Jagdpanzering 18 A and B

Eighteenth session in two acts

After finishing the camo pattern I stopped to ponder what I'd do next. In my mind I had two main paths: a) trying out the oil paints, and b) preparing the metal bits.

I felt that if I prepared the base of the metallic parts at this point, I'd have a better playground for the oil paints later on. In other words, I trusted my eyes so little, especially on the junk-filled rear deck, that the weathering would become much easier if the engineering tools and such were actually distuinguishable from the rest of the tank.

An easy choice, then, and with that we proceeded in the flowchart to the line b from the decision salmiac. I used the same dark grey (VMA 71052 German Grey) on all the metallic bits and pieces, I didn't start masking and airbrushing even the tracks but did those with one of my smallest brushes. And now, painting the shovel, I encountered a problem caused by the age and kilometerage of said brush: the tip of the brush wasn't a singular point anymore but looked more like a saluting Spock. Most of the metal parts were doable with it still, just the tightest spots like the edges of the tools were difficult without making a mess. So, for a second time in this project I stopped working when I noticed that things were just not proceeding the way they needed to.

Sequel

There wasn't much that was missing. I had ordered those three new paintbrushes (different sizes, but each small) for accurate work, as my all pre-existing brushes had already seen years of use and you could tell. I painted the remaining parts with a fresh, fine-tipped brush. While painting these I noticed a couple of bits that I had managed to miss earlier: the crank on the righthand hatch, and the long crowbar on the left side, halfway under the jack. This did verify in my mind that I had chosen the correct branch in my process.

At this point I wasn't going to poke the wooden handles or the paper-wrapped wire cutter handles, but I had an idea for them and they could wait for a moment. The barrel cleaner rods were also wooden, with brass connectors, but the block in the end was a bit of a mystery: was that a funnily modeled brush, or a its protector that could remain camouflaged?

I also added some dark grey scratches on the jack, it was not supposed to be a long-abused bit with its Dunkelgelb basecoat a distant memory. At this point this looked functional to me.

Periscopes

This vehicle was supposed to have four periscopes: three of the traditional, fixed place blocky replaceable prisms and then one round and unprotected one in the sliding plate. Interestingly I didn't find enough prisms from the sprues while building, so one was missing completely.

Each got painted with the same German Grey as all the other metallic parts so far. Then I mixed in some flat black to the paint, and painted the glass parts to be a hint darker than the frame. I also used this same darker dark grey to paint the unlit convoy light in the rear left corner.

After that I added some lighter grey (VGA 72749 Stonewall Grey) to my mix, and painted a tiny sliver to the bottom of the glass to depict a periscope reflection. It was a pretty subtle effect, but maybe it worked.

I guess I could've left all this for later, in fear of making a mess later on, but I did it now because I had the paints at hand. Now I needed to remember to use a bit of a gloss varnish on the periscope glasses and the convoy light. With this progress it might be weeks later in the calendar.

The same evening I painted these, when going to sleep, I was thinking if I should do the emblems next, before even thinking of any weathering. Maybe that was the thing to do, so that the markings, whatever I ended up choosing in addition to the Balkenkreuz, wouldn't stand out from the rest of the model like my balding head in a wig store.

Jagdpanzering 17

Seventeenth session

Dots after dots after dots. For some reason I have always skipped that part of the Hinterhalt-Tarnung, maybe because I subconciously expected it to look ridiculous being done by me. But almost everything had to be tried out at least once, so the Jagdpanzer IV project got to be a test platform for a bunch of new methods.

The whole idea behind these dots was to look like sunbeams filtered through the forest's canopy. Somehow that sounded pretty cosmic, but on the other hand it also sounded like a pretty neat idea.

On the Dunkelgelb surfaces I was supposed to add either green or red-brown dots, and dark yellow dots on the green and red-brown surfaces. Some people have cycled each of the colours but I thought it was going to be enough to try out with just two. In my mind the red-brown might be a bit too strong, so I decided to go with green dots as my second colour. Also, I had been thinking while airbrushing the camo, that I should've had more green and less red-brown.

Dunkelgelb dots

Being cautious I started applying the dots from the lower front glacis plates and then proceeded upwards, via the rool to the engine deck and the rear plate. The side walls I dotted last.

Some areas, worst being the bit below the track armour in the back wall, suffered a bit from my random dots being less than random in application. They also somehow were a bit too similar in shape and size. Or that's how it felt like to me, and I tried to poke anything that caught my attention. In general this looked pretty decent already.

Green dots

After I was done with the green and brown areas, I changed to the green paint and added dots to the remaining Dunkelgelb surfaces. Again, some individual places disagreed with my eyes, having too much regularity in them to my liking.

 

All in all this vehicle looked pretty good to me, I was properly baffled by it. Or to be more exact, I was surprised by how content I was with this

Jagdpanzering 16

Sixteenth session

Like I said the last time, I was figuratively at a crossroads. Instead of dashing into something I did spent some time checking different German camo patterns. There was a specific, quite dramatic-looking, pattern that I had been itching at implementing myself for a good long while, but I didn't want to use it on this specific unit. In the end I decided to implement a pretty traditional freehand three-tone camo, but for the first time I'd also do the little dots often seen in the ambush camo.

Hinterhalt-Tarnung

Green

I started the painting by thinning down my green paint (VMA 71019 Grün RAL6007) somewhat so that it wouldn't clog my airbrush after sitting in its bottle for over a year. The first green splotches that defined the rest of the pattern I sprayed over the left side wall of the casemate, and let the rest just flow. In these first two photos the frontal green areas were maybe the weakest-looking of all.

The sides of the Panzerwanne were left in basecoat because it was all behind the running gear, shadowed and also covered by dirt, making the camo pattern there pretty pointless. And as far as I could tell that's what ze Germans also did back in the day. I just chose a couple of randomish road wheels to be painted green, and applied some green shapes to the idler wheel and the drive sprocket.

Yeah, I based some of my choices on my memory. That was the "danger" breakpoint n+1 in this (or any) project.

My gently thinned paint dried wonderfully quickly, it was so nice to paint as I could just spin the model in my hands without too much worrying.

Red-brown

While the greens were drying I cleaned up my airbrush and thinned some red-brown (VMA 71031 Rotbraun RAL8017) in the same manner as before, but in a smaller quantity. I went around the model and searched for parts where the brown areas could come to break up the shapes even more. Again, in hindsight, I could've used less brown and left more space for the green.

Finally I did the same semirandomizing with the road wheels and added a touch of brown to the idler wheel and the drive sprocket. Just like with the green layer earlier.

Some of the dunkelgelb bits had gotten a bit too constricted for my liking, so I touched them up before packing my tools away for the evening.

That ended up looking like a pretty typical Project Mumblings camo. While painting I was thinking if I had indeed formed some kind of a set of stereotypical shape-breaking tricks that I have repeated way too often. Especially looking at the mudflaps in the rear that feeling got pretty strong.

Jagdpanzering 15

Fifteenth session

Well, I couldn't leave the left track looking like that, now could I? Had I originally planned to make this into a diorama or as a damaged vehicle, I think I'd been pretty happy with the way it was. But I hadn't, so I had this nagging in the back of my mind. 

In hindsight it was great that I dropped my working gloves when I noticed my annoyance levels increasing, as pretty soon afterwards I recognized how to fix it best and with the least amount of frustration: leaving it alone immediately and returning the next evening. Now I got back to my model, measured the missing bit, and built a new one.

Track fix

While the replacement track piece's gluework was curing, I loosened up the last session's hanging nonsense with liquid cement. The misplaced pieces came off pretty nicely.

Now that the crap was off, I slipped the replacer into place and poked it a bit to give it some more natural sag as it went over the return roller. This was better than what I had a few minutes earlier, but still evilly much uglier than the right side's track.

Painting!

Having finally gotten my model to this stage I could dig out my painting tools. The compressor, my Badger, the cleanup jar, paints, the acrylic thinner, and the airbrush cleaner. I didnt think of the camo scheme yet, as I knew I couldn't get that far in one silly session.

Primer

As my primer I used the same red that I used in my latest Königstiger (VSP 70624 Pure Red). Applying thin layers the model was nicely constantly touch-dry in some corner.

Dunkelgelb

According to some tank painting ministry's order from year something-or-other I basecoated my Tank Destroyer with Dunkelgelb. I didn't start playing with paint modulation, I just airbrushed the paint (VMA 71025 Dunkelgelb RAL7028) straight from the bottle onto my model. My painting order with the basecoat was the exact same I had used for the primer, I just cared about the tracks a tiny bit less on this round.

At this point my camo game was still completely open for anything and everything. I could take any silly path, or even leave it as it was, like one of the serving suggestion images of the box showed.