Another Big tank

[ash]

After a bit of late night, slightly beer fuelled eBay surfing, I woke up to find I had purchased another BNIB Baneblade kit for the not bad price of £40. I then had to track down the bloke who cast up the turret kit I used on the first one, to get another set made, another £10. Getting hold of Tamiya TS sprays proved to be a bit of a bore, I managed to get the same shade of green, but ended up having to settle for a different shade of sand/tan, it's not far off just not as warm a tone as previously used. Various other bits were added in the shape of stowage and cam nets, etc.
Anyway here are some pix, there are still a few bits to finish such as the purity seals that somehow got completely overlooked.

[bruenor]

Vey nice mate!

[jabberwocky]

Great stuff as always, Ash.

[Tim C]

Welcome back again mate, as ever your armoured vehicles never fail to impress me. Awesome work.

[ash]

Thanks guys, here are a few close ups:

[Tim C]

Just great the closeups really show just how much effort has gone into it the damage and the weathering really make this an outstanding piece. I have one of these to do so am interested to know how you achieved this result as a kind of stage by stage process.

[coram]

Excellent.. i'm sure there is a massively different approach to painting vehicles as opposed to minis and like tim i'd be curious to know some tips

All in all i'd say this was a beer night that worked out well worth it, not too many end up like that!

[ash]

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated.
I tend to paint minis with a fair amount of dry-brushing and with the tanks it's more washes and pigments.







Fairly standard start, primed with Halfords matt black primer. Whole tank sprayed Tamiya 'Nato green', then stripes of Tamiya 'Wooden deck tan'.


I redid the front end with more green.



After some selective gloss varnish, decals applied with the aid of Microscale's excellent decal solutions. Once set all the decals received another coat of varnish.

All the recessed areas and around rivets hatches etc got a fairly dark wash of brown oils mixed with some black MIG pigments and white spirit; once dry the whole tank received a wash of raw umber oil paint diluted with white spirit.
This flows really well over the Tamiya spray paint and gloss varnish, whereas a water-based wash would tend to bead. If applied over GW or other acrylic paints I would give the whole model a coat of varnish (purity seal) first to protect the paint from the white spirit. Once dry I lightly dry-brushed some Vallejo 'Buff' & sand colour over the Tan areas of the camo pattern and Vallejo 'Reflective green' & 'Russian uniform WW2' over the 'Nato green'.


Added some camo nets (great for hiding dodgy joins or overlooked moulding lines) and other details.


Mmm . . . for some reason a lot of the pictures refuse to show up.
Anyway, Next came a fair amount of paint chipping. The way I have got into the habit of doing it is to paint the scuffed/chipped areas in the opposite colours to the camo, so in the green areas I paint thre chips a sand colour and in the tan areas I went with a green. Over the top of that I painted a black/brown colour to look like oxidised bare metal. Some of which was lightly drybrushed with 'gun metal', other bits got an attack of the graphite pencil. Since I painted this I have seen another technique (check out the Imperial Armour Model Masterclass book), where the little sponge pieces from blister packs can be used to apply the paint instead of a brush. Personally I think it looks a lot quicker and the effect is a lot better, so next time I'm going to try that method.

[ash]

I find the 'chipping' can take quite a lot of time and after a while get quite tedious , so to prevent rushing I tend to break it up into chunks and do something else in between, like crew, weapons, tracks etc







I gave the whole model a thin wash with Vallejo 'Red leather' to try an match the slightly more warm tone finish of my first Baneblade. The reason for the colour shift was because I couldn't get hold of the same shades of Tamiya TS paint, so went with the nearest I could get. After that I used the same colour wash around rivets etc to simulate rust and finally a liberal dusting with MIG pigments which were then fixed with white spirit, plus loads of mud on the tracks. After reading the FW book I think I'm going to get an airbrush!

[coram]

Thanx for the insight ash... an airbrush is definitely the way forward if you intend to keep the interest in vehicles, go for the best you can afford, none of those naff diffuser types, a wee compressor is essential too