Jagdpanzering 25-26

Weathering session 1

Now that I had noticed that my paintbrush set was missing a brush that would work great for blending oil paints, so I needed one. Or a couple. On one Tuesday on my way home from the office I popped by the nearest shopping paradise and after asking from the personell I found two fitting makeup brushes from Normal. The other one was round-tipped and the other a flat and a bit stiffer.

Before any more complex operations I repainted the wooden bits of the engineer tools with the wood-coloured paint. I didn't thin it down or anything, just repainted the worst-looking parts.

They were better now. I'd try out the mahogany-wood layers again on the next Panzer.

25: Buff and Light Mud

From somewhere I had gotten into my mind to try colour modulation, so I applied some light (ABT035  Buff) dots around the upper third of the model. This was a pretty light-coloured paint, and besides the Light Grey it was the only one from the Lights & Shadows set I hadn't tried out yet.

The paint application was done with a toothpick to keep the dots small. I started from the top of the barrel and the front of the tank. Then I blended them with my new brush, and when I was content, I proceeded to the next area.

After this colour modulation test I got to to the weathering part. I picked the light mud (ABT215) from the weather set and thinned it down very scientifically "a bit". I didn't want to use the paint direclty as thick as it was in the tube, but I didn't want to turn it into a wash, either.

I spread my paint around the running gear, lower hull, and wherever mud would've flown while spinning in the great outdoors. Blending this I used the rightmost brush seen in the first photo.

After drying from Thursday to Sunday the result was neat and did look like dried mud. Without side-by-side before/after photos I could't tell you what was the end result of my colour moduulation session. It didn't seem to have ruined anything, which was from the better side of the potential results.

Especially in the lower hull I liked how the dry mud looked like at this point. I had left the guiding teeth undone on puprose and that looked a bit funny at this point.

26: Wet Mud

After all these years I really couldn't tell if I had come up with it myself (unlikely) or did I learn from somewhere that when working with mud-sand weathering the bottom-most layer should be your lightest and most dry layer of filth. Then you'd just build on top of that always smaller and fresher-looking layers. I thought that was pretty evident in the springtime when looking at buses and cars: the old dry crap covered the most, while the freshly splashed puddle-mud had a smaller coverage.

On this same line of pseudoart mimicing real world, I thinned down some dark mud (ABT130) and added random splotches around the running gear and the lower hell. In addition I added some marks on the rear deck and on top of the casemate, by the hatches, to represent the muddy boots of the crew.

After choosing the fresher mud areas I spread and blended the mess into something less obvious.

The lower glacis plate's right corner looked like it needed to be softened up later on. If that didn't dry too much... For the sake of science I allowed it to dry for a longer time.

This last photo maybe showed that I finally remembered to paint the jack's handle with the Wood paint. Somehow I had left it Mahogany for a long time. Now it stood out a  it less, but how'd you tell apart a light wooden colour from dark yellow anyway?

These wooden handles did not spark joy in me, but I felt they were still maybe the best wooden bits I had done. Perhaps I could add a brown acrylic wash on them later on? Had I been smart I would've scratched some lines into themt to add some woodgrain texture and that'd help in the washing stage.

With the layers of crap the tank had become quite dirty-looking. Now it was the time to put the oil paints away for a bit. Next I wanted to test how the pigments and Abteilung's thinner worked together instead of Vallejo's pigment binder. So yet another new thing to be tried on in this project.