This is the new Dragon kit I reviewed earlier. Depicted as a tank at Saipan. Just need to make a base for it now.










Painted with Tamiya rattlecan gray, oil wash and pastels applied for weathering. I painted the props grey as the brass/gold called out in the instructions seemed awfully bright.

That is one nice little (but very ugly) tank! Not the technics you used, but you know. Same as the KV II....

Although I do have some feedback for you. The dusting and the overall paint is done very well, but I think the model will be better if some pinwashes is applied. Tip the bolts and lines with some highly diluted (turpentine) oil paint. In this case I should use a very dark brown like van dyke brown. This will give the model much more depth and is also part of the weathering.

You are one the right track and it is done very nice indeed.

Regards,

Hilbert

I agree on the pinwash, and this is a beautiful kit. Yeah I know the tanks ugly, but it's beautiful

Looks to me like Russ did a pin wash, but used a lighter color. And then the additional weather took the contrast away. That aspect of it doesn't bother me, and I think it looks good.

I think the vegetation in the last shot just looks out of scale. Even if the leaves were large tropical type plants, the 'stems' for those leaves are relatively small. They look pretty big on the model.

I like the end result of the finish. Looks to me like it's been wet, then got dusty.
I can't say one way or another about scale of the plants, but I like the effect of the color contrast and the impression of local foliage used for camo.

Thanks for the comments. I actually applied several washes, first of a light yellow oil, then burnt umber and white alternated, which blended a little, and finally a burnt umber coat on it's own. I used several pastel dustings, from homemade mixes. A pale green, faint gray, light blue/gray, yellow ochre and some reddish garden soil. The plants are just from the garden, and were thrown on for contrast. I'll invest in some etch or paper leaves when I set this on a stand.

Nice clean OOB build. I really like the over all weathering. Sure looks like it's been exposed to plenty of tropical sunlight and salt air. I'm not crazy about the plants nor their scale, but that's just me.

Very nicely done!

Any issues in building the kit? I have one that I'm hoping to get onto the work bench in the near future.

Grant, the build was very easy, with no real fit issues. Any errors in the instructions are listed in the review. I just realized that in spite of my checking and rechecking, my sporadic dyslexia struck again as the right hand naval insignia is upside-down (backwards facing).

Fantastic build Russ, what Tamiya color did you use?

German gray. It was the only color I could get ahold of at the time. Under all the washes it's hard to tell.

This is definitely a tank built for a single purpose. The paint and dusting turned out perfect. I would suggest a little more weathering to the tracks. You may want to add some brass chipping to the props. It's more likely these would have been painted brass.

Thanks Russ, and you are right it is hard to tell it is German grey. Thanks for sharing this build, I will be adding this kit to my stash as soon as I can get my grubby little paws on one

that looks really nice. I'm still waiting for one to show up at the lhs