that cracked plaster looks like ice! you should do a dio with a a b17 bit on a cracked frozen lake!

JBA i just popped in to have a look at the forums and spotted this one and have been catching up with the work so far and i am very impressed and intrigued by what you have done so far. Good to see you are into another interesting build mate and i will be following along closely from now on.

All the best mate,

Steve

hey Jon thanks for the compliments -i must say your own diorama looks pretty promising too

Koen, it might get mighty, once I finish the painting that's it

Erik, nope, no ice, just a regular airfield of sorts. If I wanted to do ice, i would have use some transparent resin like I did once!

Thanks for popping in Steve friend! that's a less figure orientated project than usual, buit still I hope you will like it !

well precisely, the real painting begins today!

first the guy, because he will be trapped inside the ball turret that is..

Undercoating with some acrylics


Then I tried something new.
Some 20 years ago, there was some decent LHS in the town I lived in and the guy always boasted this or that. One day he told me "You know Bill Horan? he spends only a couple of hours painting his figs, he just undercoats them with thinned down black oil paint, waits for a night and then wipes the excesses with some brush and adds highlights"
Sounded pretty crude, and then i learned after that BHoran uses only Enamel.
Whatever, i decided to give it a try with some thinned down dark green oil paint with turpentine to see how it would look like


So i waited for one full night removed the excesses and painted some highlights..
Oh dear, the turpentine turned the thing in a ultra glossy base and whatever the light I was working on, either day or artificial, everything was reverberating so much i had some deep troubles ending the job!
So maybe I should have use some white spirit instead, I dunno..
Not really sure the trick was that good, but then I set up only spending 2 hours on the painting
In the end I got this:

You may notice a big highlight zone on the right foot!

its a good effect for the fabric, but the face ans other fineley detailed prats are lacking. better for long flowing fabrick and such. good for the capes of my warhammer figgies

Well Erik, i don't know if it comes from the undercoat or from the fact that I only spent a short 2 hours on it compared to 3 times more for a "normal" fig. I don't know if I will try that again anyway.

But there is a good reason why I didn't care too much, look at this below

First painting the 2 halves, Valejo gunmetal for the guns, a mix between greens and blacks for the rest. Nothing too well done either..


.. because in the end what will we be able to see from the interior?


..nothing..


You may notice I had the round opening PE part ready on the glamour undercoated pics.
I managed not to loose it which is pretty impressive by my standards.. For the rest it was just a matter of filling with white Squadron putty which is why you can't see much joint.

Now filling and sanding for a long time for the 2 halves to fit, that ain't no plastic model kit, this is worse than that

Great progress. Too bad the 50 cals are almost invisible now. oh well.
I can't wait to see your plan for scratch making the windows.
Great job on getting a nice symetrical ball - no easy task

Looking good JB, be careful not to snap those barrels off! They look very delicate for having to handle, fill & sand the turret........
Closely following....
C.

This is a fine bit of engineering my friend with the ball construction.
You can really see now with the figure in place how little the space is in one of those things, guess they didnt know about `deep vein thrombosis` back then but then again i suppose that would be the last of his worries .

nice work mate,

Steve

JB, my friend, AWESOME updates on the progress of the "womb" !!!!! Glad to note that your little "experiment" with the figure didn't ruin the effect you wanted with the final product . Now I know why you chose to use the "horrible" Tamiya figure; like you mentioned, nothing is visible at all ! Interesting start to the base work, JB; I'm extremely curious now to see how it finally all turns out. Cheers !
Kenneth .

P.S. I'm usually only able to sneak in some modelling time at the weekends or when I am on vacation, so your daily focus to your projects is highly commendable, JB .

Thanks Scott! I know already how to do the windows -a *10 minutes work* Apparently some old Aircraft modeller's trick..

Thanks for following Charles, honestly if those barrels snap, that would be from the ball turret itself, now up to me to wipe out the carpet monster..
But now I consider it, it's true that those guns are so few visible I should have use the 2 parts metal ones JB Models do, oh well.

Thanks Steve friend! `deep vein thrombosis` aaha!! indeed can you imagine yourself hanging at the bottom of the plane like that? really not for the faint at heart!

Kenneth friend, thanks for popping in once more! Aww I am sorry to hear you only have a few hours to model on week-ends, I consider myself lucky that my son goes to bed early hey that's it for experiment, either you use the same old tricks forever, or you accept to throw away a bit of your time in the not altogether vain hope that it might help you outreach yourself. I run the second option, and try to be innovative for the sake of the final result!

Slowly moving towards the end of The Womb...

The ball turret is getting its complement of trapdoors (lead foil) and pipe plugs..


What a mess!! that was not easy to fill the turret with masking tape! I had to litterary *fill* the whole thing as I don't want my oh so finely painted pilot ending up looking like a silvery space adventurer.

Sweet looking gunturret - I don´t know if you are going to put windows in it ? - I know alot of the studiomodels are made without glass as it makes it much easier to view the interior and you dont get the distortion and reflecses from the windows.

So unless you are planning on the windows to give a special effect I would consider leaving them open.

Exiting build - where will it end
Cheers/jan

JB; thanks for the commiseration !!! Looking forward to the finishing touches, my friend. This has certainly been a extremely informative thread . Cheers !
Kenneth .

Hi JBA
its getting better and better step by step. Any trick for easy making windows are very welcome, looking forward to it

Cheers
Libor

Impressive work JBA!

Okay, JB,
So you joined the turret sides with the gunner in place and then jammed the thing full with masking tape? In order to paint the turret surface? You are a glutton for punishment....why masking tape? why not tissue or dampened tissue?

how close are you to being finished?

Ever impressed,
Charles

I guess since this is a wreck that some of the glass will be broken?

I don't know if I've mentioned it yet (but many others have) I just wanted to say how impressive this whole project is. I've never seen anything like this. Such imagination you have. Not to mention the ability to actually pull it off. And in convincing fashion too.

Matt

Thanks Jan -Honestly the interior is pretty basic and is best left hidden. i will indeed put on some windows for the reason that *some* of them will be smashed.like Matthew below hints.
Some thing I noticed is that those plexiglass windows sort of fogged and didn't seem that much see through..

thanks Kenneth friend! Still I think, 2 weeks to go!

Libor thanks to you, i currently . Yep I've got my trick for windows, and a cheap one it is. But honestly I thought it was pretty much well known. honestly i will need 10 mn to do those

Thank you Martyn!

Thanks Charles. well I didn't think about it loads, i have to airbrush this thing, and therefore mask all the openings, to do this from the outside would have been almost impossible in my mind..

Thank you Matthew, appreciated Indeed like I told Jan, some windows will have to be smashed, and I think it is going to be harder to smash them than to actually build them
Impressive thanks for this, but in the end that's only half bigger than a CD case!

back to the Womb, you won't see me that often completely endorse some products (and certainly not 1/35 morronicaly researched, ultra badly done hydrocal buildings) but then amongst the vast quantity of crap that is offered to us modellers, some real gems like those paints:

okay, those are rather expensive and I have been buying them over some time but they do the trick handsomely. They airbrushed themselves with ease, and even better, you can sort of polish them with either a brush or some soft cloth and the details just pop out!
of particular praise is the silver tint as I never ever see any paint looking like that. you just paint *silver* not paint you see..
But then it's laquer, so they rather stink and you can't dilute them with ease you have to buy some special thinner, oh well. And then i had some extra surprises with them that I didn't find documented!
more on the later.
The dark metal tint is applied where the sun don't shine (literary)

Then some clearer tint as some undercoat ion the front left of the turret. Notice I also sprayed a ray of gold as some transition, that's the sun you see

Same thing on the hull...

WOW, that's something new I didn't know about ( the use of dark and gold paint to simulate sunlight ) . GOOD TIP, JB ! Thanks for sharing .
Kenneth .

Hi JBA!
As always it's a pleasure to see your project evolve. You have this nasty habit off getting us hooked on your blogs that we all just wait impatient like little children on further progress.
Primož

I can see the light.

I love the light treatment on the ball. To me it's a bit heavy on the fuselage. I love the affect and the technique.

The ball in paint looks really good the build came out great.

Yo Jba,

Just read the hole topic...amazing work! You're home made PE is so great.

A unic subject you show here...will follow this one from now on.

Grt Nico

very nice effect mate with the transitions of the metalics, the sunshine effect is well thought and looking very effective.
Do you have a link for these metalic paints, they would be very usefull for painting armour on my medievil figures

All the best mate

Steve

Its coming along, JBA. Good choose of the paints, I have got just the best experience with this kind. I keep watching, and thanks for PM. Truly I did not have an opportunity to try this way ever in my short modelling life, but it might be handy soon. Back to the paints, I am sending PM, could be handy.
Now I will try my patience with wrong front mudguards on Bronco saloon coach
Keep it coming
Libor

LOL, you rant's are getting better and better. I love them!

Cool colors indeed, and superb idea with painting on the sunshine directly. Good catch!

Claude

The ball turret really does look like it's outside. Fascinating. Simple!

Matt