Hello everyone
Welcome back to my blog, or if it's your first visit then just welcome :)
As you might have seen I just "finished" my latest Panther project, still a few things to do, but finished enough. So I have selected my next project, which will be one or more 1/72 Kingtigers from Dragon (I got 3), but think I might just start with one, and try some new things and see how it turns out.
So far no pictures, since I havent really technically done much other than just building them, you might be able to find some pictures of this in some of my older posts.
Prepainting
I would just like to talk abit about the kit before I go on to the painting process. As any other Dragon 1/72 kit, this one is amazing as well, it's easy to build, fits great and the details are awesome considering the scale, and also as usual the zimmerit looks fantastic aswell, probably alot better than I would have been able to make myself. So I would definately recommend this kit to anyone who would like to build a Kingtiger in this scale, you won't regret it.
Painting
I simply started by painting the entire tank a light'ish yellow consisting of Tamiya XF-60 and XF-2. I almost only use Tamiya paints for airbrushing and only Vallejo and Games Workshop colors for brushing.
Next up the Camo Scheme, which I decided should be the Ambush pattern. So I cracked open the XF-58 and XF-64 and went to town, afterwards I added to dots with a brush using the same colors and XF-60 for the sandy dots.
Now I wanted to give the entire tank a brown wash or glaze or whatever you want to call it, and for the purpose I allied myself with some Vallejo Washes (Umber Shade and Necro Black). In hindsight I should probably have given the tank a gloss coat first, which I will try next time.
Bonus Pictures
That's all the work I managed to get done today, next up I think I will fix the brown shade, give everything a coat of gloss, then maybe a darker pin wash followed by a light buff drybrush on the edges of everything.
But lets see what I'm in the mood for when I actually have to work on it again.
Painting Continued
So next up was the pin wash, or atleast a try to do something similar. I used Vallejo Negro Black ink/wash, thinned down with abit of water or Vallejo Thinner (can't really remember).
Before I started a gave the entire tank a coat of gloss varnish.
I tried to do the wash around the details and in the places where it would naturally be darker, generally just to make things stand out more, I think this is especially important in this small scale, were you might not notice it otherwise.
The next thing I did was a highlight on the edges using a flat brush and sortof drybrushing buff on the edges of things to make it stand out even more, this might not be very realistic, but it looks good in 1/72. I used Vallejo Buff for this part.
Next up I painted all the tools and metal parts black and wooden parts a dark'ish brown, this was followed by highlight of gunmetal and a lighter brown.
The tracks were glued on as well at this stage. I had painted them in between waiting for paint to dry, first with a dark brown base color follewed by a black wash, then a rusty oil wash (this require atleast a few days to dry properly, an alternative to oil could probably be used) to finish it it was drybrushed gunmetal.
Then I did the decals, first brushing on some gloss varnish where the decals would go, when that had dried I placed the decals and using some decal softener I was able to make it form to the zimmerit (softener is pretty much essential when trying to place decals on zimmerit otherwise it just looks wrong in my opinion).
Finished Tank
Well tank done, was a pleasure to build and paint, I love Dragon for making 1/72 scale sets in this high quality and to the price they do, it's awesome.
Any comments or suggestions are more than welcome :-)
Until next time
Cheers
Chris
