Showing posts with label WW2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WW2. Show all posts

Monday, 19 October 2015

7TP in September Campaign - 3rd Diorama in Life

Quite some times ago ( probably back in 2013 ), I sent my good friend and a very talented modeller Thanos [check out his Youtube channel] two copies ( or was it one? I cannot remember well) of extra weathering magazines I had lying around. Thanos was starting into weathering and I sent him the books so as to help him with weathering.

It was a very small gesture but Thanos was over-whelmed by it and he sent me a back a rather unique tank model. I call it unique because it's a kind of vehicle I would never buy by myself.

Thanos sent me a 1/35 Polish 7TP light tank with the twin turret from Mirage Hobby. I admit I am not into light tanks but since Thanos was kind enough to send me this, I decided to give this my best and decided to make a diorama out of it.

Yes, this is one of the last few models I finished before I had to leave the UK and return to this god forsaken country called Burma which I am still stuck even until now as I am figuring out my next move as in where to go and how to go so ( go as in migrate ).

This quite old yet lovely model was painted by a variety of paints and paint brands. I cannot remember exactly which paint exactly but here is a break down as much as I can remember, 
I used Olive Green mixed with a very small amount of tan to get a very light olive green. I also put on thin clear green on top once dried for some tonal variety. 
I used Red brown but I mixed with something which I cannot remember to get a different tone from the German three tone.
For the dark yellow base, I used Dark yellow BUT i put on a layer of thin Clear Yellow on top to give it more richness and make the colours more yellow.

For the weathering, I tried my best to keep with the summer period of Europe, a dry and dusty look with grasses and flowers. The dio idea is that the 7TP is coming up on an embankment to a forest road/path. I don't know if that even looks like that LOL. 


This is one of the few kits that I am absolutely happy with what I did. I did have to nitpick about some boo-boos but the enjoyment and seeing it finished far weight the boo-boos
It's time for the photos - 
(Just click on the smaller ones and they will pop out )







Some close ups on the vehicle itself -






Some close ups on the ground work -





And as usual, my show case photos from various angles -

 








Since this is a vehicle with two turrents and two guns, I cannot do my signature Gary Wintin shot ... how sad :(.....

The vehicle itself just looks lovely and I'm really happy with how this turns out. The only thing I am not happy about this build is the lack of track marks on the ground. I tried to make track marks but subsequent ground works and stuffs has rendered my works on the track marks null. I need to practice more.

 This is another milestone in my skills, especially in  making diorama and bases. 

This is one baby I will be proud to have on my shelf as this is a dear gift from Thanos and I will never sell any gift kits from my friends. Plus, this is one of the few kits I managed to finished before leaving the United Kingdom so this baby hold a special meaning to my heart. 

If you guys see anything that I need to improve with my diorama building skills, Please do leave some C&C. Thank you very much. 

Until next time. 

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Thursday, 18 December 2014

Trumpeter 1/35 JS-4; A low-slung beauty

Good day people. It's almost Christmas. Hope you guys are done with xmas shopping and ready to exchange gifts.

I'm sure you all are aware that I am building a quick dual build of the JS-4 and the KV-5. Well, I have finished both of them. I planned to do a finished post for each separately and since I have already posted about the KV-5, here's the JS-4.

For a detail review of the kit, please refer to my review post I made for this - LINK.

I made a full account of the W.I.P in the previous posts and you are welcome to look over at them if you are curious about how well the kit goes together. Actually, let me make a list here for the Work in Progress posts -
Part 3

The kit is built out of the box except for just one small thing, The gun is from my Panda Hobby's Obj 279. I love how the JS-4 look but I really think the original 122mm gun make it look less intimidating so I heck off the 130mm gun from Obj 279, shortened it a little bit and put it on and I never regretted it. 

I bought Painting Guide for AFV by José Luis Lopez Ruiz and after reading the book cover to cover once, I decided to apply the unique Black and White technique. I misted my own mix of green on this which include quite a bit of different shades of green including Olive Drab. After the initial misting, I realize I messed up the mix so I had to mist another layer of green as my first layer was too yellowish. Again, I wasn't happy with the green I had to apply another pure green to blend all the colours. I put on too much green on top of the B&W so its kinda not that obvious any more but you can still see the effect. Here's a shot of the B&W layer -

Following a blast of pledge gloss floor wax, I pin wash with the colour Burnt Umber and used Naples yellow, Cobalt blue, white and a very small amount of black oil paints to blend all the colours in.

For the weathering, since this was an actual vehicle, I wanted to show it with some weathering to depict a used vehicle ( trials, exercises and what-have-you ). I put chippings all around and decided to put some rust streakings out of some those chips and decided to put on collected dusts on some nooks and crannies and the same dust effects on the wheels and tracks.

This is one of the few kits that I am absolutely happy with what I did. I did have to nitpick about some boo-boos but the enjoyment and seeing it finished far weight the boo-boos
It's time for the photos - 
(Just click on the smaller ones and they will pop out )






The running gears -





Some random close ups -

 




And as usual, my show case photos from various angles -



 

 




 


And here it is, side by side with the KV-5,


The vehicle itself just looks lovely and I'm really happy with how this turns out. This is a milestone in my skills in highlights, contrasts and oil filtering/fading and to mention a very valuable test piece for the B&W technique. This is one baby I will be proud to have on my shelf or another one's shelf should anybody would buy it as I have plans to sell it.

Speaking of selling, I am selling some of my built models so if any of you are interested, shoot me an offer on ebay -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/romance6688
Internationals are welcomed as well but most likely have to be communicated via email and paypal as I did not turn on international shipping on ebay. So shoot me an offer on ebay or from email if anybody's interested.
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