M4A3 Sherman - Italeri (7518) - PART 2

Hello Everyone

About a month ago I recieved 6 M4A3 Shermans from Italeri's fast assembly line of kits, if you've read this blog before you have probably seen the post where I painted the first 3 of them (if not read it here). Now the time have come to finish the last 3 Shermans and while I'm writing this post the current layer of paint is drying. 

This time around I'm going to do it using the same technique as last time, though I tried to paint the base color slightly different and I'm looking forward to see if it makes any difference in the end, the result I manged to get last time was rather pleasing and I'm surely hoping to repeat the succes.

I tried to spice up the basecolor of these tanks, since I really find one tone tanks abit boring (One of the reasons why I love building German panzer) so this time around i started out like last time with a basecoat of olive drab, followed by a highlight of olivegreen and then i added a few drops of white and sprayed this on the edges and on the top of the turrent and hull. I then decided to add abit more shadow so I took my olive drab and added abit of black which I applied in the shadowy areas and the weld seams. After the basecoat was done I gave the tanks a few coats of clear and left them to dry, my next plan is to give them a little black wash to create even more shadow after which i will try to drybrush some highlight and wear and tear (like last time) and I hope the result is going to be atleast as nice as my other Shermans.

I let the wash dry over night but I decided it had made the tanks abit to dark for my taste, so I mixed a lighter shade of green and sprayed it lightly on the edges and big surfaces of the models and I think I'm quite happy with the result.

Next up is probably a drybrush of buff and then details such as tools are going to be brush painted, but I probably won't be able to finish them in the following days since I'm needed elsewhere.

So I managed to get abit more work done the other day. I tried to drybrush them with buff which turned out quite good, after that I thought I would try to airbrush them with buff to make them look more worn, dusty and sun faded, this also turned out ok, and so far I'm rather happy with the result.
I also applied the decals.

Next step is painting the all the details.


To begin with I painted all the tools, tracks and weapons Black, which was then drybrushed/painted  with Gunmetal. The wood handles for the tools and the grip for the .50 cal was first painted a dark shade of brown and then highlighted with a lighter brown.


Below you can see the finished result and to be honest I think they turned out quite nice, maybe even better than the other Shermans I painted earlier.

Old Shermans left and new Shermans right

As I said I'm quite pleased with the result and I think I will try to use some of the techniques I used on these on my upcoming builds, which will most likely be some JagdTigers. But I must admit I don't really enjoy painting U.S. Vehicles as much as I do German tanks, but that's not an excuse for doing a bad job, ever.




I would be really happy if you drop a comment or some feedback in the comment section below.

1/35 Panther G - Late Version - Tamiya (35176) Assembly

Hello everyone.

Just wanted to make a post about one of my current builds, and for once it isn't in 1/72 scale. I recently joined a campaign on Armorama, where I'm going to build a Panther tank together with quite alot of other people, but it isn't going to begin before January next year.

But i recently had the opportunity to buy two different Panther kits, both from Tamiya and both of them type G, one early and one late version. The kits are almost identical except for the few key parts which are the difference between the early and late version. 

Being Tamiya kits these tanks fit together perfectly, they might not have all the bling bling PE parts and other shizzle new Dragon kits have, but jesus Tamiya know how to make instructions and parts that fit together without any filling or sanding.

So my plan was to build one now and the early version for the Armorama campaign next year. But if you read the blog before you will know that I have quite alot of builds going at the moment, and I'm not sure if I want to finish the rest of my 1/72 first (I'm probably going to) cause I got another couple of 1/35 kits that needs painting (Tiger II, Tiger I and Stug III).

But anyway, I just managed to get the time to finish assembling the kitty today without any trouble, I think I'm going to buy a few aftermarket parts for it such as PE engine grills and maybe a metal barrel and muzzle brake since Tamiya decided to make the barrel to parts and to be honest it's going to take some filling and sanding to get a smooth surface, so alot easier with a metal barrel.

But I think thats about it and overall the kit is quite detailed (atleast good enough for me) and since i got both kits for just about 19$ a piece, so compared to buying a brand new Dragon kit i saved quite alot of money, god bless garage sales.

But here are some pictures of my building process, i tried to add a few weld seams (first try ever) and I should probably try another method next time, but as mention this build is just a trial run for the campaign.

The figures in the set are not as good as some of Tamiya's newer figures, but since this kit is from '94 i don't blame them and I'm probably going to buy some resin figures for it anyway (or perhaps not for this one but the other Panther atleast)

As you might have noticed most of the tools and such are missing from the kit, but I'm going to paint all those things separately since I really would like to try colour modulation on this one, just to try something new.

I will try to keep updating on this build aswell, but since i got quite the queue build up of 1/72 kits, it might be a while :D

But stay tuned!

Well I would really appreciate some comment or suggestions (especially concerning the weld seams) or any other comment you might have really :)

Jagdpanther - Dragon (7212)

Hello Everyone!

If you've read this blog in the past week you might have noticed I've been building a couple of Dragon JagdPanthers. Well I'm glad to finally be able to say they are finished!

And if you've been reading this blog since I started it (or just read some of the older posts) you have probably seen the last JagdPanther I made, that one depicted an earlier version with zimmerit. The JagdPanthers I have been building now are the late version, atleast that  is the idea of the kit, but you get all the same parts as in the early version, so you are able to pretty much build whatever JagdPanther you want.

I think this kit is an older Dragon one, because as far as i know Dragon don't make kits with die-cast metal parts anymore (i could be wrong of course). In this kit the upper and lower hull are made of metal and this basicly just add weight, which isn't really a bad thing since it feels quite nice, but detail wise it isn't better than it's plastic counterpart. Beside the metal hull the kit is exactly the same as the other JagdPanther i build (except that one had zimmerit) and everything is detailed nicely, actually I think the only difference between the two sets is the phote etched grids the for engine deck, which the late version kit doesn't have sadly since it really adds some nice detail in my opinion.

The biggest problem with the metal hull is the fitting when you want to put them together, if it had been plastic you could always force it into submission, but that is quite alot harder when it's metal, a solution could be to use some putty to fill the gap (if there is one) but since i prefer to paint my model without glueing the upper and lower hull together this wasn't an option for me. So far i haven't had any realy problem with fitting though (i also build two late Panther G from Dragon which also had metal hullls) but as you can probably tell by the pictures later in this post there is a slight gap at the front of the glacis plate.

But now it's picure time!

Here is a few pictures of the finished assembly process. Later i decided to change the skirts on the JagdPanther with the open commander hatch to also be  battleworn.

The basic painting phases completed these include priming, basecoat and the camo pattern.

The next step is a light drybush of sand followed by a black wash and another drybrush of a lighter sand tone or buff.

I also tried to give these JagdPanthers another wash this one made from a brown oil color, this one I used around every hatch, tool, welding seam etc. etc. to make everything stand out abit more. It isn't that visible on the pictures i think, but standing with the model in hand and you can see it.

I also started painting all the tools black and the dreaded wheels (which as usual is tedious work). After this I also put on the tracks and finished painting all the tools. Both models then got a coat of varnish after which i applied the decals (Some Archer Fine Transfers decals).

The finished them they got another coat of matt varnish and was left to dry.

Here are some pictures of the finished JagdPanthers! You might notice the empty commander hatch, but just need to get the time to paint some tank commanders, i got about 12 different commanders from AB figures and they are simply amazing. I need to paint a commander for my last Panther and one of my Stug III, so I'm probably going to paint all 3 together at some point.

Old JagdPanther with Zimmerit on the right

Compared to my old JagdPanther the two new ones are quite alot lighter in the camo pattern, think I might have overdone the black wash on the old one, and I probably also improved my skills abit since then.

Overall this JagdPanther kit was a pleasure to build and if I ever want to build another JagdPanther without zimmerit I would probably go for this kit again.