A couple of mine

Location : St.Ives, Cambridgeshire

A couple of my projects

Albatros D.Va - 1/48

A couple of mine AlbatrosDV3

and a re-work of the Airfix Buccaneer cockpit, starting with this....

A couple of mine Bucc002

and ending up, so far, with this...

A couple of mine Bucc018

but I prefer making 'targets'!...like this

A couple of mine PA029

Location : stoke on trent Spotter Watch Member : no

those are fantastic and the tank is stunning. I have got 3 tamyia military landrovers still boxed. i have just been inspired to do them after my lynx im building. Diaramas i think Smile

. what scale is the tank?

Location : ely Spotter Watch Member : nope

Very nice, I only realy do tanks now and again to practice diferent weathering stuff on them. So I tend to go all out over the top on the mud and rust.

Subject: Re: A couple of mine 2009-09-08, 02:30

The work on the Bucc cockpit is amazing! I'd love to be able to do something like that on my AC-130!

Never really tried out tanks either, but looking at yours, I'm feeling tempted!

Location : St.Ives, Cambridgeshire

Thanks fellas A couple of mine 352546

the tank, a German WWII era Panzer IV, is 1/35 or for non-modellers a 6 foot man is about as long as your thumb.

I do like making aircraft but find with AFV's you can let your artistic tendencies rampage a little more e.g all the markings on the tank are handpainted.

Ben, it's not hard to scratchbuild, I guess I was brought up in the pre- resin and photo etch era when you had to. Having excellent references are key and modellers of today are blessed with all sorts of good stuff these days A couple of mine 711487

Try to search out a book called Scale Model Aircraft in Plastic Card by Harry Woodman, the models are well outdated but the principles of building them remain the same.

Andrew

Location : stoke on trent Spotter Watch Member : no

I have started to build a land rover now as i could not get in to the Lynx build if you get what i mean. Its the tamyia 1/35 'pink panther' but im doing it green. Im going to weather this and make some sort of muddy jungle type diarama i think.

I have a couple of questions. How did you do the mud on the tracks? it looks like real dirt. I have had a go with doing colour washes to high light the details etc but never very successfully. what should i be doing to do it properly?

thanks for any help.

Location : ely Spotter Watch Member : nope

Hi there
If its of any use, the few tanks that I have done I have used the mig productions weathering set which comprises of a jar of resin and various pigments to get different colours of dirt. If you mix in sand then you will get a grainy efect. The resin dries rock hard so I would try it on a scrap peice of card or plastic first. The pigments are also good for smoke, rust and dust.

Hope this helps a bit

Location : ely Spotter Watch Member : nope

I only realy do tanks to try out different weathering products, but hey they are good to do now and again

Location : stoke on trent Spotter Watch Member : no

thanks for the info. i will look into that product.

excellent model also.

Location : St.Ives, Cambridgeshire

The mud is from river silt dried then seived until I got the really fine stuff. I mixed that with PVA glue and some earth pigments to kill the gloss of the PVA.

Regarding washes, if you look at my tank carefully you can make out where I've done lowlights and highlights. You're after artificially increasing what's naturally occurring. This is done by spraying the vehicle with your paint mix, then adding a lighter colour to the mix and only spraying that on the top surfaces. A darker mix of the original paint can go behind the suspension units. What I've done then is lighten the highest edges (e.g that framework around the drivers hatch) with progressively lighter mixes of oil paint, Naples yellow + white in this case. It's mixed very dry and just very lightly brushed on. The shadows get a wash of diluted Raw Umber oil paint.

Aircraft modellers do a similar thing by lightening the centres of panels. The skill there is fading it together so it looks as if it's not there.....if that makes sense.

When I get to the weathering stage, I always try to make up a little story - where are we, how old is the subject, how much combat might it have seen, what time of year is it etc etc If you have that 'vision' in your head I find it easier to select the right paints etc.

If you want to start using earth coloured pigments, pop down to your nearest art shop and get some artists pastels, grind them to dust and start applying. They're suprisingly adhesive.

Nice Elefant Shaun BTW.

Cheers- Andrew