Three-Point oiling and jeweling

A tight set of steps

I managed to use two consecutive evenings to work on some pretty visibile subtasks of this project. The pin wash bound the paintjob together a bit, and after that I did the glassware. While I was on it I did all this in one good stint with the extra drybrushings that I felt they should be shared in this one post instead of splitting them apart.

Sepia wash

Nothing fancy here. I made my thin oil wash, applied it all over my 'Mechs to make them look disgusting. After a bit of drying time I cleaned up the worst, moving the shadows into corners, pits, and other naturally darker parts of the hulls. Then I left them to dry for some more time, to have them ready to accept some more acrylics.

 

Jeweling and jump jets

Before I started painting I doublechecked what kind of gear they were supposed to have. I only remembered Warhawk's loadout and I didn't want to rely on my memory or uneducated guesses based on the shapes of the miniatures.

Turkina:

• 2x LB-5X @LA
• 2x ER PPC @RA
• 3x JJ @LT;CT;RT
  

Ebon Jaguar:

• LB-5X @LA
• ERMLas @LT
• LRM-10 @LT
• SRM-2 @RT
• Gauss @RA
  

Warhawk:

• 2x ER PPC @LA
• LRM-10 @LA
• 2x ER PPC @RA

Stage one: lenses and cockpits

Turkina's Right Arm ER PPCs I painted with the Electric Blue and its lighter shades as I've been doing lately. Unlike on lasers, I aimed to get the brightest points towards the center of the barrel. This time I also painted some gently thinned EB to the tiny slits in the barrel for a bit of a glow. I used the same shades on the Jump Jets while I was twisting the mini in my hands.

Again no surprises were coming, the cockpit viewport bits got painted red. My lighter shade could've been a bit darker but maybe it looked weirdest at this short distance.

The Ebon Jaguar only had one energy weapon, so it was pretty quickly done. The ER Medium Laser's green felt like it was a bit difficult to get nice this time, they had been the best ones before.

Warhawk was pretty simple with only four barrels to paint in the same way, and just three easy-shaped and -positioned viewport parts. Encouraged by the Turkina's ER PPC glows I thought I'd do it here too, using only the simple Electric Blue. I was most definitely not insane enough to fool myself into thinking there'd be time and space for me to do any shading into these slits.

Stage two: coverups

I didn't quite get all done in one sitting, so the next evening I fine-tuned my previous work. I had also guessed the Ebon Jaguar's Center Torso or Head wrong so after another doublecheck later, this time it was the cockpit painting guide, I painted the rest of the viewports on it.

The little round things in Turkina's LRM launchers were something that I wanted to add a lens to, in a yellowish shade to make it clear they weren't lasers, and I also wanted to add some tiny tiny sensoring to Warhawk's chin. From afar the Ebon Jaguar's SRM setup looked like it had a place for a targeting system's sensor lens, but a closer look revealed that it wasn't the case, being divided in two.

Weathering

Having reached the cruising speed I wanted to wrap up the weapon weathering effects I had been thinking of. I still wanted to give another shot at the Gauss Gun's heat distortion effect on this dark grey base, now I'd try a slightly different approach. Should this approach fail to produce neat results, I'd paint the next GG in metallics straight away. Each of the AC barrels needed to be darkened to give them a sooty look.

To achieve the gentle darkening I just drybrushed them with black, again with a pre-moistened brush. I hadn't A/B tested the dry/damp brush approach and their results myself, I just went with one approach. Turkina's LB-X AutoCannons and LRM launcher's leading edges were the first ones I worked on.

The Warhawk was almost skipped, until I remembered that yes, it indeed had an LRM rack on the roof to keep the alpha strikes at bay.

Ebon Jaguar's LB-X and its two types of missile launchers each got the same black drybrushing. I was again lamenting that the SRM tips were so tiny I didn't simply dare to paint them red with white tips, the way I had been doing happily on my IWM miniatures.

Now I had the best moment to paint the cockpit canopy I had misread earlier. While checking the reference, I also noticed how I had misread the shape of Turkina's center-middle glass piece. Fixing that one at this point would've made it look a bit weirded so I left it as it was, making the decision mere moments before the paintbrush would've touched the plastic.

For the heat distortion I followed the three-colour-band dabbing approach with curing times in between. It was better than the last one, but only at a very close range.

Now all I had left was the nastification of the hex bases. The victory was near..

Launcher's woodgraininess

Uncle NightShift's woodgrain effect copying attempt

The principle in this method was pretty simply. The base was a white or off-white -painted plastic, that had been scoured with a metal brush before painted for the woodgrain effect. Using different browns and greys (the source video had used black and dark grey) little oil dots were put on the plastic, and all that was blended with strokes going along the woodgrain.

I had no black oil paint, so I chose from my collection. The setup ended up being four browns and light grey as a bonus:

• ABT002 Sepia
• ABT092 Ocher
• AT170 Light Grey
• ABT093 Earth
• ABT130 Dark Mud
  

First oil painting session

The dots I applied with a couple of toothpicks, I started by doing this on one end plank. Maybe I could've been fine with fewer dots, but my previous dot filtering attempt was from a couple of years ago, and then I was tweaking a camouflaged surface. This time I was trying to get something from nothing instead.

After a few swipes I had a light brown plank. I added a couple of darker dots and blended them, as I felt this plank a bit too monotonous. The best thing with oil paints was always that if the result didn't satisfy, it was so very easy to tweak more.

 

Anyway, I wasn't disappointed in how my first wooden plank looked like, or how painting it with oil paints went. I proceeded to paint the next beams, one by one.

At this point I had to decide what I was actually going for. Either all the wooden parts would be as alike as I could manage, or they'd be whatever and the frame was built of those wood parts that the assembler(s) had available. I decided to go with the "a poor builder cannot afford to be picky" and painted just about all of them in a different way.

Amazingly I got just about the full frame painted in one longer painting session. That rocket packet -side's bottom vertical one was the bit I held on to, so that was going to be painted when the others were at least touch-try. This wet paint was pretty shiny, but I was quite pleased with the overall look already.

Two days later the shininess had gone down a bit, but it wasn't dry by any measure. I wanted to share this photo, as it showed the woodgrain effect much better.

I was thinking of later using one of the darkest paints and then paint some knots as littledots, and the branch shapas as little < angles. With a gentle blending they could bring more woodness into this. We'd see later if I got that excited about this idea.

Second oil painting session

A week later I painted the missing extreme ends' ground-facing bits. The original paintjob was still not completely dry, but it was ok for this work.

This time I limited my paints to three: Earth; Dark Mud; Sepia. The wood beams I painted with the earth and dark mud dots, then added here and there some random sepia dots and the aforementioned angles. With pieces as narrow as these, the < . > shapes didn't survive in the way I hoped. I'd try that trick again later with larger surfaces.

 

Now it was all painted, and I left it in the box in the sauna to dry for a week. Maybe for two weeks, even.

With enough time passed I coated my wooden setup with the super matt varnish. Maybe I'd need to use satin varnish instead for a more natural look. At least the oils were now protected.

 

Blood Spirit Alpha - bases

Hexed ground

As we all knew, flat black bases didn't suffice. If my mud goo sets were still alive, they were a potential source to be mixed with the ballast. Ballast as it was wasn't going to be the base I wanted, even if it somehow fit the desert theme. Maybe I could consider something I did for Morgan Kell's Archer.

White glue and ballast

First step was to spread white glue over the ground, and let it to set for a short moment. Then I sprinkled Woodland Scenics' ballast on that. There were some odd bits of foliage in my mix, so some unplanned greenery got added.

Then, predictably, I let them to dry for a while.

Oiling the terrain

To make the terrain less schorched desert -like, I painted over it with Abteilung's Earth (ABT093) and then added some random stains of thinned down Industrial Earth (ABT090).

Once again I left my Star into the sauna to flash after I was done with the oily mess. Despite being mostly dry the oil paint glistened for a bunch of days.

There were some trash nuggets flowing over the edges and those I'd clean up before packing the minis away. Nothing larger was going to happen at this point, anyway, these were done.

Blood Spirit Alpha - sepia attack

Pin washing

This section was going to be pretty much the same as in the previous ones: I made a thin wash with Abteilung's Sepia to enhance the panel lines and bring the tans and reds together a bit. I started with the Mediums in the back row, where it showed how my wash was a bit thinner there than the portion I applied on the front row's Light Omnis.

After the oil paint had flashed in the sauna overnight, I cleaned up the worst excesses. Then I returned them in the sauna for the thinner to evaporate. Now the key difference between the photo above and the one below was that they were taken under different lights, thanks to the other cat had reserved my usual table corner as her napping place.

After another night-day cycle inside the unheated sauna the minis were ready for the next step. I hadn't quite made up my mind on what that actually was, but my options were pretty much narrowed down to two paths.

Mist Lynx's Galaxy emblem might require a thin line of off-white along the bottom edge of the octagon, the red drop had gone too far low. In the same way the Clan emblem's droplet had too low contrast after drying, even if it stood out more while wet.

I properly liked the way the Shadow Cat's Gauss Rifle looked like now, nicely worn. While writing this I was thinking very hard if I should attempt to do the heat-distortion with the washes or not. The dark grey surface just didn't sound like a fruitful canvas.

Like I said earlier, Ice Ferret's oil wash had had a much subtler effect than most others.

Stormcrow's top torso lines would've benefited from some masking instead of pure freehanding. This was another thing that just didn't come to me while working on it.

My Kit Fox had a nicely worn look on it now, and the LB-5X had a neat aged effect, despite the mold line. This one had a bandlike window that worried me to no end. Maybe something could be saved by highlighting the sensor packet under the cap in the middle of the forehead, something like a yellowish lens that wouldn't get confused with the actual viewport.

Stormcrow and Viper bathing in oil

Final tweaks

Before getting to the oils I did some last minute changes to my minis. The Stormcrow got a few blue marks onto its back as it had nothing there before. Viper's fists were painted dark grey for variety and those I also drybrushed with lighter grey, and then I re-repainted the AMS dome blue because I didn't like the unpainted steel there that much.

While working on these paints I also painted the hex bases so that the grey mess wouldn't catch my eyes constantly. For both minis I painted the front hex edges in blue, the others in dark grey.

Pin washes

Somehow I didn't feel like playing with the gloss varnish on the minis, I just sat the pieces on the crappy painter's tape I had for extra holding spots and pretty much covered them with Abteilung's Sepia.

On the first run I cleaned up what was cleanable with an eyeful. As usual, the photos revealed what I had missed but I rarely declared perfect results after just one run.

All this took an hour. We were at 2h 20mins now.

Panzer IV weathering strikes back

Oiliness, part 2

I wasn't quite done with the oil paints earlier, but I hadn't wanted to start making more of a mess on the tank before getting the tracks on. Now I got out of my self-setup holding area toward glory.

Exhaust pipe and track armour

This tank's exhaust pipe needed some life on it. Trying it the last time I wasn't too happy with the splotchy effect, so this time I decided to skip it. I made a mess of irregular splotches with my dark rust (ABT070) wash.

While I had some excess wash left, I used it here and there on the inside of the track armour. Unplanned, irregular patches of colour.

Already the next day I did the same but with fresher rust (ABT060 Light Rust) first as little obscure dots, which I then blended with a poking motion. In this photo the paint was still fresh, but it did show the variety already somehow, despite the reflections.

Now I had to let it sit still for a few days. Also, before cleaning up my wash, I used it very lightly on the track armour.

Earthy paint

I had already spread some earthlike thin oil paint on the lower parts of the Panzerwanne. Now I made some more of it and poked that into the holes and gaps in the tracks and on some select spots on the tank itself. Of the latter parts I blended the stuff pretty heavily, as I didn't intend to leave clearly noticeable brown stains on the deck of my tank but to add tonal variety to the practically one-colour paintjob.

This rear shot now showed that I finally remembered to paint the rear reflector red (VMA 72710 Bloody Red). In the end that single bit would be the only glossy part of the build.

My final shot also showed the freshly painted light rust on the track armour. My actual goal with this photo was to get a nicer look at the freshyl earthified tracks.

The jack, highlights and flakes

Soooo yeah, I had forgotten the jack repeatedly, so now I build and painted it in short order (black primer, then dark grey) but the wooden handle didn't make it to this photo. As I wasn't smart earlier - or I thought I was and was gravely mistaken - it wasn't really installable with its neat clamps without multiple repaintings all around. The jack was going to just lie there on its own, on a fender.

For the wooden handle I used just one paint, AK1108 Hull Red, that I had used for wood before. I didn't intend to try the woodgrain on a lonely piece anymore and I recognized making this same choice before.

Gentle chipping and bolthead highlighing

I thought I'd do a few chips  only, and one of the best places for it was the track armour's steel bit. To get the first layer of these chips I mixed something like 40% of sand (VMA 71075 Sand(Ivory)) into some sandy yellow.

In addition to the steel bit in the front I made some scratches into the rear plate's Balkenkreuz box but not too many places called my attention for scratches. Somehow I remembered one of Uncle Nightshift's details and I used the same paint to highlight a bunch (read: all) of the topside bolts and whatnot, like those handles above the turret's side hatches and so on.

 

While the lighter bits were drying I mixed my well-liked dark grey + red for the deeper gouges and went for it. There weren't that many of these, I really didn't want to make a worn tank this time around.

In the front end I changed my mind a bit and made a few more markings after all, thinking that they were driving into things with the limited visibility they had. Still, not many of those, mostly to the easily stone-bumped things like the drive sprocket's protectors and the lower front edges. Maybe I was a bit overcautious compared to what may have been the everyday life in Northern Africa.

This felt like the paintjob was pretty much done now.

Dullcoat and satin touch-ups

After a couple of days for the paint to dry I applied varnish (AK183 Ultra Matt Varnish) to seal it for the final touches. These photos were taken before all of it was dry yet. The end was, again, near.

Both the red reflector and the driver's periscope's visible glass part (where I didn't paint a lighter reflection along the bottom edge) got a gloss varnish (Vallejo 70510) treatment, and the unpainted metal pieces got some satin varnish (Vallejo 60522) with the thought that they'd reflect light a bit differently than the painted tank itself.

Olio macchinato

For some additional messiness I made some nasty-looking oil (ABT160 Engine Grease) and used it to make it look like someone spilled some oil over the jack, then on one of the roadwheel hubs, and as some crap flowing out of the small hatches in the side of the Panzerwanne. Just to add a bit of variety again.

Pigments to top it all

Now I used some light sand from my well-aged Tamiya Weathering Master A set with the applicator's brush in various places. I mostly used it in the lower hull and especially on the roadwheels. Did it stand out nicely or did I apply it wrong? We'd see later.

Very predictably I made use of my Carbon Black pigments with the thinner and used the very thin wash on the muzzle brake, on the MG tips and obviously also on the exhaust pipe.

Was it done now? What a disturbing thought, as I had just bought it a moment ago.