nightshiftmodeller

One leather jacket is out of the way

My friends, here's the first attempt. Surprisingly, the leather was much more fun than painting trousers. It's the textured, high contrast nature of the material that makes it really enjoyable to work on 😁 

I used the "stippling" method to paint the whole thing, which is essentially chipping, but on figures. You apply each layer in a textured manner using tiny dots and scratches and because the color transitions are textured, you can use stronger contrast and build the effect up...

The gents are ready

My friends, Alpine delivers once again with these beautiful French tankers. They had a few more casting imperfections than their previous figures, but still nothing serious. Just two small holes and some very obvious mold parting lines. I noticed some microscopic bubbles in these pictures, but they're very small. I'm sure the primer and subsequent layers of paint will get rid of them. 

Now these folks have the same uniform. Light tan trousers and leather jackets. Leather should be ...

Tree trimmed and other news

Mah frins, today I finished the tree video and I'm ready for figures. The final update on the tree wasn't much if I'm fully honest - I trimmed the excess static grass which really makes it look more authentic, and gave the foliage a random heavy wash of diluted Olive Green oil paint. I don't know if it shows at all in those pictures, but it made a huge difference "in person". Basically, I found the foliage a bit 2-dimensional because of its overall monotone color, so I used the green oil pain...

HD photos

Trees, figures and epoxy water were always the most terrifying things in modeling. Well, now I'm not scared of trees and figures anymore, so there's only one more thing to try out! 😁 But let's not rush things, everything needs its time. 

Early video

Brick and Morty S01E01 

Real leaves probably grow faster than this!

Ma friens, this was one of the slowest tasks I ever attempted. Brush painted chipping, step aside! 

I didn't have much success with the AK foliage from a few posts ago. I simply wasn't able to stretch the twines and achieve a satisfying result, but my latest order of modelling supplies contained "Dense Shrubbery" which I've thrown in for good measure as it could get handy at some point (I'm basically collecting various diorama and foliage products every time I order something). I'l...

All painted up and ready for foliage!

Here we go, this was so much fun! 

I primed it with Mr. Surfacer Black, then sprayed Tamiya Deck Tan from above. What followed was a heavy Vallejo treatment with white, deck tan, old wood, light mud, and black brown applied wet on wet. After the acrylics were dry I gave it a nice thick wash with Industrial Earth and Burnt Umber from 502 Abt. Then the most enjoyable part, adding moss from fine turf, painted with Golden Olive and Flat Yellow from Vallejo and toned down with Slimy Gri...

Need something to listen to during your workbench session?

Mah friens,

looking for the ultimate modeling podcast episode? Look no further because this episode of the Plastic Posse Podcast features Adam Wilder, Mike Rinaldi, and yours truly. We had a great time, and if you want something to listen to during your modeling session, here's a link (you can also find them on any podcast platform of your choice)

And here it is, ready for painting!

Muh frens, at first it was really terrifying, but now I could do this all day! But that's how it is with most things, right? You never know if you'll enjoy it, and if you have it in you, unless you try it. The green vegetation from AK makes me still worried though, but for now I'm gonna focus on painting the tree.

I think I'm gonna give it a coat of black primer, then spray some greyish Tamiya paints over the whole thing and hit the surface with multiple Vallejo paints applied wet on we...

Hands down the scariest thing I ever attempted

Mah friens, I've never been more nervous than today morning when I was looking at that pile of dried up wood on my workbench in the last photo and thinking "how in the world am I gonna make a tree out of this". It was a weird feeling, because obviously every ingredient was there, just the vision and some sort of plan were sort of lacking. 

But hey, if you click through this gallery from the last photo to the first, you'll see the transformation. Although the tree didn't look like m...

Fresh batch of references

Pictures taken when I was still able to move without crutches! 😁 I remembered the first photos as I was finishing the brick wall, so here they are. Some details are very interesting, such as the crumbled cinderblock and mortar sticking out of the wall on that garage. 

HD photos

I'm gonna call him "Brick & Morty" 😆

Early video

Breaking news: French duck tank drives through mud, instantly regrets it! 

Second diorama component is ready!

The first one being the tank, obviously 😁

A small detail like this makes for a wonderful weekend project - I managed to do it all in one day. And here's the fun part - no airbrush, no enamels, no oils! All done with paintbrushes and acrylic paints.

You can see the base coat in the last photo, bricks painted in different tones and stones in dark grey. The next step was to add mortar lines, which were made from a 50/50 mix of sand and plaster, applied dry between bricks and secur...

Quack, quack!

It's finally done 😁 We all experience that feeling when we get excited for a model but the initial hype wears off after a while, right? Yeah, this was the exact same thing... but it's about building and finishing models, not just collecting them! 😁 

Finally, another diorama!

My friends, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief after one of the most intense disciplines in modelling - composing a diorama. Since the T29 I'm trying to put a lot of effort into the composition, not just the basic layout of different components, but also rotation, "main viewing angle" and so on. For example, the T29 has a really poor main viewing angle because it shows the entire scene from a side. This time I tried to rotate the whole scene so it'll be nice to look at from the front side...

Somua finished and another "experiment"

Ma frens, I added more earth effects on the upper hull, renewed some lost contrast around hatches with oil paints, speckled some grime on the engine deck and polished the worn edges with a pencil. With that, the Somua is done and we can move on to the most exciting part - vignette! 

I also did another procrastination side-quest and quickly painted the test block with bricks and cinderblocks I made some time ago. Just basic colors, a heavy wash of white acrylic paint and some streak...

I wanted to finish the Somua today, but...

... all that remains are some stains here and there and polished metal edges, and that means only one thing: PROCRASTINATION! 

And what's the best way to procrastinate for me? Play with styrofoam, of course! 

Well, I'm going to finish the tank tomorrow, I applied some extra earth tones on the upper hull today and all I'm left with are some grease effects on the engine deck and the most soul draining technique ever - pencil around the edges and chips. But let's talk about...

Early video

The Quackening is upon us, my friends! 

I had to take an involuntary break, but...

... today I'm back! Before I get into the modelling stuff, let's talk about the last two days. Yesterday I had an x-ray check-up. The day before I was getting so nervous about it that I couldn't even focus on modelling, so early in the afternoon I gave up and tried to distract myself with other activities. Yesterday, when I came home around noon, I was really tired and just fell asleep. So, what did the x-ray say?

Well, one of my bones, the thicker one, is still broken. I finally saw th...

Finally some success with AK Terrains Paste!

My friends, today was a success because I might've finally gotten a hang of the AK acrylic mud. If you remember, my initial impressions were mixed - it has excellent texture, but it dries too fast and leaves visible tide marks. It also has high pigment content so when you're blending the stuff, it leaves a colored film. 

But today I might've figured it out. It's all gonna be shown in the video, but to put it shortly, you need to apply it in small amounts at a time and quickly blend...

HD photos

Release the Quacken! Although most effects on these photos are rather subtle, if you compare some angles with the first batch of pictures, the difference is quite noticeable 😊

When you're almost done, but then disaster strikes

My friends, you all probably know that moment when you're about to get something done, there's just one more thing left to do and then it turns out looking like pure crap? That happened yesterday, the only thing I had left to do was apply some enamel rust washes on the exhaust and call it all ready for dust and mud weathering. But it turned out looking just awful! Those pics are at the end of the gallery, btw. 

So I stripped the entire exhaust down and repainted it today. It was so...

Mail caaaall

Ma frens, I'm just gonna drop this here real quick, I'll get back to you in a few hours with rust tones on the Somua :) 

I found a nice idea for a factory diorama with the Ferdinand, but both models look so good I can't decide which one to do first! 

But there's plenty of time to decide, after all, I need to finish the Somua, make a base for it and then do the Syrian dio! 

Early vid

Let's gooo, Chateau de Bordeaux! 

Oil dots and some streaking effects

My friends, oil dots are on and as usual, they nicely toned the pin wash down wherever it needed to be toned down. They also added some extra tones on the large cast surfaces. However, I wasn't able to add too much forced contrast with highlights and shadows because of one thing (which I should've anticipated from the get-go): chipping! They would completely cover up chips around edges. I wasn't very happy with this, so I at least blended some fake shadows around hatches. And while I was at i...

Washes save the day, again

My friends, the model is fully "washed" and ready for oil dots and fake shadows/highlights. 

I ended up spending more time with it because I wanted to bring out the cast texture on the hull and turret, especially the casting imperfections which I originally created with a rotary tool following reference pictures of the Somua at Aberdeen museum. The texture was brought out with very diluted Raw Umber and the rest was carried out with Industrial Earth. I didn't use Bitume after all, ...

The most satisfying technique ever

Ma frens, I present to you the first round of pin washes! The process on a model with lots of bolts and rivets tends to be rather slow, so I decided to start on the lower hull to get most of the time consuming stuff out of the way. Tomorrow I'll finish the upper surfaces.

For this paint job I chose three oil paints: raw umber, industrial earth and bitume. So far I only used the first two, raw umber - the lighter one - on the pale green base coat and industrial earth (the darker one) on ...

HD pictures

How to make the least menacing looking tank more serious - just shoot it from the ground level 😁Still not overly bad ass, but hey, poor Somua is doing her best! 

We're back to our regular programming!

My friends, after a 2 week break we're back to our weekly schedule, enjoy!