Well here we go... My first serious foray in to the dark world of WWII German AFV modelling. So to start my 'new direction' I though I'd go with something that everyone has seen before just to try my hand, see where it goes.

This is the Academy Tiger IE 'Early Production' kit just falls together no issues whatsoever (yet - not tried to put the running gear on of course), I won't bore you with the build as for me, this is about the 'colouring in'. I started with an overall black shadow coat as usual. Next I undercoated with a very light misted Tamiya flat brown coat followed by 'Deck Tan' for the highlights and just a spot or three of white for the high, highlights. That done I left it for a day to dry thoroughly.

For the basic 'Dunkelgelb' I mixed Tamiya XF4 'Yellow Green' and XF60 'Dark Yellow' in roughly 30/70 proportions and thinned it with around 30% Iso - unfortunately when I shot the first coat it spattered intermitently so I added more Iso to my mix and got a much smoother flow. As it's very mild here in NZ just now, the model dried really fast on a sunny window-ledge and was ready for camo in an hour. I had a picture in my head of how I wanted the stripes and 'meandering lines' to look, so took a deep breath thinned some 'Field Grey' and shot it freehand using my trusty Iwata BR with the difuser tip removed to get a very fine line.

There are some touch-ups and errors but not too many - for some odd reason I simply cannot get the camo on the barrel to work, but I'll keep plugging-away at it. Once I'm happy with the camouflage I'll shoot a couple of coats of 'Klear' to seal it all in then get the (few) decals on.

Please feel free to make any comment, criticism or ask a question. More soon.

Ian.

9 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Yes the lines in green are the right width, nice airbrushing job! Watching with interest and welcome to the armor universe!

Update time:
Varnished (two coats of Klear), and kit decals (cut apart and reorganised to make a different vehicle number).

Pin wash with a 50/50 mix of Paynes Grey and Raw Umber followed by chipping.

Next will be more chips (sponge method) then I'll leave it alone over the weekend and next week start with an oil-dot filter to get some rain streaks in. As I said before your feedback and suggestions are not just welcomed but encouraged - will need all the help you can give me.

AFN

Ian.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I did and re-did all of the right side camo too - was having some problems with my Airbrush so swapped-out some parts from an old one and it works far better now... odd as Iwata usually have excellent QC.

Ian.