75th Anniversary of 1942 (World at War)

This is my starting point for the Marseille figure. You get a torso, a head, two arms, two legs, some casting blocks and a huuuge base. I think the base is out of proportion and dwarves the figure so I may cut it down or not use it.

The figure itself is described on the box as 54mm, which is 1/32, but the figure itself looks to be 1/35, and looks small against 54mm figures. 

Edit: I think the figure is tall enough, but has a very light frame. I guess people do have that build, not sure about Marseille.

It does look well molded though with a couple of bubbles that will need some filler.

The kit was buried very deep in my stash, and had been in a box in the cupboard in the garage since the very early 2000s. It took me quite a while to find it.

Cheers

Tony

 

Looking forwardto seeing this one Tony.

Thanks Bish.

I've got him together. In the last photo you can see the use of filler underneath the coat and around the bottom of his trouser legs. There's also filler around his sleeves, where the arms are joined. I like to use Tamiya filler, then clean it up with a Q-tip dipped in their Lacquer thinner for applications like . I've since washed it in soapy water to remove any mold release agent, and primed it with Tamiya aerosol fine white primer, then work got in the way so no photos of this yet.

Cheers

Tony

Coming along very smartly, Tony.  It's been a while since I've done a figure, so I'm looking forward to viewing your progress.

In the stash, I've got Coree's Memphis Belle crew from the '90's film, that I haven't gotten around to yet.  Your build will be a good tutorial.

Marsailles was very lean - that's very clear from all of his pics. (He had movie star looks and Goebbels cameramen always highlighted such figures. We did too - probably everyone knew who Richard Bong was.) If you've ever seen a real ME-109 you can see that as an advantage - the cockpit was designed for midgets. Diet and physical training has changed a lot since the 1920s-early 40s. People are taller, stronger and heavier across the board. Some are getting more protein when young (Japanese adults are about 4" taller today than 75 years ago). I don't know that Americans and Euros are much if any taller (Russians were pretty wiry - many were on the border of malnutrition during the Stalin years) than now but check the size of athletes in the different eras. Someone like LeBron James simply didn't exist in 1940. Even in boys choirs, (being a Bach nut, I actually have done reading on the subject) young boys have their voices "break" earlier now - sometimes as early as age 12. It was several months later in the early 20th century and maybe two years in Bach's sign. That's a sure sign of stronger and bigger people at a very early age. There's a famous picture of three RAF pilots - three of the "few" from the BoB - they're all gaunt, obviously exhausted and weigh about 120 lbs. From the boxart of your kit, I'd say the figure is, if anything, representing someone too heavy.

There are many common tales of US GI’s being better clothed and being better fed upon joining the military than at any point prior in their lives. This was a residual effect of the Great Depression for many Americans. My mother used to tell me how her mother had signed papers that falsified her brothers age so that he could join he National Guard in the late 30’s at age 16. This was not uncommon. It was the “Arsenal of Democracy” and WWII that turned  economy around and gave rise to the higher standard of living for he rest of the century in the USA.

Thats one thing that makes me chuckle about most re enactors. Typically they are older and overweight. Those they try to portray were usually much younger and almost always far more lean.

Thanks for the good information, it helps me to understand this figure. I've haven't got far enough to start looking up pohotos of him myself as yet, thats probably for the weekend.

Without any reference to accuracy, the Marseille figure is by far the 'wiriest' of any of the 54mm figures that I've painted. Most of them are historical, from Waterloo and ancient or medieval times. Maybe they are all being sculpted and molded to modern standards, I'm really not sure, hence my comment about his appearance.

Cheers

Tony

You're a sculptor - you work with ideals just like Plato told you to. We don't really think that ancient Greeks actually look as portrayed in the extant statues (mostly Roman copies sadly, but no doubt accurate) - it's the way they should have looked. Nobody looked like Michaelangelo's David either. Not even LeBron looks like Michaelangelo's David - his hands are too small. (Naturally I was very close when I was 20. Not.) So if the gent is a little better muscled in resin than the extreme fit string-bean that he probably was, this is art. He was also one of a pretty significant number of WWII aces that died in some kind of mishap/accident.

Stik One of the Vietnam vets I interviewed told me that you could tell if someone was from the rural South - they liked Army food. My father told me that almost everybody wolfed it down during WWII - odd that the war was actually good news for many Americans: the Depression was the nightmare. In Europe, it was reversed - the "Depression" was just a little poorer than normal and the war was like hell coming to earth. Eric

I think all of this is good background for the figure, and I'm glad we're interested enough to write all of this down. In the end I'll paint what I'm given, and hopefully can make it look something like him. Having invested some time is looking at photos last night, I don't think the box art is that close to his facial characteristics, but I'll do my best. Then again, I also noticed that the name on the box is Hans-Joachim Marselli , so maybe they were suggesting that you could make it look like Marseille, but they weren't, for some reason. I will say that its as well sculpted as any figure I've attempted so far, I bought it 2nd hand many years ago, and I'm guessing that someone made a copy of it before I got it, because there were a couple of little pieces of what looked to be plasticine, or maybe you know it as modelling clay, on it. I'm down to trying to work out what would be the best base colour for his uniform. It's raining cats and dogs here today, so there might be some progress if all goes as planned. Cheers Tony

Tony:  what brand/type of paint do you usually use for figure painting?  I've been collecting Vallejo for when I can get around to some 1/72 pilots, but haven't tried them yet.

Joe Hudson from both the Forums and FSM magazine uses them a lot.

Hi CMK,

Thats a complex question. 

I tend to mix and match a bit.

I used to use oils exclusively, I really like using them but the long drying time was the downside. 

I bought the Vallejo face painting set. I've found the paints to be excellent, although the technique for painting with these acrylics is quite different. I also have used the Andrea colours red set and blue set, which are quite similar, and the AK Interactive Waffen SS Spring/Summer set, similar again. These are all really nice paints.

I can use these paints in specific instances. However I understand that Bill Horan uses Humbrol enamels, and I love his work, so I often use them too. It's good because I have a large range of them. It's an amazingly resilient paint. I've even tinted them with oil paint, which works well too.

If I want to represent leather or wood, I usually undercoat with Tamiya acrylic, then stain it with oil paint. You can get a decent woodgrain if you get nearly all the oil paint off an hour later, or leaving a bit more paint on, a pleasing slight sheen to leather boots and straps.

For the British MP I did in the Weekend Madness GB, it's mainly Humbrols. the face is Vallejo, the leather bits done as per the technique above.

Maybe it comes down to how I feel on the day a bit too, lol.

Cheers

Tony

Squadron has yet another phony sale on (good selection, but rotten prices usually). They're featuring Mini-Art & Eduard. Mini-Art has several figures - among them three German aces of WWI (including Goering: actually a very striking figure in youth). I don't know if there is a conspiracy against Yankees in the genre, but Eddie Rickenbacker really looked the part of the movie star/fighter ace. (Also had the highest kill/sortie ratio in WWI and maybe WWII - if the kills were real.)

I don't do figures, but if I did, I'd think about my "go-to" Golden paints. They have Fluid Colors (very like Vallejo Model Color) and High Flow (like Model Air) - except Golden's are superior. Both of these paints are really made for hand painting despite High Flow's use for airbrushes or inks. Golden Fluids are 100% polymer agent: High Flows have drying retarders and levelers in them which is why tip dry almost never happens. The two are completely compatible for mixing. (High Flows are thinner so they have a higher pigment load which is good for us, but maybe not for an artist.) If you want to use acrylics like enamels or even oils, you'd want some kind of medium that will lengthen the dry time. They do have drying retarder which works. (Vallejo Model Color has the same medium. Vallejo is an art house first, model paint second: check their web site. So they've many of the same brews.) I'd look at a clear glazing medium - or maybe even a black or burnt umber flat glaze (both very translucent). You can get a lot of working time and a glaze lets you do all kinds of mixing or painting tricks, like changing the tranlucenscy of a small portion of what you're working on. (I used a matte black glaze over rust when I did my burned-out Panzer: that worked very well.) Golden also has a medium called Airbrush Extender that does much the same thing. YouTube has a zillion videos from Golden or Liquitex on these items. You might want to check them out. You'd have to do some mixing, but their mixing colors are amazing and you can come up with shades and hues that you'd never find commercially ready. There's a channel on YouTube that could be of great value. "Will Kemp Art School" is loaded with short videos on color mixing and all kinds of color manipulation for the acrylic artist: glazes, color mixing, pigment stretching, use of about one million various mediums (a 7minute shot on mixing "flesh tone" colors is the longest of the group). Painting flesh tones or clothes has got to dwarf any problems encountered painting an airplane or a tank. Kemp is keen on things like foliage, still lifes, beach/ocean: you get the idea.

Eric 

Thanks for the insights, both Tony and Eric.  Bought a book on acrylic-paint figure painting.  Used to use Testors MM, but wanted to get away from the enamel-base stuff.

I'll look into Golden paint.

 

I'm following Doog's step by step weathering of a 1/32 Tamiya Corsair - he's one of the best aircraft modelers (in my view) working. (You can check out "Doog's Models" at https://doogsmodels.com and get on his very interesting mailing list. The site has splendid material. His YT videos are very good too.)

 

This step is an oil dot filter. This is another fading technique - if I was just trying to change colors I would use filters & washes on a tank. But we want fade. (Doog heavily chipped his Corsair. He's right historically because some of the most famous Navy and Marine Corsair squadrons flew out of Munda Point which was a rolled coral strip - think landing on sand paper. Henderson field was dirt on Marston -correct spelling - or Marsden - more common - matting. I see little signs of Wildcat chipping, but they are all seriously faded.)

 

I used Wilder Oils which dry extremely fast. (Gamblin "FastDry Matte Oils" dry just as fast but I didn't have one of the colors I wanted.) I used white, black, buff and light blue. At least half the dots are white. Doog uses what he calls "Invisible White" from Windsor Newton. What he's referring to is a mixing white with zinc instead of titanium as the pigment. Zinc white is a mixing color and has very low opacity and would work very well for this. But I don't have it in oils, so I simply used a lot less titanium white. And less is more for dot filters. Doog recommends - correctly I think - applying the dots with a tootpick. Then grind the colors in with a round brush. You can use a second brush with mineral spirits on it (I use Gamblin's Gamsol solvent - the most benign solvent I've ever used and perfect for this kind of stuff) to take colors off if you've got too much blue or black on there. The effect is pretty subtle. The pic below shows a segment with the dots applied: note the wing to the left of the dots has been given the oils, rest of the plane to the right of the dots hasn't. You can see, I think, that the filtered section is distinctly lighter and has a different tonality variation.

 

dot1 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

 

The next two pics are of the upper surface after the dot filter has been applied. The detail shows the intricate segments of lighter (more faded) surface appearing randomly. The difference in hue between the metal and fabric has also been reduced which is fine.

 

Dotdet by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

 

dot2 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

 

Now we need some proper grime and panel lines wash. Doog uses enamels. I will be relying on my trusty Iwata Com.Art acrylics. We'll see.

 

Eric

 

 

My apologies for being away from the group build, great work everyone.

 

 

 

Painting the Ju87 has been slow the past weeks, after priming I pre-shaded with Tamiya X-1 Black. It turned out to be a mistake on the bottom, the RLM 04 and RLM 65 are very light colors. I airbrushed on four coats of RLM 04 and it was not enough, so I decided to re-paint the bottom white.

22 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

 

Using Model Master Enamel Flat White #1768 FS 37875 I re-painted the bottom and area on the fuselage for the yellow band.

 

21 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

 

Next up is Model Master Enamel Yellow RLM 04 #2072. Then after letting that cure for a full day I masked over it with Tamiya tape.

23 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

25 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

 

I then airbrushed on Model Master Enamel Light Blue RLM 65 #2078, two coats where applied. Both the Yellow and Light Blue were thin straight out of the bottle, only needed one or two drops of thinner.

 

After letting the RLM 65 cure, it'll be time to start the top colors. First up will be RLM 70.

 

26 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

For a even bigger Ju87 Stuka, I here Trumpeter is coming out with a 1/18 scale version.

 

 

 

 

Looking real good Dan.

A 1/18th scale Stuka, o my. I may need some bigger shelves.

Eric that cat is looking really nice! Thanks for the rundown on using the oils, I've been wanting to try that on one of my builds. I apologize if you already mentioned it but what did you use for the Blue Grey topside paint?

That Stuka is looking huge, and well done. I think you made the right decision, Thanks for the insight on Dot filters Eric, I've used them on armor but never considered them for aircraft. I might try them on some upcoming builds for the Midway and Coral Sea GBs. I just use W&N Oils, I have to use whats available and I have too many to ditch them for another brand now. I haven't seen the brands you mention here in Australia yet.

I've blocked in the basic colours on the Marseille figure. One of the photos I found of him showed a slightly lighter tunic than pants, so I've lightedned the base colour for the tunic, although it's hard to see in this photo. It's just Humbrol enamels so far, with Vallejo for the flesh and Tamiya acrylic as a bas for the leather bits.

Cheers

Tony

Eric:  the weathering techniques look excellent!  Nice work!

Great looking paintwork on the Stuka, Dan.  Colors are really sharp.  I like the effect you achieved with the light blue.

Herr Marseille is already looking good, Tony.  Good work.

Rooster All of my colors are home brews done with Golden High Flow acrylics. I did a lot of research on this and concluded that most of the commercial versions for USN early war blue-gray were much too blue - some almost teal. Everyone has their own eyes - I see blue gray. (All of the USN colors except for their later war gloss blue for aircraft are glorified gray with some kind of "cool" (ie blue) hue.) So I used HF neutral gray; ultramarine (a mixing color - so very little) and just a tad of titanium white and carbon black. You'd think more gray would do it - but in the world of color mixing common sense doesn't take you too far. On my kit because of the heavy fade, the gray will appear relatively darker than it should in theory. At least that's what I remember. I should be keeping recipes. As it stands, I'm keeping mixed paints. Because of "black basing" one uses very little paint so you might as well. And I put nothing else into my mixes for the purpose of reuse on future kits - thinning is all done in a different cup. When I take a crack at the Sunderland, I'll have half the paints already mixed from this kit and a Beaufighter I did in August. And I've got a Panzergrau ready for future project. I bought a bunch of 5ml plastic bottles for almost free on eBay and they should keep the paints perfectly fresh. Golden makes good paints and if they are properly sealed they last a long time. (I did somehow lose my Brit interior green so I'll have to redo that.) Eric

Tony that figure is looking really good!

In for an update myself. Took a long time, a lot of mistakes and some fustration but I was able to get the insignia crosses masked and painted using Maketar masks. I'm fairly happy with the results (the fulesage crosses sit a little low) and learned a lot from doing it. I do wish they were cut out a little more cleanly from the manufacturer as they tended to leave a ragged edge but that can be fixed by running a sharp knife along the cut lines. Luckily weathering can hide quite a bit

I need to repaint the right wing RLM 74/75 and touch up the left a little then on to decals!

Now that looks amazing Andy, that really is a stand out build.

Great job on the markings as well, you have more patience than me with those masks.

Bish

Now that looks amazing Andy, that really is a stand out build.

Great job on the markings as well, you have more patience than me with those masks.

 

Thanks Bish. Yeah it certainly tested the patience I had. Once I learned a decent technique for postioning the masks all in one piece it went a little smoother. Not sure I'll try to tackle masking these mid-war crosses again. There are so many small strips of masking material that can get out of line. Don't think the more simple late war crosses would be as bad.

Great work Andy, an off beat and attractive finish. Very impressed with the painted markings, I had enough trouble painting Japanese hinomaru

Dan, that's coming along really well, good recovery from the preshading, still enough to show through the blue though.

Tony H-J M is looking good, always good to see how your figures develop.

Eric, very interested watching your progress with this build and seeing some of Doog's techniques on his channel.

Talking of techniques, had my first go with hairspray/winter wash technique. Overall, results were good going to frustrating. May have been too much hairspray in some places or too much paint as I tried to get the coverage looking properly white. Or possibly I waited too long by the time I got to the last parts, or put too much water on befor cleaning up.

The wheels came up well, able to get a good circular scrub out going there. Took a little too much off the gun shield and not in the right places. Then I moved onto the main body, which was where the frustration was as in some places big sheets of paint came loose, leaving big patches of Panzer grey.

Here's a photo, not showing the bits I didn't like...

So another clear coat, more weathering then assembly and more weathering

Nice work, Andy.  Very unusual scheme and you accomplished it exceptionally well.  

Looks like a lot of photos I've seen of roughly-used winter camouflage on the Eastern Front, lost.  I think you accomplished that well!

Finished the Wildcat. I'll take proper pics during daylight I hope.

I want it to look like one of these nasty aircraft: Wildcats at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal October 42 (Nobody can accuse the Wildcat of being a graceful bird. But it looks like it wants to punch someone in the nose.)

cactus6 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

As I almost had the project wrecked at the last hour, better get some kind of record up. Here's the idea- the kit's on an Eduard base that emulates Marston matting.

ft-ab-rt2 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

More tomorrow. I'll do a proper build diary for the aircraft section.

Eric