VK4501(P) update.

So I got my hands on a lovely Battlefront VK4501(P) thanks to James as mentioned in the previous post. Here's some pics of it's current progress I've snapped in between working on my British stuff.

It's for a late war army I'm constructing which I'll reiterate at the bottom of this post. Gorgeous looking vehicle and you can really see where the Ferdinand/Elefant came from when you look at the drive train on this beast. I'll be painting this in a tri-tone camo that I'm going to be airbrushing on thanks to my brother in law has loaned me his compressor. The camo pattern will be hit and miss as it'll be made up on the fly and I've never used an airbursh with a compressor before only with canned air (which is crappy btw and ends up costing you as much in the long run). Below are two pictures, one of its base coat and one of its current state.

 

The base coat I use is a mix of Tamiya XF-4 Yellow Green and some Vallejo 70882 Middlestone, this is beacause I love how Tamiya paints work through airbrushes but the colour is a little too vivid for my liking. To be honest the image still looks very bright and it doesn't look quite so stark in the flesh, I gave the model three coats of Mig Filter for Tri-Tonal camo to try and draw the shades together. This has then received a gloss varnish and a "pin wash" using Mig Abteilung black oil paint mixed with a small amount of white spirit, this achieves a black lined effect quickly, cleanly and most importantly reversibly. If you're too generous with the pin wash you can take a clean brush with white spirit on it and manipulate the section you've made a mistake on, you can thin it down, wash it off parts you don't want it to hit and even remove it altogether.

  Tomorrow once this wash has dried I'll give the model a thin gloss coat again to seal it in and apply decals then work on the detailing where I'm planning on making this tank look pretty worn and weathered. I plan to use Panzer Grey as the colour with which to pronounce stone chips and scratches as this would've been the original colour underneath the more recently added tri-tone scheme. After all of that I plan to hit it with some super matte varnish to dull down that shine and also some of the shades in the camo very slightly.

EDIT: I think you can see between the two pictures just how much the XF-4/Middlestone base has really toned down with the camo pattern on it and the coats of filter?