As promised, here's finally an update on my progress so far.
It's not much, but it's something at least, and considering my limited free time, any progress is good, no matter how little.
I sprayed the interior with Tamiya X1 to keep the gray plastic from being visible through any holes in the hull.
Then I gave the radiator inserts a coat of red brown primer followed by a dark oil based wash. I decided to give AK Interactive's new "Real Colors" a go here and I absolutely love them. The colors look very accurate to me and they spray very nicely when thinned with Mr Color Thinner/Leveling Thinner.
I didn't bother with any additional detail painting, since so little of them will be visible once the hull is glued together.
Once that was done, I added some texture to all the vertical armor plates. For this I used Mr Surfacer 500, slightly thinned and stippled onto the model in several thin layers.
The hull is not glued together yet, so there are some gaps visible, which should disappear once I permanently assemble it.
The side armor plates could possibly use some light sanding to smooth them out a bit compared to the thicker front armor, but I'll leave them as they are until I can check how they look with some primer on top.
I already painted some of the periscopes, but I wasn't happy with how they turned out, so I cleaned them thoroughly and started again.
My first attempt involved painting them in clear blue with silver paint for the mirrors.
I later found out that German periscopes had a green tint to them, making my blue tinted versions both inaccurate and, thanks to the silver paint not reflecting light properly, rather disappointing looking.
Here's the start of attempt number two:
I started by painting them in Gunze's clear green and I'm going to use bare metal foil for the mirror surfaces to get a proper reflection.
The picture doesn't really do the green justice. When you look at them in person, there are no noticeable dark areas visible in the tint.
My apologies for some of the pictures being a bit blurry. I'm still trying to figure out all the settings on my camera. I did place an order for a new macro lens today however, because my current lens is horribly unsuited for photographing models.
Cheers, Clemens