Tiger 1 (The color of woes)

Here is a picture of the completed road wheels (with wash applied) Believe it or not the color on the Tiger itself was darker than this (and from the same bottle) and the wash can actually be seen.

I am leaving the road wheels this color and will "dirty them up" for the diorama.

Hey Erock, I feel your pain bro! Been there before....

Ok here is my opinion...

Tamiyas XF-63 Panzer Grey is a bit on the black side and not on the blue side as it should be. Remember Schwarzgrau is really a bluish grey. What I do is take about 80% Tamiya Dark Grey and add 20% Fat Blue. This will give you a really good match for that RAL. Neutral Grey is to light and not on the blue side

Also when weathering it, I would suggest using a 50/50 mixture of black and raw umber for the wash. This will add somemore contrast to the weathering IMO. I believe the darker the paint the lighter the weathering...and vice versa with lighter paint schemes.

edit..I just saw the road wheels...and they look good.

Hope this helps...

Mo/Rob

Erock,
The color of the roadwheels looks right on from here. Nice job. About that wash....You're right; a dark wash is almost invisible.
Try this: Take your base coat and mix several drops or so of white in it. Load your airbrush, and on a fairly fine setting, start "dotting-in" the color as if you were trying to put on polka dots, but this time allow the "dots" to overlap slightly so that the underlying base coat shows through just slightly. Allow this to dry. Now add some more white to your basecoat to lighten it even more. Start dotting-in again, but this time, pay attention to all those surfaces exposed to sun, rain, snow--all the weather. Start dotting-in on the center of the panel and work your way out to the edges, but don't paint the panel lines. Apply to road wheels, too! This provides a wonderful faded area demarcation point. Allow to dry. NOW mix your black wash, and allow it to run into crevices, corners, etc. Next, get some armor sand or radome tan (one of my favorites), and dry brush. The dark Panzer Grey color will come alive for you. I did this scheme on a Marder and a 1/72 Hasegawa Tiger, and it came out great. (The Marder got a 1st at the 2002 IPMS Nats.) I would send pics if I had access to a digital camera....
Hope this helps you.
Gip Winecoff

Thought I would share the best way I have found to paint solid color schemes. It works good for camo too, but does not show up as well as with just plain color schemes.

I always start with an enamel base. In this case since you were doing a gray paint scheme, I would start with model masters medium gray. This is a much lighter gray than what you will want for the final tank. I would let this dry for two days.

Next I put the fine tip on my airbrush, and load it with the darkest color I will use. In this case that color would be Tamiya’s German Grey. I might even add a little black to this color to make it just a bit darker. Then I start “framing” the model. Meaning that I paint over all the corners, and the panel lines. Pretty much over everything a wash would highlight, and then some.

At this stage you should have light gray in the center of all your panels. Using a minimal paint flow I streak the airbrush up and down all the panels, making sure that the streaks all run the same direction (up and down when the model is put together). This is the point where I wish I had a digital camera. Fill in the lighter color with streaks until it meets your satisfaction.

This is a great way to show weathered, and fading paint jobs, or just to add extra highlights to your model. I usually finish my model with the usual washes, and dry brushing.

Hope this helps, but if you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me know, I’ll try to borrow a digital camera.

edog

edog,

I think I have an idea about what you are describing. I do want to darken it up a tad and this seems like the perfect way.

So, I start with the lighter color (which is already on) Next, I should basically "outline" the tank and panels with the darker color. Here's where I'm sort of blurry. Do I make the lines (up and down) connect to each other or space them a bit?

Would really like to give this technique a go on this Tiger!

I used PolyS acrylics on this Tiger that I just recently posted.
I pre shaded with flat black from Tamiya.
The polyS paint used was RLM Grey and it looked similar to their panzer grey.

Here is the post that shows my Tiger in all grey:
http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5450

Erock68,
I recently built Tamiya's 1/35 Early Production Tiger I, the R/C variant, and I aimed for making it look just like the depiction on the box. I used Tamiya's "German Grey" and while it did turn out only slightly darker than the representations, it was not nearly as dark as the shots of your road wheels. It was also somewhat blue. I have also noticed that Tamiya's acrylic will "wear" quickly if you handle it before applying the finishing dullcoat.
Good luck!

Roy

Erock

I make the “streaks quite random” if you do it right, you will end up with a paint job that looks like it has run off from water, or faded.

I will do almost the solid color streak in one place, then let quite a bit of the lighter color show through next to it. I would suggest trying it on scrap if your not sure what I mean.

Outline the primed scrap, then just streak in one direction (I usually hold the model, so that I can streak left to right, then back right to left, this means that the paint wont be jumping around in the bottle so much). Make sure the streaks are not dark (you use light paint flow with the airbrush). The lighter gray will get darker, and darker, and you can stop when your happy with it. Unless you get carried away with the darker color, you should have some of the lighter color showing through.

“Do I make the lines (up and down) connect to each other or space them a bit?”

I start by streaking the whole surface, or panel making sure that some of the lighter color shows through. I don’t think the spacing matters too much, just make sure that the first streaks are lightly applied. If your not sure, start with wide spacing, then fill in where you want. Then go back and streak darker in places to your taste.

I would say, just experiment on scrap, and you’ll see what I mean, pretty fast. I hope anyway.

Sorry if this sounds a little confusing, I’ll try to post some pics when I paint my Tiger I (should be next week if I can get a hold of a digital camera)

Here is the final base color. Yes, it is lighter than the original. I applied the gloss coat and will then wash with Black oils to bring out the details, then use Burnt Umber for weathering.

Note:Big Honking bolts inside to simulate the "weight" on the tracks, in the diorama and side panels cut for re-alignment (might even leave one off)



edog

I want to try your method but I think I need to do some practice with it first. I will get the technique down and use it on my next project.