Well got the camo on as you can see it's Revell matt 65 green and Revell matt 8 anthracite but..........

then went to try and do some shading by lightning the panel middle areas with lighter shades of green and black,

not altogether happy with the result, think I've gone to light and it doesn't look natural.

Also was struggling a bit with the AB ie low pressure with too thick a mix, tip clogging etc and have managed to burst the wee O ring seal where the nozzle meets the body ( have read that more expensive AB's don't need o ring as they are so well machined, so you get what you pay for I suppose).
Anyway have ordered new nozzle with o ring but in the interim will try to either cut a new seal from piece of rubber or wrap some thread and beeswax round it and try to darken some of it back a bit. Tricky business this airbrushing.
Tony my turret went OK apart from stowage basket which was a fiddle and the aircon housing at the rear wasn't a very good fit.

Paul,

Your weathering looks pretty good on my lap top. uneven fading is actually more realistic then leaving everything a single shade. A good coat of flat will help to blend everything in.

Back on track (ha ha) managed to sort the strange colours, (got the AB working again, cut a new sealing washer from a bit of a patch for an air bed, it's not perfect but It'll do till the proper replacement nozzle and ring arrive) and oversprayed a slightly darker shade of the black and felt a lot happier with it, enough to press on with a coat of Klear and then this morning tryed for only the second time what I believe is called the "dot filter technique" and got caught out with the same thing that happened last time ie;
after dotting the various colours of oils and streaking them down it looked pretty good, nice and subtle variations but when the turps substitute had dried off the colours became much more vivid and too harsh and required me to go over it again with clean turps to tone it back.


Anyway think it's looking a bit better now but there is still a lot to do. Think I'll give it a rest now before I pass out with the fumes off it !

Hi Paul,

the result looks pretty nice so far . The camouflage scheme seems like it has been faded a little bit too much BUT i'm not sure if i'm right.

A dusty and realistic look always reduces contrast. Could also be a result from the camera's flash too or the lamp. Fluorescent lamps and pure white LEDs for example can easily ruin the look of a model on photos. Trust me, i got the same problem.

Would you mind doing another photo session under good daylight conditions? I would really like to see how the model is looking then. Also, what colours did you use for the dot filters?

Is looking good! Did you apply some pinwashes? As Bernd said, dust will bring back the contrast. So it is helpfull if you apply some fairly thick pinwashes because the dust wil bring it down and fade it with the base colour. Very nice paintjob still!

Ok here are a couple of pics taken outside in good daylight and it really is looking a grimy dirty old bit of kit




Now, the book I bought has really good pics of dirty looking guns serving in Bosnia and I was hoping to work towards something like that, but not so soon !
The attempt at "dot filtering" was really to just fade the paint a bit and then to go on and gradually work up the dirt and grime carefully with some light oils and maybe some pigments, I had not planned to have it look so dirty at this stage. So if my pics look good and convincing then it is by accident rather than design
(albeit a happy one). I did do a pin wash but it is very light and I think I'll do another to try to bring out a bit of definition. The colours of the dot filter were Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber,Yellow Ochre (very little) and a blue which I've forgotten the name of but hardly used.
I haven't done much to it today, am at the stage where I sit and stare at it and try to convince myself I'm happy with the progress but really aren't sure. Guess this the artistic side of the hobby, all the vagaries and nuances and subtlety come into play. Need to wait till the muse is on me!
Thanks for your interest

very 'scruffy' mate..
get that gown the wash lines sharpish!

Seriously very good, how did you do the optics? been trying lots of methods, but not hppy with mine so far

Think I'm finally happy with it, spent a bit of time cleaning off the excess dirt and think it looks a bit better.











The optics were done with pieces of purple foil, not sure about them though.

Now what next..............?

Very well done , I think that it looks great.

Thanks for all the comments, I've enjoyed this one, all the etch and the metal barrel were new features for me and I think they have made a difference to the end result. Have found the next build...............................An Aeroplane!
Picked up an Academy 1/48 Thunderbolt for a ridiculous price, so as I was looking for something different I'll give it a try.

Cheers Paul