It's a model I built when I was in Greece for summer. It's not 100% complete, but it's at a presentable state and not going to change much. The text comes from my blog, with a few alterations to make it fit for the forum.
I hope you like it. It's a beautiful kit.
I'm going to go through this quickly, in order to get to the sexy pics.
I won't write anything about the kit, since a very good review can be found here: http://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/kits/zve/kit_zve_3596.shtmlThe first challenge was to find a good way to make the leather seats look like leather... The representation of such materials has always been a pain for me. The kit instructions insisted that the seats should be black. I had a different idea (I always mess things up when I have time to get creative) and decided to paint them in a dark red-brown leather scheme. I also used the hairspray technique to represent some scratches and the tamiya weathering master set A for some extra wear. This was the result:
Next step was the wooden parts. And they were PLENTY!!!
The idea was to paint all the woodwork, weather it, cover it with hairspray, then a coat of the basic color (Hu67 - panzer grey) and then chip them to show wear.
For the wooden parts, I used pretty much everything I had handy. Basic colour (I don't even remember which), a coat of future, then washed it with raw umber, burnt umber and some black oil colours, then dry brushed it with lighter and darker tones of brown, then the tamiya weathering master again, an oil colour filter in the end and...
Having decided that I would use the hairspray technique quite extensively for this kit (it was the first time I was using it on a real model - up till then I had only used it for small barrels and other stuff), I sprayed some Humbrol Rust on certain spots on the hoods, the cabin etc, before I cover them with hairspray and then the basic grey.
To make a long story short, the several parts looked pretty much like this, before I started assembling them on the chassis:
Engine:
I didn't find too many reference photos, so I just followed the painting instructions:
Chassis:
Not much to show here at this point:
With the engine and chassis left aside, I worked on the several cargo load items. I spent a whole morning on two canisters, one of which looks like this (the one on the left):
I copied three fuel drums, using aluminum foil. One of them:
Home-made steel wire (compared to a Dragon part in the middle):
and I started assembling the parts:
One of the things that I had decided to add on the cargo bed was a Maybach engine from an old Italeri Bergepanther that I had built. A friend saw it and asked for the engine, so I thought I could "cover" it with a piece of canvas instead. I used milliput and:
Using oil colours I added some rust effects on the metal parts:
It wasn't until too late that I realized that the rust effects were too intense and probably not too realistic... But it wasn't the end of the world...
I used pigments mixed with oil colour mat varnish to add dried mud effect on the wheels and elsewhere. Sadly the only colours I had available in pigments were ochre and burnt umber. So I did my best with them:
And since I'm a bit short of time right now, I'll jump to the final photos of the model.
My mechanic is not painted yet (I guess I'll do it next summer) and there are still a couple of things that need to be done.
This model is going to be part of a diorama in the future. With a little luck, that is.
Thank you for your time. I'll be around to answer any questions and read your constructive comments.
Final photos:
