Insignia time

The time of Balkenkreuz

Yep. I've been pretty busy last weeks. Despite that I sat down with my paints and did a bunch of Balkenkreuz on the model. One on each side and doubles to the rear side. And as my habit is, I did all by hand. This time I painted them relatively small, just for variety.

Running out of playtime

I'm afraid I can't keep fooling around and wasting time, soon I must attack the remaining pieces. The build order is just something I need to take care of first, so nothing gets ruined or ends up needing a bunch of repainting.
Most likely I end up making the wrong choice, but that's how it sometimes goes.

Steel paws of the steel kitty

Simple and short posts have been trending lately, I've noticed. This time I've painted the rims of the road wheels and attached all the wheels - excluding those obviously missing drive sprockets. Next up: random tools and the winter camo.

This has to be the record-breaking shortest message in my history...

A fancy camo job

Kicking my own arse

So I decided to get myself (and my act) together and started painting this bugger for real. The priming didn't really need much more, for it was mostly done. Which was pretty nice at this point in the project...

A hastily taken photo of the primed model

A simple and easy plan

I figured that  a simple approach would be the best one. Supposedly. In any case, unlike with my earlier german devices I thought that I'd apply the paints in a bit different order this time. Somehow that "start with Dunkelgelb and then go with the rest" approach didn't feel as nice as the previous project's "green goes first and the rest follow later".

Maybe the different painting order was better or perhaps I had actually learned something at some point. Or maybe the Lifecolor paints were better. There was only one way to find out!

From the pot to the jar to the tank

Round one

Vallejo's Verde Panzer got the greatest of honours and ended up being the basecoat. At some point in history I had diluted the paint a bit too much and the result was a bit thin. But that was fixed by applying a bunch of layers, so nothing was lost except a bit of time.

The green experience

Round two

Somehow it felt natural to apply the brown (Vallejo's Marron Panzer) stripes and lines next. They'd be a handy general pattern-definer to begin with. Then I'd paint the rest of the stripes in the third colour to break the form a bit more strongly.

It actually looks fun this way, too

Round three

As the obvious finale I filled the paint jar with Dunkelgelb that the chums at Vallejo call Amarillo Panzer for some odd reason. This paint caused some confusion because the airbrush occasionally spat half-dried lumps of paint out... Damnit.
The end result wasn't going to win any awards, but it's all my own fault. Big parts of what I painted seem to be at their best in the rear half of the tank and oddest in the front - no matter which model I'm working on. This appears to be a clear sign of "practice more" and "study yourself and improve" it.

Right side without tools

Left side, equally toolless

A part of the weirdness of the left side is caused by that I stubbornly tried to keep painting instead of taking an airbrush cleaning break that was clearly needed. As I said, my own fault. In any case, the oddness and imperfectness of the camo job isn't the main thing in this project. In addition to camo being painted by people this is also going to be whitewashed over in the end anyway. So it'll be just fine.

Background activity

Without any special mention: I did paint the road wheels, drive sprockets, idlers and those random items that belong on the outside of the tank. The wheels will be needing some manual painting a bit later, but otherwise they're done. Yay.

A green basecoat

This is a yet another photo-deprived posting because I haven't remembered to take photos of my small steps lately. After I got done with the priming and painting the interior of the fighting compartment white (including the rear part of the gun), I sealed the hull and felt smug.

Rumblegrumble

I wasn't smug for a long time, because the nose was grinning a bit. Of course I could've opted to have the chasm in the rear part of the tank but as that's a lot more difficult to fix and hide, I didn't go there. The hole got a good amount of putty on it and after a bit of smearing and leveling I left it to cure for a nice while.

This evening I took my files out and fixed what I could, then I wiped the surfaces clean. For some reason I didn't really want to have a layer of fine-ish dust under my paintcoat. Ultraexcitingly the next thing I did was to cover about 60% of the surfaces with Vallejo's German Tank Green. The rest I'll fix either tomorrow or whenever I actually have the time. That and the potential fixing that may need to be done if I find some annoyingly large bald spots on my tank when the paint has dried

And then?

When the green surface is set, I'll set up a random camo scheme with the brown and Dunkelgelb, maybe even with a set of selfmade national markings. Scratch that, I'm going to do that and we all know it already.

After that part is done I'll set up the wheels and the tracks and decide "that's almost finished now".


When I've declared that I've got the perfect opportunity to make more of a mess on my hunting kitty. In english it means I'll return after almost ten years to the world of water paints. Just in case I manage to make a better wintery whitewash this time, improving from my first attempt.
For a brief moment I pondered on preparing a base for this beast but maybe I'll take it easy right now. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.