1/56 scale Panzerkampfwagen B1/B2 740(f)

 Here is Italeri Official Account / Warlord Games 1/56 scale Char in German service, otherwise known as the Panzerkampfwagen B1/B2 740(f). Overall, this was a fairly good kit with a lot of options. My only issues were that it seems a little undersized and the large rear fuel tank had fit issues and needed filling and sanding. This is almost entirely out of box, except for the folded tarp and oversized chain (not a great idea to put a lot of external stowage on a flame-throwing AFV!).

It's painted using Tamiya acrylics for the vehicle paint and Vallejo acrylics for any details, then an oil filter was applied overall, followed by a pin wash. Areas of heavy dirt, soot, and the rusty exhaust were done by dry blending oils (as well as an enamel wash for the exhaust). Mud splatter and streaked grime are all acrylics.

1/56 scale Soviet KV-1/2 Tank

 Warlord Games/ Italeri Official Account 1/56 scale KV-1/2 Soviet Tank

Soooo I finished this model back in May however, I had an absolute hell of time attempting to photograph it. Luckily, with the help of the Night Shift youtube channel (you should sub, he's great), I was able to diagnose the problem as the wrong color temperature light bulb. The build itself is pretty out of the box, with the exception of heavy steel texturing on both turrets.

I really wanted this tank to have a partially worn whitewash finish, as if the crew were clambering all over the tank throughout the long, cold Russian winter. As such, I just did a base color of Soviet Green, with some details like the MGs picked out. I debated about whether to include stowage or not, ultimately deciding against it since I wanted this vehicle to look very spartan, as lacking in supplies as its crew.

All the whitewash is done by first applying a blue oil filter on the areas where the whitewash is heaviest. After that was thoroughly cured, I applied white oil paint and began dryblending it, working from heavier to lighter areas. After *that* was thoroughly cured, I added soot, smoke, and dried dirt with oils. And after *that* was thoroughly cured, I added the mud and dirt splatter with various acrylics.

1/56 scale Italeri/Warlord FlammHetzer

Continuing with the recent cavalcade of AFVs, this is the completed Italeri/WG 1/56 scale FlammHetzer. To date, this was the most rewarding tanks I've assembled from Warlord. The detailing is very accurate (with the exception of the driver's vision slit being a little too big) and the subject matter is really unique. My only gripe was that, normally, small portions of the hull need to be cut away to insert the pins for the side skirts - a process that's laborious and can easily lead to a mistake. To make mine more realistic, each section apart and I cut the pins off the back of each bracket. While this does make the skirts more fragile, it looks better overall.

Since this will be paired with the Rubicon Sdkfz 250 on the gaming table, I went with a similar color scheme of hard-edged Tamiya Buff/Yellow-Green, Red Brown, and Flat Green. Since I didn't have access to my hairspray at the time, I did all the chipping and worn paint effects with a brush. Washes and filters were done with oil paints and mud spatter effects were done with acrylics. 

This is also somewhat of a departure from my normal builds in that I refused to put virtually any stowage on. I really just wanted the vehicle itself to be the main focus. 

 

 

1/56 scale Warlord FlakHetzer

I'm still trying to adapt to my new lighting setup, so here's the first test photos featuring the completed Italeri/Warlord 1/56 scale Hetzer mit 2cm flak. Not having much material to go on, I opted for a hard-edged three color camouflage scheme. Unlike many of my previous builds, all the chipping is done with a brush. I wanted the flak gun to look like it had just rolled off the assembly line to be thrown inside the chassis with no painting at the factory, so I painted it a red oxide primer color. The netting is medical gauze, unrolled and lightly misted with green spray paint, before being wetted down with PVA glue and water.

 

Italeri 1/56 "Last Stand" King Tiger

So, I acquired this Italeri King Tiger as a tournament prize ages ago, promptly built it.....and then it sat in my paint queue for over a year. To be honest, I wasn't really sure what direction to go with this, as I already had a resin "Henschel" King Tiger in my inventory, which is big and terrifying, and two seemed like overkill. This is also slightly undersized for the scale (the Panther I posted yesterday is actually slightly taller and beefier in general), the details aren't really correct in some places, and the molded-on zimmerit is.......lacking, or entirely absent in certain areas where it should be (the mantlet and turret rear stand out). I scribed some quick (and not very good) zimmerit lines and then sanded and cut into many areas of the zimmerit to make it appear that the paste was flaking off.

Finally, I decided to hell with it and threw together this "last stand" King Tiger. Since the model itself is a little anachronistic, I made the backstory that this was pulled from a depot somewhere in the final days of the Third Reich and given a quick painting of insignia. As usual, I primed in red oxide, put down a coat of hairspray for chipping, and then airbrushing Tamiya 50/50 Yellow-Green and Dark Yellow. I then did the chipping in the non-coated areas and, to simulate wear on the zimmerit, lined the edges and areas of heavy use by using the basecoat color with some white mixed in. As I mentioned, I wanted this to look like someone had handpainted on the insignia with a brush, so that's what I did - no decals here! I added streaks and rings on the upper hull to simulate where a paintcan was laid. 

After finishing detail and track painting, I sealed the model and then gave it an overall dark brown oil filter. Normally, I use a yellow/light umber filter on dunkelgelb vehicles, but I really want this to look dirty, so it is noticeably darker than most of my German AFVs. Once dry, I then added successive darker washes to the zimmerit towards the bottom to simulate dirt and mud buildup in the crevices, as well as dry blending light umber and brown oils in the deck surfaces. I washed the tracks with AK Track Wash, hit the lower hull and track areas with Vallejo European Mud, and then loaded an old toothbrush with Vallejo European Splash Mud, Vallejo Medium Olive, and Secret Weapon Caked Dirt and flicked it to create the splatter effect. Rusty mufflers were done using Vallejo Rust Texture, overpainted with successive oil filters of red, orange, and finally yellow - this creates an oxidized texture without the use of dry pigments. Finally, I painted all the viewports and the headlight and gave them a gloss coat. 

 In closing, is this entirely historically accurate! Definitely not! But it was something fun and a good base to test out some new techniques. 

1/56 Panther repaint

 

I'm back with some new (old) models, this time a repaint of the Italeri 1/56 scale Panther with anti-air armor I completed several years ago. I was never really happy with the paintjob and weathering I did and decided to give it a new lease on life. 

I didn't want to go to all the work of stripping the entire thing down to primer, so I decided to simply overpaint everything. I started by adding chipping around worn edges, repainting the tools, and adding a little more depth to the tank commander figure using acrylics. Once that was done and sealed, I started by giving the tracks an overall wash using AK enamel track wash, and then picked out worn metallic parts with pencil lead. I started on the oil weathering by applying a white filter over the entire model and, once that had dried, doing a much deeper wash of white oil paint. This left the whitewash with a semi-transparent layer overall to represent a weathered finish but, wanting to keep the whitewash heavier in areas that had less wear and exposure to the elements, I began dry blending white oil paint into crevices. You can see a good example of this on the glacis plate under the MG mount and near the track covers. 

I then applied a detail wash of brown, green, and black oils (the colors shift darker lower on the hull to represent mud and heavier weathering kicked up by travel). As rusty as the previous weathering had been, I wanted a darker tone to the armor panels and mufflers so applied an overall wash of dark umber and then applied multiple filters of red, orange, and finally yellow oils. With the pigment load getting higher and higher, this creates the "dusty" oxidized effect without having to use dry pigments. 

Finally came mud. For this I used Vallejo European Mud, focusing on the track areas, rear hull, and lower glacis. Once dry, I loaded on old toothbrush with paint and "flicked" it over the lower hull to create splash effects, using Vallejo European Splash Mud, Vallejo Dark Olive, and Secret Weapon Caked Dirt. 

On The Prowl - SS 'Wiking' Tiger I

This is the last of the 1/56 scale AFVs in my paint queue - a stripped and repainted Italeri Tiger I. This kit is mostly out-of-the-box, except that I added an AA machine-gun mount, MG42, and a metal tank commander from Warlord. The MG mount itself is just a piece of 24ga wire, bent back upon itself, then bent horizontally at the front and back, and superglued in place. The tank commander's torso is actually an Italian crew with a German headswap. I used the Italian torso because I wanted to model the crewman wearing SS camouflage coveralls in the Plane Tree scheme.

Painting the tank itself was mostly an exercise in just trying new techniques - zenithal highlights, hairspray chipping, a bit heavier oil rendering than I normally do, and some camouflage netting. It is primed in Krylon Red Oxide, then just giving zenithal highlights with an airbrush with VMC Old Rose, after which it was sealed and hairspray was applied. The basecoat is Tamiya 50/50 Dark Yellow and Yellow Green, with wide diagonal bands of Tamiya Red Brown. Details are picked out in VMC paints.

The tracks are done differently than I normally do them. I primed them in Krylon Flat Grey Primer, then washed them directly with some cheap Burnt Umber thinned down with Vallejo Glaze Medium. I then drybrushed them in VMC Oily Steel and washed them again with Vallejo European Dirt. While I like the dusty effect of this method, I don't think it's dark enough and I'll be trying an AK Interactive Enamel track wash next time.

The netting is simply medical gauze, unrolled and misted with Rustoleum Camouflage Olive. Once dry, these were cut to size and dunked in a 50/50 mix of water and white glue and laid on the tank. To give the appearance of "weight" to the netting, I dipped an old brush in the mix and used that to manipulate the gauze into place, pushing it down and around contortions. It's a nice effect and adds some visual interest to a rather bland tank.