M48A2 Patton Tank by Loracs - Revell/Monogram - 1/35 - PLASTIC

[Loracs]

Greetings, after nearly 2 years building the Revenge, I needed a change of pace: something different, something fast building, something to paint.  Here it is, a good old model tank.  This is a first for me ... and an excuse to get something I have had my eye set upon for quite a while now (well!  a couple of months), and a quality airbrush.

 

Decided to start a new build for a simple reason.  Not really for the build, which can be done in a day or two, but mostly for trying a few approaches to painting and weathering.  You will be having a front seat to my mistakes!!!

 

Let me start with the culprits: the kit and the airbrush.

 

Edited 3 hours ago by ccoyle
corrected log title

[Loracs]

The second essential is the paints.  I already have a fair amount of Liquitex ink and paint.  I like them because of their pigment load and their vibrancy.  The ink can be used as-is for airbrushing and the paint can be thinned down with airbrush media.  The nice part is that Liquitex has a number of media available to change consistency, gloss and even transparency.  This is quite useful.

 

Despite the fair selection of colors... you still want to mix them to the final choice.  I found on another forum someone that works on reproducing accurate colors for WW2, either armors or planes.  He produced "recipes" for some paint brands.  I tried a few and they were quite good.  Here the links, so the author gets full recognition.

 

RLM color mixes for Tamiya Acrylics, Tamiya Lacquers, Golden Fluid Acrylics and Liquitex Basic Fluid paints - Paint - Britmodeller.com

 

British Aviation Colours of World War Two book insert - Spectrophtometer readouts and sample recipes using Tamiya, Liquitex and Golden Fluid Acrylics - Paint - Britmodeller.com

 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Loracs

[kgstakes]

Nice kit!  And thank you regarding paint recipes.

 

i use masters touch artist paints and have had good results when painting cars and trucks 1900-1930’s.  Just love those style of automoblies. 
 

sometimes I’ll use hobby paints but for the money and ease of use with both brush and airbrush I find the artist colors do quite well for me anyway.

 

 Again thanks for info on the “recipes”.  I’ll look them up and see what I can do too.

[Dave_E]

I’m in. 🥤🍿😀

[Loracs]

@kgstakes, indeed you should be able to get very similar results with Master Touch Artist paint.  As a reference, you could always look up the pigment composition between the brands... that should help establish equivalence.

[realworkingsailor]

15 minutes ago, kgstakes said:

Nice kit!  And thank you regarding paint recipes.

 

i use masters touch artist paints and have had good results when painting cars and trucks 1900-1930’s.  Just love those style of automoblies. 
 

sometimes I’ll use hobby paints but for the money and ease of use with both brush and airbrush I find the artist colors do quite well for me anyway.

 

 Again thanks for info on the “recipes”.  I’ll look them up and see what I can do too.

If I’m not mistaken the “Casey” who posted the colour mixes on Britmodeller worked with Alex Mann (Mann’s Model Moments on YouTube), to create a whole plethora of (relatively) simple mixes using ICMs Acrylic paints for WW2 subjects.  The videos Alex made are worth checking out as he covers everything in detail: https://m.youtube.com/@MannsModelMoments

 

 

Andy

[Loracs]

@Dave_E, thanks...  I'm sorting thru a stack of pictures.  I should be able to post more by tomorrow.  Like I said, I'm likely to be doing quite some mistakes... but HEY!  this is the purpose of a log.  

[Loracs]

@realworkingsailor,  A thousand thanks... will certainly look it up.

[Ronald-V]

If you want to see how far you can take these kind of kits (and for some inspiration), you should take a look at Night Shift on Youtube.

I'm not really interested in the subjects he paints mostly (tanks) but find his videos helpful and inspirational to watch.

[Loracs]

@Ronald-V, hey! greeting.  I did come across Nigh Shift video.  He is indeed fantastic at outlining the various approaches to painting, chipping and weathering.  What I learned was that it is very technical, which is exactly what I was looking.  You can tackle painting as a series of layers that you can build gradually on the model.... some even reversible once you "seal" the underlying work with varnish.

 

I will definitively try them out here...  for the first time.

Edited 9 hours ago by Loracs

[Loracs]

I was not planning on making a build log for the tank, so I'm missing quite a bit on the early steps.  Not much to say really.  Building the kit is a snap: check the fit, glue, fill the gaps (if any) and sand.  We all know that.

 

I can then move on to the interesting part, painting.  Since this is my first plastic kit, I had the "luxury" of getting the disposable reagent I wanted. For priming, I used VMS no-peel primer.  Read good things about it.  Priming from the airbrush went nicely with the 0.44mm nozzle.

 

A basecoat was then applied using a darker tone of olive drab: a mix of Liquitex "Black Mars" and Medium Yellow.  The intent was to get a dark undercoat and since I only had grey primer, I started with this.

 

[Loracs]

This is when a small disaster struck.  I had to walk away from painting for a few minutes. I still respect the golden rule of airbrushing: never leave paint in the airbrush and walk away... it is likely to start drying and create all sorts of issues.

 

So ok then, remove the paint from the cup and rinse well with thinner...  I realized later that I grabbed the wrong bottle and in fact added cleaner instead.  When back, I simply dumped the excess and added paint. Of course, the cleaning solution was still present in the body of the airbrush, which started to mix with the paint.

 

The result was catastrophic to put it simply.  When I started brushing the underside of the turret... everything started running badly.  I was there, not quite realizing my mistake, trying to dry the paint with just air to fix that.  It just made everything worse, it started running to the edge and affecting the upper part of the already painted turret.  A real mess, I should have taken a picture... but hey! I did not.

 

To be continued in the next post...  I'm getting some sleep.

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Loracs

[Loracs]

This brings me to the solution.  I had to either strip the paint off or try to fix it.  The last option cost me nothing so why not.  I carefully removed the paint/primer from the underside using IPA, as well as the transition edge down to the plastic.   This was followed by sanding the dry paint above the edge 2-5mm down to the primer to almost plastic.

 

The point is that the no-peel primer behaved perfectly, feathering to a smooth transition from the paint to the plastic nicely.  I then slowly re-applied primer and a coat of paint.  You can see the result below.  No sign of the mishap or barely.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Loracs

[Loracs]

Second Base coat: A second base coat was applied using Olive Drab, the lighter tone.  I tried to focus on the inside panels, but due to the paint's opacity the color variation with the dark undertone was very subtle.  Will try color modulation and pin washes later next week to bring more changes. 

 

Notes: You can see (hatch door, second picture) that to get the color variation this way, I need to get very close with the airbrush.  Even then, I'm not sure of the end results on a larger area.

 

The kit comes with a small battalion of figurines.  I started on those as well.

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Loracs