StuG III Ausf. G weathering and finishing touches

The final megastage

Starting this phase I thought that it would be just about finished, maybe after an evening or two before the StuG would be ready to be photographed. *beeeeeeeeeeep* said the siren, to emphasize my mistake.

Boltheads and other edges to be highlighted

I iterated through all the main colours with their own highlight colours. On the sandy yellows I used the plain sandy yellow straight from the tub, without any mixing. It stood out nicely as the oil washes had darked the light colour the most.

For the RLM82 greens I made a slightly lighter tone by mixing in some light green (VMC 70942) and applied that mostly on the edges, some central bits of plates and what felt like a good place.

The brown highlighter I made out of a mix of two Panzer Aces set's camo paints in about 90/10 ratio of 70826 and 70825 (German Camo Medium Brown and German Camo Pale Brown, respectively).

I guess I could've treated them a bit differently if I had a better clue of how StuGs lived in general.

Chipping some paint

For the lighter chips I really didn't feel like mixing three different very light shades, and to try to align them perfectly on the camo pattern. Instead I chose a slightly more dramatic approach: White Grey (VMA 71119). The edges and such were easy targets, my biggest question marks came from me not having a good idea on how the flatter surfaces got worn down and kicked in real life for plausible scuffmarkings. I did add a few scratches and other dents and tapdancing results, but tried to keep it pretty simple this time around.

 

Like before, I filled the light chips with a mix of black grey (VMA 71056) and red (VMA 71003 Red RLM23).

Weld line pondering

Inspired by uncle NightShift I thought of painting any weld lines with steel or even silver. At this point, especially after the oil washes, it would've looked a bit off in my opinion so I skipped it. But I did consider it anyway.

Nasty washes

Thanks to the nonsense with the varnishes I still had some glossy parts shining under light, so I thought I'd attack those with some really thin dirt wash. To be more exact I mixed two dirty washes and spread them over two evenings. The first one was approriately just dirt (VMA 71133 Dirt) that I used to cover most of the vehicle. This may have been closer to a filter than a wash, it was that thin, but what did I know anyway? The next evening I thinned down some brown (VMC 70872 Chocolate Brown) and concentrated in much smaller surfaces than with the dirt earlier.

In general I felt the assault gun looked nastier than a few steps earlier. That was the goal, in addition to covering up the stubborn gloss varnish traces.

Periscopes and their glasses

This unit had a selection of nicely visible periscopes of a couple of different types. The driver's periscope was of course in the worst spot to paint, then there was a very normal-looking periscope and then a binocular periscope and they were neat. Somehow I had completely ignored the commander's cupola's periscopes until now. To start the show I painted each of them black (VMA 71047) and built on that.

Of the actual colour of the prisms I had this idea that they were green-tinted. Of course I could remember wrong, but it was of no concern as I wasn't going for a realistic look. Instead I decided to paint them with a blue jeweling that'd stand out clearly. That meant that over the black I painted a layer of UK Mediterranean Blue (VMA 71111).

The next layer I painted with the Magic Blue (VGA 72721) I used a lot in the BT minis, going for smaller crescent or L-shaped shapes. In the tiny round ones it was of course a bit more difficult than on the rectangles.

 

To make them stand out even more, and to throw seriousness under the muddy tracks, I added the light reflection dots and lines into the corners. They stood out very nicely, especially from lower angles, but from normal viewpoints they didn't really stand out.

Finally I coated them with gloss varnish. They were in the end quite different from the ones I painted with greys on the Jagdpanzer IV some three years ago.

Graphite

I treated the wearable parts of the tracks with my graphite pen. As usual, I did this gently and only treated those bits of the tracks that were visible. In an attempt to reduce the amount of mess and dirtiness I left the parts that it rested on untouched.

Tamiya pigments

My storage had two boxes of Tamiya Weathering Master A that contained Light Sand, Sand, and Mud pigments. One of them had a still functional brush-sponge tool, the other one's sponge had crumbled apart years ago. On the spot I decided to use them all in order from lightest to darkest, a bit like I used the dirty washes earlier.

Light sand

Pretty much the whole Assault Gun got brushed around with the light sand pigment.

Sand

The normal sand got applied a bit more concentrated on the centers of the panels and some sandtrap-like corners. My idea here was that the lighter sand dusted more, covering more surface area, and than the wetter, heavier one spread around a bit less.

Mud

The mud pigment was applied with the sponge and I concentrated mostly on the lower hull and the wheels with it.

 

Final tweaks with oils  

While playing with the oils earlier I had successfully ignored the exhaust pipes completely, and I had to do that still to be able to rest. Now that I had the nasty oils ready, I used that stuff on the track armour pieces behind the casemate. Those had remained too clean, and it was not acceptable.

Both the dark and light rust (ABT070 Dark Rust, ABT060 Light Rust) were thinned down with my worrisomely low-running odourless thinner. In the end I used the dark rust also on just about each of my paint chips to give them a bit more life. The light rust I used quite sparingly anywhere outside the exhausts and track armour.

To be honest, I wasn't supremely happy with all of these, but I also recognized that I had been staring at the model for ages and in so many sessions (22 by the photo naming but I had worked on more evenings than that). Perhaps I was being overcritical.