Nice finish, Karl. I esp like the story telling with the shell hit damage  

Amazing work Karl, it really blows my mind to hear you say that about your figure painting. In my opinion, your figures could stand alone in a contest just like your armor. It's a shame that your display area is so limited that you can't get more of the figures and armor together with some groundwork and story telling. Looking forward to the next kit, any hints as to what's on the bench? Or did I miss the announcement somewhere?

Thanks Dave!

Much appreciated!

Karl- simply brilliant! I love the weathering approach with acrylics

Dave

Steve--LOVE the sock puppet! lol! How funny! Thanks for the comps!

I would love to put this one a base, but unfortunately "space" rules my modeling world in a big way. A base would take up too much room in the display case. Unfortunately, that's my biggest consideration right now that forces my decisions about making dioramas, vignettes, etc. !/72 vignettes are fine, because they're only the size of a standard 1/35 tank, but anything more than that and it has to be a pretty radiical or imaginative idea for me to translate into a diorama.

Gamera, Tojo, Russ, and Mike, thanks all; I sincerely appreciate the kind and sincere compliments!

Jack, I generally bump up the contrast and sometimes tone down the highlights, as it's really hard to get good lighting on shots without getting a "white wash" of glare or a dull gray background and limpid contrast. Mostly, I load them into Microsoft Office Picture Manager and hit "auto-correct". That actually makes your pictures look like the eye perceives them in real life. In conversations with many of the "top" modelers out there, I've learned that basically everyone does this to some degree. Otherwise your photos tend to look gray and lifeless.

Wilbur, thanks for the props on the figure, I swear that every time I start one, I feel like it's my first, and that I'm clueless as to how to bring it to life. I have anxiety about doing them half the time, but there's nothing like a figure to give a human element to the model not to mention scale. I wouldn't go starting another forum--you'd have a hard time attracting enough people to a brand new place online-better to just research and read through our own forum for figures here; truly, there's some amazing work on it. Shame about those Black Dog figures--I have found that they seem, to be very highly priced, and tend to stay away from them. You know, if you look around, here are actually quite a lot of good figures available in plastic too. Masterbox has some amazing ones, but you have to look for them to find them. Good luck!

All I can say is that is outstanding work there.

Mike

Au usual, Karl, another stand-out.

Well done!

Very nice work Karl as usual.  You're a master at weathering.  And yes as I've found out, photographing a model with lights may make it look cleaner than it does in real life, or brighter.

I don't know if everyone truly understands the work and developed skill in painting figures, which is a discipline in itself. The figure looks terrific. The red lines on the uni, that is some skill.

I always like to build the figures with a kit if for nothing more than to show scale. I started going to the figure painting forum website a long time ago to attempt to learn from pure figure modelers. I've got a long way to go.  Good brushes is one key.

There are so many great figures available today in resin. The 3 Black Dog figures for my D9 build would cost almost as much as the kit. Figure that out! Haven't bought them.....yet.

Cheers.

Another fantastic finish.Worthy of a feature article somewhere.

Karl - stunningly presented, a real eye catching  representation of this workhorse of the Wehrmacht.

Did you dial up the contrast of the photos to further show to full advantage the weathering techniques?

regards,

Jack

Looks awesome Karl, both the Panzer and the figure! Going to have to blow up your photos this weekend and study them to hopefully learn something!!!

Splendid in every way, and well worth the wait.

 Now, sock it up to the next level

    with a suitably detailed base/background and you

                definitely should have a possible best of show.

                   Beautifully rendered.

Thanks, Bob and Bish! I sincerely appreciate your comments! Thanks for following along!

Mike, thank you for those generous comments. Very kind of you to say. Thanks for calling out those details--I was hoping someone would notice all them!

Four things I love besides your absolutely brilliant weathering is the weathering inside the turret hatches that realistically portrays a lot of travel through those portals by men  wearing dirty boots, the scuffs in the paint on the back of the turret basket that suggests it had been rubbed by branches and crewmen, the actual contents of the turret basket (I've often tried to imagine what may be kept in those), and that stunning figure you painted.

That is art. it pleases my eyes in almost every way. Excellent Karl. Just excellent.

Another great looking build Karl. The shell hits are really well done. Good job all round.

Looks amazing Karl! I've really enjoyed watching this come together, and I've learned a lot along the way.

OK, finished pics up!

I had a lot of last little details to do--I had to paint all the stowage that I put in the turret bin; most of which you can't see too clearly, but it makes a nice mess. and of course I had to paint the crewman.

The last "major" weathering thing I did was to ad dusty pigments to the crevices of the hull where they would have accumulated over time. I used Wilder's "Dry European Mud" for this.

After all the details had been painted, I'm calling this finished! Whew!

And the crewman...

The figure was painted wih Craft Store acrylics; just a melange of whatever colors I needed were mixed in to provide shadows and highlights.

I'm pretty pleased with how this came out. I believe that it's the first "Gray" vehicle /panzer that I've done in over 10 years? It's been a LONG time! I've always asociated the Panzer Gray scheme with "boring", small tanks, but I really enjoyed bringing this one to completion. Hey there's always the "Dicker Max" and other like it! Something tells me that I'll be doing more!

Thanks for evryone who looked in, commented, or followed! Please feel fre to leave comments, and I hope to be back soon with a new project!

the doog

Thanks, Panzerjaeger!

I think the bright, bright rust tone is because I took these photos with lighting, not natural light, and it brightened everything up. I doesn't look that way in real life, so bright. I understand what you mean. :)

I get that.

Ya, it always pi** me off that after all the work you do at the bench under "full spectrum" lighting, and the model looks great.

Then you go to a show and the room is lit like a cave, and all the subtle weathering affects just go away!

That is why I started to build lighted bases for my car models, now I need to build some for my armor stuff too.

PANZERJAGER

the doog

disastermaster

We're all a waitin'....

lol, it's Han's' fault! Darned figures, sometimes they take so long to paint!

Hurry along, Karl.  Or by time you finish, Hans might have gray hair and need to be re-painted...

Don

Despite my best intentions, I always end up leaving the figures till last so everything is waiting on them. But I am sure we can all wait one more day.

disastermaster

We're all a waitin'....

I predict tomorrow night I"ll have the finished pics!