SMJ, Good work on the Jinny! I see you continued working on the weathering and the final result is more impacting now. If my understanding is correct you are making one small scene with this one, right? If so I am looking forward to seeing the complete scene soon.
Greg, that Spit is going on well and I guess the best is to come still.
Mark, Excellent work on your Kitty so far. I really like the look is having and think the model will change a lot to better in following stages. Rudder replacement is one very nice touch and regarding that reference image you posted the most impresive and interesting thing to me is to see the heavy weathered look of those birds in the field (specially noticeable on the Kitty on the foreground) very interesting to reproduce on a model.
Rick, As for your dusting up question, everything is up to the model I make at the moment. I am painting dust with diferents mediums (oils, enamels, acrylics, pastels chalks, pigments) and methods (wet or dry) and every of them worked with its own properties and finish. As I mentioned enamels are very easy to use for this purpose and allow a very controled painting which is very convenient in this case because the Bren is quite small model indeed (i.e. upper hull side plates height is 12mm only) and I know it would be quite harder to keep the dusting effect to scale with pigments in all those small surfaces, for instance.
Tamiya 1/48 scale Universal Carrier
After the dusting up stage, overall base color gives impresion of a much lighter shade, and of a much continuous and uniform look too, so in order to gain some visual impact some darker stains/effects will break up that plain look created by dust. Again thinned enamels are perfect to add those few dark traces necessary to add operative life to our model. I worked with earth brown and flat black to reproduce different grade/nature stains depending on the area to be treated. Vertical brown stains fit well in the dusty sides giving sense of overlaped/removed dust in the course of time, meanwhile darker (black) stains will reproduce some necessary oily and greasy touches on the running gear mainly. I consider both effects add some kind of dramatic (in the good meaning of the expression) touch to one operative vehcile. It is also interesting and noticeable to see in this pictire how already our perception starts integrating the messy lower hull and running gear in the image observer percieves of the model and those messy areas do not look that terrible now.
I prepared some stowage for this tiny vehicle. I think accessories are always welcome on a model and they are particularly important for one open top vehicle like the Bren. Unfortunately it seems many modellers are skiping this important -to me- step because accesories are always time compsuming, specially at those smaller scales.
Once the model is near completion then last touch is to add some extra metalic shine with one ordinary pencil. This also takes time to make it correctly but this final effect adds both depth and shine to the model and increases the feeling of its steel nature too. The only trick is to limit this final effect to the areas most exposed to friction and use, and do not overdo on every edge and surface because it would not look reallistic if so.
At the moment I still have some small final details left to add, but I hope we will see some images of the completed model as soon as I can have time ot take some. Stay tunned.
Lu