Hi Don,

I've been following your progress. Nice to see this back on the bench!

Well, back at it again guys. Another long stretch between sessions for which I will apologize. Getting right to it, here are Just a couple of quick photo updates.

I've begun the modulation process using the AK Olive Drab set. Not much to see with the first two colors on as they are very dark and also very close in tone. I also did not apply the darkest color (AK 132 OD Shadow) correctly. I realized after the fact that it was meant to go on only in the darkest areas like a pre-shade, not as a dark base-coat. I applied it as more of a base coat because of all the nooks and crannies to make sure they were all the darkest color and no primer was showing through. It became obvious I had done something wrong when I attempted to spray the next color (AK 133 OD Dk. Base) over it to begin modulating. This color was very thin and very transparent so there wasn't much shift in color at all. Obviously it's meant to go over a grey or white primer and blend up from the AK 132 OD Shadow. This is shown on the very small pictures on the back of the modulation set box, but it wouldn't hurt for AK to put in an instruction card with some written suggestions on how to get the best effects with these colors. In any case, I was able to go back and add darker shadows back into some areas to regain some volume. Sounds weird but it seems to have worked in getting back some of the deepest color. The effect is slightly more pronounced in real life than in these photos but not by much.


The third color in the set (AK 134 OD Base) was more successful in beginning to add volume to the shapes. It was not as thin out of the bottle as the OD Dk Base, and seemed to cover better but was also a little more reluctant to spray. I upped the pressure to 20psi which seemed to solve the problem. These aren't the best shots but you can see the shapes beginning to show up. I plan to do some "glamour shots" when the process is complete.


Three colors left in the set. I plan to spray the next two and pick out details with a brush for the last one. I'm finding the modulation technique quite difficult to do while simultaneously learning to use acrylics effectively in an airbrush. I anticipate that the last color will be the hardest to control since it will only be needed in the highest areas and so, I'll pick those details out with a brush so as not to overspray the other areas.

Thanks for checking in.

Hi Don.

Nice to see some progress on this one again! Keep it up!

Hi Don,

I second John's comments - great to see this on the move again! I've not tried the AK stuff yet, but I do something similar with Tamiya OD by making several mixes with different percentages of Buff or Dark Yellow added, all over a base of black primer.

Trouble with OD is the stuff was designed to be dull, plain, and hard to notice! Still, lookin' good...

Tom

Don, This is just an AMAZING build. Great craftmanship and attention to detail. Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Jeff

Hey Don!

Good to see you back at it. Your progress looks good and I can't wait to the other layers as you apply them.

Keep Going Buddy its Looking AWESOME!!

I'm liking the progress.

Thanks for the nice comments and encouragement.

Here's stage four in the modulation process--AK-135 OD Highlight. This color covered and sprayed very nicely straight out of the bottle at about 13psi. Looking at the photos, I may have overdone it slightly in the coverage of some areas but I plan to go back and darken a few places to get more contrast between some of the surfaces. I've done a little bit of experimenting with that in a couple of places already and it seems to work pretty well. Still learning...

I also now see why the AK tutorial videos leave all the tools and what-not off of the model as it makes taping off certain surfaces much easier than trying to work around everything.







On to stage five...

Hi Don,

At least on my monitor, the color appears very 'brown'. What are your thoughts on the color itself? I typically use Tamiya's OD myself, so if you happen to have any experience with that color, if you could compare it, that'd be awesome.

Thanks, and looking really nice!

Jesse, part of that is the photo image. I'm using some new lights, 100w equivalent CFL's rated at 5500K color temp. I don't think my camera is set correctly for this so there's a slight color shift going on. It does not appear as brown on the model.

I don't have any experience with the Tamiya OD (XF-62), but based on an article I read by Steve Zaloga (which you can read here), he believes it to be the most accurate representation of wartime OD after having tested several manufacturers offerings. The Vallejo Model Air OD (043) is also close, but he believes it to be somewhat lighter and more gray in color than the actual OD paint chips he was comparing the model colors against. As is Mr. Zaloga's style, you have to get through a few pages of history on OD first, but the crux of the article is on the last page where he explains his testing methodology and shows the results of the color swatches next to each other.

I did my own swatch comparison of the Vallejo Model Air OD (043) and the AK OD Base color (AK134) in the modulation set. To my eye, the AK color leans more towards green while the Vallejo color is just slightly more brown. I assume that this was intentional by AK to allow for a filtering effect back towards brown once the "Wash for Green Vehicles" is applied since that wash is actually a dark brown. I personally plan to stay away from any of the commercial filters available for green vehicles since to my eye, they all appear to be very green and would probably work better on Russian 4BO or British green.

My 2¢ is that if you use the AK modulation set along with their Wash for Green, you can probably get a pretty fair representation of wartime, slightly faded OD without the use of other filters.

Thanks for the detailed response! Good info to know.

Been following this, nice to see it back again. Interesting discussion re OD colour. I too have had problems getting a decent representation of colour from my camera and have spent ages tinkering with it's settings eventually using a clever wee shareware prog called "GraphicConverter" to tweak the colour balance on the photos. Looking forward to seeing the finnished paint job.

Stages 5 and part of stage 6 are complete! I haven't yet hit all the high points with a paint brush and the highlight color but I've made a start. I would appreciate any and all feedback on the levels of contrast so far. I tried to go for more of a stylistic approach rather than a true lighting approach but there are elements of both in my effort. I won't take offense if you think it looks like I went too far in some areas. I may need to do some tweaking to get the right effect.













One other thing...I want to do a quick revisit regarding the discussion above about the appearance of the Olive Drab in the photos. For this round of photos I adjusted the white balance settings on my camera to "florescent" to match my new light sources. Below are the results of that setting, un-retouched:


This did not look right to my eye since the white areas seem to have a very blue/green cast. So within iPhoto, I used a tool to automatically remove the color cast by selecting a white or neutral point in the image. I used the white band on the AK label. This is the result:


Finally, I went back to the original image and manually corrected the color using the histogram as a guide to get a neutral balance between the channels. I also lightened it a bit. This is that result:


I favor the last version which appears to be most accurate for the blue background and white foreground colors and this is what I will be using for future shots. However, as you can see the tank color has once again shifted a bit towards more of a brown rather than green. I cannot say how accurate this is to the paint colors since my computer is in a different room with very different lighting than my hobby area. So just to be clear, the images appear the way I think they should and may not necessarily be "accurate" for the colors being represented.

As always, thanks for your comments and feedback.

After posting the above images I realized I could pull it up on my phone, in the hobby room and compare the posted images with the real thing. In doing so I was a bit surprised that the first image in the comparison series was actually more accurate than I thought, even though the white foreground color looks odd in the photo. It seems the new camera settings are doing a pretty good job of capturing the correct colors after all. Not wanting to misrepresent the product that AK has produced, I have decided to use images of this project without color correction from this point on. Thanks to Jesse for bringing this issue to my attention as I would not have given it any thought otherwise.

Haven't had much time in the last few days so I've not yet completed the brushed on highlights. However, the more I looked at the turret the less I liked it so I've gone back and added some more shadows to soften the extreme highlights on the sides further back and on top. I think this is a minor improvement as it is now more similar in contrast to the hull. Also did some additional shading on the glacis plate around the sandbags (but I forgot to capture that on camera this time).






Still looking for feedback on the results, good or bad!

Thanks in advance.

hmmmmm.....feedback...yeah...uh

AWESOMENESS!!!!

You have done an excellent job with that base coat and the color look spot on to me

Excellent work once again Don, Keep up the great work!

Looks good to me! I wish that I had your patience dude,
J

looks damn good....how are the figures coming along??

The way you have depicted the light source is quite clear, but, at first glance, the shadow area on the barrel near the mantlet seemed out of place.

Looking further at the overall build it now seems to make more sense. I believe the weathering will blend this all nicely together.

Regardless of my opinion, this is a stellar build.

more more more more



G

Guys, thanks for the feedback. I probably should have practiced a bit on an old kit first, but I'm fairly happy with how it turned out after I was able to rework a couple of areas. I still see some some places on the turret that might need a bit of tweaking. Hoping to get some more work done laying in colors tonight.

Gilbert: The crew are primed and ready to paint. Intentionally leaving them til last since I want to focus on the tank while I'm making some progress!

Wayne: I agree, the barrel could use a bit of work but I was thinking it needed more of a transition from the darkest near the mantlet to the lightest in the middle of the barrel. The very dark section where the barrel comes out is actually longer than it needs to be but there is a bit there covered by tape which will be removed when I'm done to represent the scuffed paint from the barrel recoil. I'm hoping that doesn't look too weird right next to the dark shadow. Having a better transition hopefully will help. Thanks for pointing this out.

Gotta run.

Thanks again!

You got a real talent for shading, not to mention everything else here, this whole build is awesome

-Conor

Hi Professor. Just want to say I'm beyond impressed. Truly inspiring. Thanks for sharing!

Trey.

Awesome work. Well done!

Don, Just read through the entire build, and I'm more then impressed. Just an amazing build. Certainly time well invested. Your painting modulation was a little hard to follow on my laptop colorwise, but the end results look fantastic.

Adjusting White Balance if you have white within the photograph and use a good photo editing program, is a good way to go. I'm assuming that you did with by matching the Kelvin temp of your light source, then any slight adjustments from there. I didn't follow how you used a Histogram to adjust the WB as it's main function is to adjust for blown out whites and blacks through the 0-255 scale.

Joel

Hello everyone and Happy Holidays! Had a few days off and managed to squeeze in the bulk of the detail painting and finish off the modulation. A few touch-ups still needed here and there but for the most part, I'm 99% ready to move on to a coat of Future and application of decals.

















Cheers!