Hi Michael,

Excellent, those decals are pretty cool. It will certainly make the diorama a talking point when it is complete. Well done.

All the best,

Paul

looking forward to see how this turns out. the one i posted is great, but focused on replicating the tank only. i like what your doing by replicating the surroundings as well. luckily, there are many people that have had taken picture of this already, so you have plenty of reference. plus, there are many of us here that can get pictures if you needed them if they live in the area

Excellent idea using decals. They look high quality. This is good advertisement for your brother. I may have to look him up someday for some graphics

Are you going to apply these (graffiti) decals onto the wall late at night when nobody can see you do it? You know, so it's authentic and accurate

@ Paul: Thanks for the thumps up!
@ Jesse: Reverence I do have plenty. Google street view turned out to be very valuable too.
@KoSprueOne: You point out an often underrepresented aspect of modelling: time appropriate modelling! No serious modeller can build a tank or whatever on a weekend, let alone at evening or even at night, when the real counterpart has been produced during working days only! So of cause the wall decals will be applied in the depth of night, anxiously looking around. Only this approach will instill the correct spirit into this wall!


Okay, here is some progress.
(Well, looking at the results I am not so shure yet whether it was really a pro- and not a regress)

First I tried to depict the casting seam of the turret, which I had sanded of by mistake. Stretched sprue seemed the appropriate material for that. Only that my patience was the only thing that got stretched. The sprue on the contrary did not strech at all but prefered to snap instead. Even shouting and cursing did not help. Surprisingly.



So finally I gave up on that and tried thin (0,1 mm) copper wire instead which was then blended into the turret surface with Mr. Surfacer.





Hmmm. Maybe looks a bit too prominent now.


Colour

A pink tank without pink is not a pink tank. So lets slash on some colour. Tamiya X17 mixed with some X22 and Thinner should do the trick.
And on the pic the colour actually looks quite right. Unfortunately in reality it is much too bright. I do not think that I will take the chance to tone it down with filters but will colour it anew before applying the camouflage. This time after testing the outcome on a piece of plastic before…




At least the tracks turned out well: on a foundation with Tamiya X52 black (XT1) with a drop of Gunmetal (X56) was sprayed without covering the base completely.



To my surprise the tracks of the real tank show no sign of rust at all. So I refrained from replicating any.


That much for now. Thanks for following.
Michael

to me, it doesnt look pink enough. especially, when you take into account any filters, if you did them. the pictures i have seen, it looks bright pink

Hi Michael,

I know it is too late now, but for your future reference there was a debate in the general section on stretching sprue...

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/212866

Might prove useful for other projects.

All the best,

Paul

@ Jesse: The pic doesn´t do the real colour justice. It really is a bright piggy pink.

@ Paul: thanks for pointing at the streching sprue blog. Good to see that I am not the only one who struggles with this technique. But in the meantime I even managed to succeed three times
The question is: to do the seam again or not?! Hmmm...

Enjoy your weekend
Michael

Hi Michael,

Easy answer...no, looks just fine.

All the best,

Paul

That was a good day so far! The second wall is finished and I am quite happy with the result.



The basic shape was formed with Styrofoam and Styrodur-pieces. These werde covered with tile cement. While this forms a very realistic surface in 1:35 it turned out bee too coarse in Braille. So it was sanded down and dressed with repair plaster. Some enamel washes later it looked like a wall already. A sheet served as roof.




At first I did not know what to do with the roofs as I had no reference and – more important – as well no idea how it might look and what to do. I presented the problem to my modelling buddies at our weekly meeting suggesting to leave it a metallic deep gray with some weathering.



But this faced strong opposition and it was suggested that I get some idea of what it might look like and build it accordingly. And this is what I made out of it:



A little frame was constructed from Evergreen profiles. The roof was then covered with slates of fine sanding paper to imitate roofing cardboard. Some washes with various colours, application of pigments and some green slime later I liked the appearance. No idea whether this is a realistic solution but it doesn´t look all too bad.






The lower part of the wall received a different paint as if redone later.
And then the highlight: The decals. They went down easily, settled with setting solution, blended with some off white, survived two light black washes and the final laying and painting of a cable.






The first wall got a cardboard-top as well and was finished by attaching the wooden screen.




And that´s how they will look together…





Happy modelling from a happy modeller

Michael

Now the base got some attention. For the fence with the concrete poles I heated 2 x 2 mm rectangular profiles in the oven to 70 °C and bent them so that after cooling the tip remaind in a slightly bent position. The tips were then rounded, struts added, medium grey colour applied and some wear represented with the sponge technique with off white, various shades of grey (;-)) and some washes with black.



The pavement received some signs of repair. Border stones were carved and coloured. The street was paved and marked with a yellow strip. This I sanded down to make it look used. The center area where some grass should be planted the ground was prepared by appying some brown washes. To blend the tank into the groundwork slots were carved for the tracks.



Okay. How to cover the whole area with grass? Some attempts with coloured fibers did not work out. Just to sprinkle railroad modelling grass I did not like because it looks just flat and boring if you do not have a special device to plant static grass. Looking through all my boxes with plants and parts of plants a stumpled over a plant I collected in Israel on a Mountain Bike Tour. I am not 100 % sure but it might be called goldenrod and featured some fluffs of fibres that could be plucked and planted with white glue. Painting it with acrylic colours posed no problem either. Very fine fibres I found at common hemp ropes too. So I only hat to cut bushels of various length and plant them.








The areas where the grass was trampled down and where the tracks of the tank will be were covered with artificial grass fibres. The rest was planted as described. And that´s the way it looks after a couple of hours.




Well, some perserverance will be required…
Let me know what you think! Any better, quicker, easier way for this for the next time?

Thanks for following.

Michael

Very cool to see this one take shape. For a second there though, I thought you were talking about this:

Hey, this one I haven´t come across during my pink panzer search. Where is it? Thanks for posting.
Michael

It was here at Ft. Sill last year.

the diorama is looking great! the decals on the wall blend in realistically.

The ground work looks tedious but the results will be worth the effort.
I don't have any other advise for you on that and at that scale

Cobrahistorian - nice tank, why was it painting like that?

Unfortunately to make it easier to be seen so it could get blowed up...

Done! Took about 7 h to plant!






Ready to be airbrushed.

Stay tuned.

Michael

The grass is always greener on the other side.
Ha, not anymore after my painting session:



The fence was also installed and topped with three strands of barbed wire (E.T. Model)




It took me quite a while to find a proper mesh for the fence. Most were too coarse for Braille or blocked the view too much. This Verlinden-Mesh is just right in my eyes. I do not intend to colour it but the barbed wire will get a wash to break its shine.

Planting and building completed. Here some shots with the base almost finished.




The tendrilling plants were created by sticking coarser foilage material onto basil-roots, which was then glued to the base.




The dandelions are just pieces of yellow foam glued to the grass.









The purple plants are tiny blooms from an unknown plant I found on one of my tours.





I finally skipped the tree. First it did not turn out that nice. Second – and mor important – it blocks the view partially from the right side of the tank.

So, some tweaks here and there and the base should be ready.

Thanks for following.

Michael

looking very good so far!

I dreaded camouflaging the tank. And for a reason. I found it always (meaning once so far ;-) ) challenging to mask camouflage in Braille. For my fox build the tip was hinted to use tooth paste for this purpose. So I tried this – luckily at the bottom first – for the paste I used dissolved the colour. I discarded it as toxic waste. So finally I used white tac which worked but was quite a pain.






Any better idea from the community? I want it quick, easy, pain free and PE protective. My method does not qualify for any of these.

Looking forward for your suggestions.

Michael

Michael,

Fascinating and very impressive results so far. As for your masking issue with toothpaste, did you apply any kind of protective coating over the base paint (Future/Klear, Tamiya X-22 Clear, clear varnish...etc.)? Matthew Lenton (firstcircle) has used toothpaste successfully and I believe he also mentioned using a very inexpensive brand of toothpaste without any additives as being best.

Cheers,
Jan

Don't know if this works but maybe you could try paper maché? Without adding glue of course ... Make a porridge of paper (tissue paper ??) and water, stick it on the model, and paint (airbrush directly), remove before it sticks too hard. If you use a paint that actually hardens it should be possible to let the paint harden and then soften the paper mush with water to get it off.
DO NOT try this without testing on something else first !!!
Let us know if it does work .....
/ Robin

You have done really well, your pink tank looks very nice, but the show stealer is the dio, stunning work

nice work, reminds me of the Range Targets at Larkhill, strangely hard to google pics of the white, pink, & yellow primary targets for the open days....

I'd go with White-Tac as the least-worst masking agent, less messy than toothpaste & doesn't leave residues like blu-tac & sillyputty can...

woww.. very nice build, good job !!

@jan: Thanks for your kind words. Concerning the toothpase: no, I did not put varnish as I intended to apply it after the application of the second colour only. So next time I will probably have to varnish the tank first and apply the toothpaste then.

@robin: at first glance your technique seems a bit too messy to me. For example, when I correct the shape of the mask, the surface will be wet and will need drying before airbrushing it. With the white tack I can correct the shape quite easily by just pushing it into its intended place. The surface does not need any further preparation afterwards. But I will keep your idea in the back of my head. It might come handy once. And as long as the paper mache is not dry it might be more tender to fragile areas, particularly PE parts.

@steven, @jon, @erhan: I am happy that you like it. Thanks for following and giving me your thumps up.



Now some more bits and pieces:

Took me quite a while to decide which colour to choose as second one for the camoflague. At the end I thought that Vallejos Model Color Purple would be a good choice and bought it. I did not want to paint it with a brush so I took pains to make it work with my airbrush. At the end it worked somehow with a dilution with water and a little bit of Model Color Thinner. Has any one out there any recipe to how best dilute Model Color colours to make them fit for an airbrush? Of my attemps with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner (clumps), addition of tiny amounts of detergent (spiders), more water (spiders), just Model Color Thinner (spiders), less water (repetitive clogging) neither worked well.

Somehow the paint landed on the tank. Frustratingly the colour turned out too blueish and with too much contrast to the base. For I did not have the time to redo everything again I opted for leaving it this way nevertheless. To make my misery complete, demasking resulted in the loss of one of the side tanks and some PE parts. Luckily these things were an easy fix.







Stay tuned. More to come

Have a nice weekend with lots of time for your projects

Michael