Late War Tiger II |
Dragon, 1/35 scale |
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by Dmitry E. Kiyatkin |
The full
range of MIG Pigments is available online from Mission Models
Introduction
This King Tiger is supposed to represent a vehicle assembled from a
collection of parts available at the very end of the war. In truth,
the model is not based on any historical evidence and was simply
built as a painting and weathering experiment with German dark
yellow scheme.
The base kit is Tamiya 1/35 scale Tiger II. Photoetched metal parts
came from Lion Roar and metal tool clamps from the Aber set. The
tracks are individual plastic link-to-link tracks from an Asian
company name of which now eludes me.
The front drive wheel is from
Friulmodel.
Construction
Construction was relatively
simple. Mr. Surfacer was used. Model was painted with Tamiya Dark
Yellow acrylic mixed by eye with Buff. Several filters of yellow and
brown oil gave the finish a satin look and started the weathering
process.
Click the thumbnails below to view additional images:
As always the finishing is
complicated by many techniques that are merged in the final result,
so I only want to mention two aspects of weathering that I learned
while finishing this model: (1) how to make yellow armor plate look
exciting and (2) how to easily create oil stains.
Any single color vehicle often presents a finishing challenge - how
to make the model interesting and naturally dirty looking without
going overboard? As mentioned before I started with a filter (**you
can see the change from Pic 26 to 28 below**).
Click the thumbnails below to view additional images:
Then a heavy wash of brown oils
mixed with turpenoid. I overdid this and had to blend in some yellow
and light brown oils to tone down the effect of the wash. Scratched
were done with a small sable brush and colors of enamel.
The advantage to this method is
that you can remove the “bad” unsuccessful scratches with a clean
damp brush. I think a person with poor vision is actually better at
applying random, tiny scratches to the large flat surfaces. These
represent bullet and stone impacts.
Now the surface look better, but still unrealistic.
It needs dirt and mud. For that I
used very thin, “wash-like”, mix of Burned Umber enamel and applied
it in a tapping motion with a small brush. This was applied to the
flat surfaces, focusing on areas where dirt would accumulate. The
paint is hard to see before it dries, but it has a cumulative
effect. Some blending and removal of paint with thinner damp brush
can be helpful. This is easy to do, just use a small brush and do
not be afraid. This method also blends the scratches to the rest of
the finish. This method was also used to mimic some rain marks.
Once this is done, I used a large
flat brush very slightly damp with thinner to gently blend some of
this effect.
Now things look better, but still more can be done. I applied a thin
layer of light earth pigments all over and tried to remove most of
it with a dry brush and then my finger and small makeup sponge for
the harder to reach areas. This adds an extra level of fine dirt in
the depressions created with Mr. Surfacer.
At this point I wanted to apply splash marks. I used an old stubby
brush, dipped into thick mix of pigments and turpeniod, and flicked
the hairs to make the splashes. This is pretty realistic, but hard
to control on the upper hull areas. So I cut a ½ inch round whole in
a 4x6 in index card and used this to direct where I wanted the
splashed to go. I used 3 shades of earth pigments for this affect. A
bonus is that “unsuccessful” or excessive drops can be wiped off
with a small dry brush actually adding some more variation to the
finish. See the difference between the photo two above compared to
the one below
I used thinned oils and enamels
for oil stains and always got mixed results with much effort. This
time I mixed 1:1 Tamiya Flat Black and ModelMaster gloss finish. The
mix looks slightly bluish in color, but dries black. The good thing
about this mixture is that it seems to flow off the small brush and
form oil stains on a flat surface.
Click the thumbnails below to view additional images:
The oil paint washes that I used
for stains before, just ran too much and was tough to control. Try
it, it is easy. Only negative thing is that the stains to dry with a
bit of thickness to them, but you really cannot see that.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this was a very
rewarding and educational project and I am looking forward to
finishing my next German subject. Only word of advice I have about
weathering is that you must start on a model you are not very
attacked to and are willing to sacrifice for learning.
Click the thumbnails below to view additional images:
Model, Images and Text
by Dmitry E. Kiyatkin Page Created 14 June, 2006 Page Last Updated
13 June, 2006
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