Sdkfz. 222 Part IV

Not much to it. A lot of mistakes, not so many happy ones, but at least I got it out of the paint booth and into the cabinet. You paint and you learn. :)

I tried to make it look like they tell you everything looks after a couple of weeks in the desert. More ore less the same colour as the sand. Without overdoing it. Meh, I guess I kinda achieved that goal.

What I missed (it pays to do your research!) is that apparently every German vehicle got painted "desert tan" once they left the staging area in Libya. I attribute that to the fact that I didn't touch the model for almost two weeks while contemplating a bath in Simple Green or just paint it and get it "out of the door".

It sounds like I'm really not pleased with how it turned out. I am. I learnt a lot on how to manipulate the pigments. And why they're the last step in the chain.

1/48 kits are sometimes really fiddly, but this one went together in a couple of hours. Painting doesn't have to take as long as it does with 1/35 kits. So it's more like painting a figure instead of the month long projects that building & painting a 1/35 kit easily turns into.

Learning has occured. Pigments dont hide your mistakes. I have painted something. Other kits demand my attention!

Oh, and of course. The macro lense is unforgiving! :)

ICM Sdkfz. 222 Part2

Meep meep! Ich bin ein staubiges Auto!

It's pigmenting time!!! My favorite part of modelling! Inhaling small particle dust and sneezing like a mad man.

I'm trying a different approach this time without using any fixer. For the first layers it's just distilled water, some flow-aid and pigments (African Earth, Rubbel Dust & Light Earth [4:1:1] from MIG) applied like a wash to the entire car.

I then use more of a traditional oil painting approach and move the pigments to where I want them with a moist/damp brush until I've removed all the tidemarks and gotten the streaking like I want it. This first application is more of a "getting the dust where I want it".

Picture was taken when considered myself done for today, but not done with the first application of pigments. There are still a lot of areas to touch up.

After that it's some sealing (which will eat up some of the pigments) to tone it down further. After that even more layers of pigments (mostly the underside that will get a slightly darker tone) and perhaps some rust & oil stains.

I guess the rust stains will be kept to a minimum. Unless the Libyan desert was really rainy in 1941. :)


--
Work has started on the SAFS as well. I painted up the interior while listening to the latest D6 Generation (the vanilla ice-cover was hilarious). Not much to see/photograph now since I've masked it all off in order to lay on the basecoats on the SAFS itself. Hopefully I have something to show next week.