I'm figuring that all of my readers (the few that there are) are tired of seeing my Tiger I in progress so I figured that I would show "my few" a model in honor of "THE few". I finished my Tamiya Spitfire Mk. I a couple of weeks ago, but decided against a full story of the finishing due to a nightmarish experience with the decals (Don't even ask...). Now that its done and my blood pressure has been lowered from that whole escapade, here are a couple of pictures. As you may notice, the chap sitting on the wing is the one I made in a build a few months ago!
Excuse my mistake on the previous post, but I painted the accessories after I finished the camouflage. I used Country Maple by Decoart for the wooden handles of the tools. All gray was painted by using a 1:1 ratio of silver and black paints, in order to create a lustrous appearance to all metal surfaces. When I looked at the metal that clamped the tools to the vehicle, I carefully matched the paint to the colour of the camouflage beneath.
I've now put on the camouflage colors. I used Decoart Burnt Sienna and Hunter Green for the stripes. I tried to make them as small as possible for historical accuracy.This was probably the easiest part to paint, and also the funnest. My Tiger actually looks like a Tiger now! The next part will be on weathering the tank.
The coat of Dunkelgeb is now on. This is a very specific shade of yellow that was used by the Germans for summer camo in WW2. I used Tamiya XF-60 to paint the Tiger. I cannot stress this enough, wear a respirator when using anything other than craft acrylics. You cannot get this color in craft paints, take my word for it =(
I painted it completely but left enough black showing as to make it look worn and shadowed. The next step is doing green and brown lines.
It's finally here! My Tamiya late war Tiger is together. Now as we all know the painting of a model is when the character of it comes out. The first thing I did was give a base coat of black. This will give the model's lines a deeper look. Also, it will add depth to the zimmerit. I used Decoart black. The next step will be to add the distinctive dunkelgeb, dark yellow(which was very hard to find).
In the past few months, I have had two models on the go: The Tamiya Tiger (I've been working on this one for many months) and the Tamiya Spitfire MK. I. Both are nearly complete so you can expect to see pictures in the coming month(s).
For this next part of the Kit-Bashing section, I'll take a look at figure modding, making parts from scratch. For this part, I'll be using the figure from the Tamiya 1/48th scale Supermarine Spitfire MK. I kit. I began by cutting out the parts and drilling a hole in his torso and right arm (already detached in the kit mold). I did this because I inserted a piece of wire to hold the arm in place. After getting the angle right, I used wood putty to create the rest of his arm. I then painted him accordingly (look through my archives to find articles about figure painting) as an RAF pilot from the Battle of Britain.
