Hi Guys - after a chat with Jurgen we decided to run a new blog on painting our respective Tigers. As you know Jurgen is working on the Tamiya Tiger I Initial Production Afrika Corps, and I am working on a Tamiya Tiger I Early Production (not yet seen) , and both are in 1/48 scale. Both of these kits have been built, so this will just follow on with the painting and finishing stages.
We will just be posting progressive pics and captions against our work, and will hopefully generate a bit of discussion and interest. This was inspired by another joint blog by Freik and Vlad who are building Sherman Crabs (sounds a bit like sea food
), so thanks guys as you have both kick started another one and should be a lot of fun.
Well here we go with my Tiger I
The kit itself is nicely detailed and includes the metal hull tub and was put together over a few days. With the kit built it was primed with a base coat XF-64 Red Brown. You will notice that I have decided not to included the smoke discharges, as I dropped the turret while spraying and lost one of the tubes in the process. As I was a bit lazy I decided to leave them off.
This kit is to be painted in overall Panzer Grey, but with a degree of modulation. I say degree because I am no expert in this technique but wanted to give it a go.
The colors used were XF-63 German Grey mixed with equal amounts of XF-18 Medium Blue and XF-2 White. The result is more of a blue grey and a little on the light side, but is what is needed prior the weathering stages later on. This was applied allowing the base coat to show through in only the deeper shadow areas.
To add the appearance of light and hence the modulation effect, it was time to mix some lighter colors. I used XF-18, XF-66 and XF-2 testing the shade prior to committing to plastic and then spraying in areas where light will strike. This included corners of panels, some edges, top surfaces and specific components to create this effect. There are mountains of articles on this process available that can explain this much better than I can, but you can see the effect below.
At this point I have a very bright two tone AFV that looks very toy like, but wait for it, this will completely change over the next few stages..........so stay tuned for more.
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