I started this kit a good 4 months ago, but that was with shelving it for a month and a half. I had kind of gotten into a funk and moved on. But last month I decided to pick it back up again and roll. I have tried to work ONLY one kit at a time (or at the very most I will work one armor and one aircraft while the other is drying, etc.) Anywho, long story short this is what I have been working on for the last few weeks:
Details:
I used the Eduard full photo etch kit for this. Obviously did not use everything, but there is quite a bit of tiny metal on there. That is partly why it took so long. Paint is a base of Tamiya Desert Yellow for shading with Buff for the highlighting. I spent a good 3 hours one day looking at Abrams pictures, and I have to say that while there were a bunch of beat up Abrams, the vast majority seemed to be surprisingly clean...and we are talking about field operating vehicles here! Thats why I once again chose to go simple dusty type weathering. Now, I have had problems lately with Mig Pigments on the desert colored vehicles. Basically they all seem to vanish amongst the sand colored vehicles. So to make it stand out this time I decided to mix Buff and Dark Earth until I got a color I liked and then airbrushed on the dusting except for the tracks where I was able to used Dry Mug pigments. I used Tamiya's smoke for the bulge on the gun because I saw a bunch of photos where this was prominent. Also for the vents on the back I saw some 50/50 with darkened smoky coloring and clean. I took a little artistic liberty and chose a more heavily smoked vent simply to add contrast. So I don't know how close to reality it truly is. But to me it looks good. Stowage is from Italeri's modern US equipment except for the ALICE packs which were given to me by ModelManiac96*. They were painted Tamiya Olive Drab, shadows black artist oils, highlights MM Russian Armor Green. That is about all I can think of for right now.
Anyways, I am thinking of calling this one done, but before I make that bold statement I am looking for comments and critique that might need working on. Anyone spot something that could use working on? Looks good? Looks bad? Let me have it fellas!
Brian
*He actually only had 3 to give me, and I was going to use these as a base to make a mold and try my hand at resin casting. Long story short I don't know what I was doing wrong. Mold came out fine, but I had serious problems pouring. Tons of bubbles no matter what I did, and it took me literally 6 attempts to get ONE extra pack decent enough I could use gap filling super glue to fill bubbles on and give me a servicable pack. And sadly this was the best of the pieces I modeled and tried to cast....I won't even begin to describe the troubles the K89 Mausers gave me.