| A Little History
I have been building models since I was six
year old. Wow some 37 years ago? I actually
remember…somewhat, the first one. It was
a 1/72 scale jet my mother bought me. Since
that time I have been pretty much addicted to
that hobby. I originally wanted realistic aircraft
to recreate dogfights that occurred in famous
air battles such as Midway and the Battle of
Britain. I had read everything I could about
these epic struggles and knew, in detail, each
plane used. However, I could not find any realistic
“toys” to have my imaginary dogfights.
Models were the answer. Of course they had to
be built first. But in a few hours I had them
chasing each other around my room shooting at
one another and crashing into the ground..(carpet).
They were unpainted and covered in glue. Heck
you could not even see the pilots for the glue
covering the canopies.
Soon I wanted to make them look a little better
and began painting them. These were the old
1/48 scale monogram planes available in the
early 70’s. I bought bottles of testers
enamel paint, some brushes and went to work.
This produced a little better results but still
not the slick professional finish on the box
cover. Then after talking to a fellow much older
than I was in a hobby shop on Birmingham, Alabama…I
think the place is actually still open, the
Homewood Hobby Shop, I discovered the most flexible
and useful tool a modeler can ever purchase,
the airbrush. I saved my pennies and bought
a single action Badger for about 60.00. I started
off with a can propellant and behold! The models
made a significant improvement. They actually
began to look like the wonderful examples on
the boxes. My buddies would come over and flip
me a few dollars to borrow my airbrush and paint
their models. It was marvelous.
Soon my interest began to jump around to armor.
I bought a monogram 1/32 Ostwind flakpanzer,
I believe, that or the Brumbar..,eventually
I had them all. But included was a diorama sheet
by Shepherd Paine.
Shep's
Dios for Monogram
These were the most amazing things I had ever
seen. I began trying to recreate these scenes..with
little success. Even to this day I have trouble
getting everything as good as Mr. Paine, but
we all need goals!
Techniques
Airbrushing 101…. (201 will come a little
later)
The airbrush is the most versatile tool in
the inventory. There are many different techniques
and everyone has developed or use their favorites,
but these are the techniques I use.
One thing to remember is that most objects are
brighter on top and darker towards the bottom.
The closer to the ground, (and thus further
from the sun/light) the darker an object becomes.
This is the concept behind the “color
modulation” technique.
For any object you can generally break the paint
down to three tones. Mix a light shade, a base
shade, and a darker shade. German vehicles were
painted “panzer gray” before 1943
and based a sand yellow (dark yellow or dunkel
gelb) after 1943. After 1943 the crews were
issued cans of green and brown paint and pretty
much allowed to do what they wanted at the commanders
discretion.
So take a German vehicle before 1943. You can
use DOA panzer grey as the base coat. Use three
bottles with the straight panzer gray poured
into the middle bottle. Add a little white to
one bottle and black to the other. Do not be
timid and make your shades distinctive. Thin
your paint to the consistency of milk using
rubbing alcohol. Set the pressure on the compressor..to
say 15-25 psi. I shoot pretty high, around 20
psi. Shoot some water through the airbrush first.
So, say we have a tank. Airbrush the lower hull,
that’s from the fenders down to the bottom
of the wheels, under the front and back the
darker color..make this almost black..a deep
charcoal gray. Airbrush the side the base shade
and spray the wheels with this shade from a
little further back to lighten the outside of
the road wheels a bit, and the very top of the
gun, turret and rear deck the lighter shade.
For a dark yellow vehicle, use tamiya xf 60
(dark yellow) as the base. Add some white for
the lighter shade and brown..or use a straight
brown for the darker shade. Paint it the same
way as stated above. There are no hard fast
rules but you want the lower hull dark, the
sides mid-tone and the top a lighter shade.
There! Now step back and take a look. Pretty
cool isn’t it? If the lower hull is not
dark enough darken it. If it is too dark spray
some base coat on it at a distance and add coats
of the lighter shade.
There are variations to this concept and we
will discuss that in Airbrushing 201 but for
now stick to this technique. Now if you want
to add some camo now is the time. Like I said,
the Germans were issued cans of green and brown
paint in a paste form. This was thinned with
gas,water wine, whatever but the more thinner
applied the lighter the shade. There were no
hard, fast rules. So mix up some green, brown
or both and thin to the consistency of milk
again. Spray some wavy test line on a piece
of paper and when you are ready add some vertical
wavy lines down the sides of the vehicle. Add
some to the upper surfaces as well. Look at
some photos of other models and some period
photos for a reference. No two vehicles were
the same. One interesting scheme is to spray
brown lines and then outline those with thinner,
green lines. If you make a mistake mix back
up some dark yellow and correct it. With water
based paints this is fast and easy.
And that’s it. You should have a nicely
camouflaged vehicle ready for weathering. If
you don’t like the way it turned out re-paint
it. You can get away with this about 2 times
before having to strip it and start over.
Airbrushing 201
Once you have a few models under your belt
using the above technique we can take this one
step further. For this you need to mix up a
bottle of black paint. Yes that’s right,
black. Spray the entire model black. Looks good
doesn’t it? Ha! But fear not. Now using
the same three tones as before begin spraying
the shades of dark yellow used in the above
example just has you would have earlier. This
will produce even more effective shadowing and
“color modulation”. Leave the areas
under the lower hull, wheel wells, under the
gun and around the turret darker. Leave the
end of the gun barrel a nice sooty black as
well. Use common sense. Remember that areas
under the vehicle and lower to the ground are
going to be darker. Areas covered by other parts
of the vehicle, ie in the shadow of another
part will be darker as well. Once the base shades
are applied camouflage the vehicle if you so
desire.
Weathering with the Airbrush
I am going to put this under the Airbrushing
201 section as some of these techniques need
to be done before applying the base shades.
Shoot the black normally as stated above, but
this time mix up some brown as well. Spray the
edges of the vehicle. Spray the fenders, edges
of the turret and edges of the hull with the
brown. Let this dry. Now using rubber cement,
Elmer’s makes a good cement to use. Apply
a light coat to the edges where the brown is,
but do not put the glue anywhere but on the
brown and just on the very edge of the areas.
Let this dry a couple of hours and spray the
base shades as usual and camo if necessary.
Let this dry a day or so. Now gently scrape
on the edges of the vehicle…a little here
and there and you will make a really nice “chipped
paint” effect. For Afrika Korps vehicles
use panzer grey as the first color instead of
black, then spray the three shades of sand yellow
over it. This is exactly how the real ones were
painted. Leave the brown off a couple of areas
and put on the rubber cement and you will have
places where the sand paint has chipped off
leaving the panzer gray visable. Pretty cool
huh?
Another technique you can use the airbrush
for is to apply a “filter” of color
to a vehicle. To do this you choose a color
depending upon what you want the filter to accomplish.
For panzer yellow you may want to darken the
entire vehicle a tad. Mix some brown paint,
heavily thinned and spray it on the vehicle.
I would use oil based paints for this thinned
with mineral spirits. This can produce some
interesting effects using browns, greens and
just about any other shade. Just be careful,
use common sense and experiment.
Weathering a Vehicle
The first step to weathering a vehicle is to
apply a “wash”. This is nothing
more than greatly thinned paint applied with
a brush to the vehicle. Exact proportions are
not important but what you want is basically
a tinted thinner rather than thinned paint.
Apply a darker wash to the wheels and lower
hull. I use a black wash for these areas. Apply
a lighter wash to the upper areas. I use brown
here. This will flow into the recesses and around
raised detail making them stand out. If you
happen to get the paint too thick apply pure
thinner to the area to tone it down.
Another interesting and very effective technique
is to simulate rain run-off. Take some oil paint
on a finely pointed brush and touch “dots”
of color to the vehicle. Use brown, black and
orange for rust. Then take a wider brush full
of clear thinner and stroke vertically up and
down over the dot of paint. You will get a linear
streak of faded color running down the side
of the vehicle. This is especially effective
on vehicles with a tall superstructure or turret
like an Elephant or King Tiger. These “washing”
techniques are very effective and can give your
vehicle a grimy, dirty appearance just like
a real vehicle in the field.
Dry Brushing
Dry brushing is a technique I find myself using
less and less. However it still can produce
some pleasing effects. Basically it is the opposite
of a wash. Here you have so little paint on
the brush it just whisks a little across the
very top and edges of your subject. This can
also accent detail and give a dusty, dirty appearance
to a vehicle. A nice yellowish brown is a good
color to start with. Darker colors can also
be used to give a ground in, worn effect. Use
a flat, ¼ inch wide red sable brush and
acrylic paint.
Pigments and Powders
This is the stuff! Get some DOA powders and
try this stuff out. You can make dust, dirt,
mud and charred smoke effects with this stuff.
Rust and soot are easily created as well. Sprinkle
this stuff on with a brush or "paint"
directly on the vehicle. Then use the brush
to spread the powder around. The effects are
subtle and you can create some interesting patterns
with the dust. Use it to simulate faded paint,
dust/dirt, soot, smoke stains on exhausts and
gun barrels. SNJ products makes an aluminum
buffing powder than can be used to simulate
worn bare metal. You can also use reds, browns
and oranges to simulate rust.
The powders and pigments can be mixed with sand,
plaster and little acrylic resin or white glue
and mud effects can be created. The will dry
lighter just like real mud and different shades
can be achieved. I usually will use one shade
or two to three just like real mud. Mix the
stuff up to a nice muddy consistency and apply
it with an old paint brush. Once again there
are no hard fast rules and anything goes but
use common sense. The top of the turret is not
going to get very muddy..unless a crewman with
muddy boots walks across the top. Most of your
mud will occur on the lower hull and fenders.
Take a look at bull dozer at a construction
site. The same principles apply.
If you have any questions about how a specific
model was made or technique that was used just
drop me a line at bmoore@appriver.com.
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