Showing posts with label British. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British. Show all posts

Saturday, 27 September 2014

AS-90 in Iraq - 1/35 Trumpeter

Good day to you people. Hope you readers having a good day and all are good. 

As you all aware, I'm building a fleet of SPG and this is my final entry on the line. The fleet is a total of 7 SPGs consisting the the Dana, Type 99, Pzh2000, AuF1, K9, 2s19 Msta and this AS-90. 

This is the only kit of this kit available in 1/35 scale. Since it's release, a lot of sites including Armorama has reviewed this gal so I will not be saying anything about the quality of this kit. Although I can say this - even though it's old, it's a pretty good kit.

I was lucky enough to get it for £15 posted including the metal barrel with the sagged recoil sleeve. I also indulged myself with a Eduard upgrade set. I didn't spent money on the second set which consisted of the basket on top and the grilles. I thought it would be waste of £7. 

As you all know, the British Army desert colour is something that is very hard to paint and there is no exact shade available out there. So using XF-59 desert yellow as a base, I decided to play around with the high light and shadow as I know this will be a monotone vehicle anyway. Four other colours were used to play around with the highlights and shadows - XF-68 Nato Brown, XF-72 JGSDF Brown, XF-57 Buff and XF-55 Deck Tan. I admit I put in more brown than I'd like to admit and it makes the paint very brown in hue but I kinda like it. You can see the visible brown hue along the edge of the bottom of the turret and the upper hull. 

For the weathering, I wanted to show it used well enough from the strong offensive as we have seen during the Iraqi war. I also wanted to show a lot of sand and dusts on it to depict a vehicle going through the very harsh desert environment. 

I didn't have any kind of sand colour pigments so after pondering, I decided to go for 2 tubs of pigments from Pinnacle Modelling supplies and there were fantastic. I bought a tub of Desert Sand which is of a darker colour with a brown hue to depict the deeper part of the desert and another tub of Light Sand which is a typical sand colour but not as yellowish as beach sand.

The chipping colour is from AMMO and I actually enjoy that colour rather than the usual Vallejo German Black Brown ( or whatever it is called exactly). The Streakings colour are made from Oil paint and I used Serpia Brown, Burnet Umber and AK Streaking for DAK vehicle. 

The stowage comes from the Tamiya US military set along with some pouches I found lying around. The big tarp was made from a big cut out of aluminium foil, folded nicely and pressed along the edge of the stowage basket and then painted.


I'm vary satisfied with what I did, albeit it could look better but still, I'm happy.
It's time for the photos - 
(Just click on the smaller ones and they will pop out ) 





The running gears -




The Stowage on board -
The machine gun -
The massive amount of fuel spillage -
The streakings -


 


The dusts and numerous chippings from severe usage -






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










And as usual from me, the Gary Wintin Shot  -


Well, that's all I can say about this. As you all know, my patience is my bane so the usual hiccups are met but nothing I can complain. I could have done a better jobs on colouring the periscopes, some of the P.E works and also on some of the over- and under-sprays but at least it is presentable. 

Ohhhkay, maybe I have one complain. I have no idea what in heaven happened underneath the exhuast marks. I didn't see it until I took photo of the exhaust. Just what are those squiggly lines underneath the black soot? Grrrrrr, it's pissing me off to see them. 

Oh and another thing I have to nit pick is that since I cannot find any information about this gal during the Iraq war except 3 photo of it in action, I had to wing it with the decals and I didn't know if I should put on the CIP panels or anything so that's another thing I didn't put on as I couldn't be bothered. That annoyed me but let's just say I took a artistic license hesitantly on this one.

Apart from that two fact about those squiggly lines, this was a very enjoyable build. I am more than proud to have this on my shelf. Now I can focus on other fleet such as SPAAG or IFV or wheeled vehicle. We will see. 

Until next time. 
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Sunday, 2 February 2014

Tamiya 1/35 Challenger 2

Hello All and all hello ...

Well, as if I haven't been posting too much finished stuffs lately, here comes yet another from me ( and I'm sorry to spam you again ).

To be honest, I finished this since early December but this baby was meant to enter the stupid HLJ 2013 plamo contest and they have this one stupid rule that we cannot let anyone see nor post anything about our entry on any social network so I couldn't blog the wip nor the finished model until the end of the official date. The contest ended since Jan 31 so I guess I can start posting this now ( screw it, even if I can't, I'm posting this .. don't wanna wait any more.. stupid rule )

Anyway, we have here one of the best ( if not the best ) MBT in the world and the kit is no less then Tamiya. I have build both Tamiya and Trumpeter kits for this version and I have to admit, the Tamiya version is really something else. Solid build, clear part, crisply moulded and full of details albeit without the anti slip texture. I couldn't decide if I should put on the anti-slip or not and after doing much research, I noticed that the anti-slip texture on the Challey is not that rough and I didn't want to risk doing over-scaled texture on my model so I opted out of doing it ( I was even going to buy a Citadel texture spray can for this ).

As every one know, the colour of the Challey2 is something that is very hard to describe and narrow down ( akin to the IDF armour colour) so I really had no idea how to go about painting it at first. I finally decide to play with high light and shadow since this is a monotone vehicle so I used Desert Yellow, Dark Yellow and Buff and mix them up accordingly to play around with the shade.

When looking around on the internet for references, I came about this quite popular photo -

and I was inspired to put my Challey in a situation like this. Just like this photo, I wanted to show my Challey as a very used up and banged up fighting on the harsh desert and one side of the turret more scratched up due to the intense battles.

The streakings are done by oil - yellow orche and serpia yellow. I have a hard time streaking with brush so all I did was draw a very very tiny line and rub it down with my fingers. I gave it a first wash of Flory Models sand wash for the collected sands and MIG production neutral wash for the grimy look. MIG Production Beach sand was mixed with a dark toner of yellow pastel that I have in my tools to tone down the bright beach looking sand.

It's time for the photos - 
(If you think some are small, just click on them ) 





Close ups of the wheels -








The two Crew members -

Some shots of the Spilled fuel I put on -



The optics -


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











And as usual from me -

Well, that's about as much I can sum up about the build. 
As much as I really love how this came out, I am very unhappy of my impatience (I guess my impatience is my bane ) that leads to some of the badly done chips as evident from the photo ( not that bad far away but really bad close up). I am seriously pissed off at myself to realizing too late that I should have give the figures a wash to bring out the myriad of details on the uniforms. Another late realization is that I painted the little sight on top of the barrel all too wrong. I do love the streakings though.

Thank you guys for always supporting me. Thank you dear readers for your patronage as well.

Until Next time
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