Introduction

Federico Collada has released the second book in his Model Tips series of books. One of the beauties of these books in my opinion is that the tips do not concentrate on a specific area of modelling and instead they travel far and wide looking at facets that should offer something for everyone. In this review I have looked at three sections that are of interest to my current tasks.

Review

This title is an A4 sized soft backed book with a page count that comes in at 110. The paper used has a glossy finish that displays the images very well. The card cover is in my opinion a little on the thin side, but as long as it is not abused it should hold up well while protecting the pages within. The contents cover 25 sections and these are as follows:
1: The scale effect and atmospheric perspective
2: Cobblestones
3: Towing cables
4: Headlights
5: Cardboard boxes
6: Vinyl backpacks
7: Filling holes in seconds
8: Textures 1
9: Periscopes
10: Liquid plastic
11: Printed bases
12: Wheels
13: Zimmerit
14: Recycling paints
15: Camouflage with masks
16: Snake camouflage with felt pens
17: Painting through water
18: Light filtering
19: Pin wash acrylics in hostile medium
20: Oil washes
21: The acid bath
22: Recipe for a homemade rusting agent
23: Stains on water
24: Acrylic mud
25: Photo montages

The areas covered in this book are aimed at the armour modeller by the author, but it should also be considered that many of the areas covered here are applicable to other areas of the hobby. Having read through this title I have noted a number of spelling mistakes, mostly in the form of the letter ‘Y’ being replaced with a letter ‘i’, I put this down to Federico Collada being Spanish; his English is far superior to my Spanish though and so I am not complaining just mentioning. It needs to be pointed out that the spelling mistakes do not detract from the title or make it hard to understand.

The print and colour picture quality are very good, and they do a good job of explaining the aim and process of getting there. For me there are three sections that I found of particular interest are:
9: Periscopes
16: Snake camouflage with felt pens
22: Recipe for a homemade rusting agent

Section 9: Periscopes tackles the aspect that many modellers struggle with, the colour aspect and making a realistic finish and look. This is achieved in the book via the use of clear acetate, metallic coloured food wrappers and some stock plastic. I know that AFV Club released very realistic stickers that replicate the laser coatings; this however is a way to get a similar effect from the use of waste material for the most part. Not content with that other methods in a similar vein are also covered.

16: Snake camouflage with felt pens looks at a method that I have seen used to great effect and that makes a very difficult paint finish a lot easier to achieve in a controlled manner. Not everyone has a hand that is steady enough to paint clean squiggly lines with a brush, or for that matter an airbrush of a good enough quality and control to tackle a finish that looks great when done well. The use of felt tipped pens to achieve the effect makes it a more realistic option of those of us without the steadiest of hands and follows through and also looks at cleaning away any errors you may make in the process; far easier to fix than when paint is used. The section comes to a close with the protection of your artistic endeavours before the addition of weathering.

Section 22: Recipe for a homemade rusting agent is a big plus for me as I like adding metal tracks to tanks, especially German World War II armour. One of the issues with metal tracks is that commercial products for tarnishing them tends to be expensive in relation to the amount of product you get and for the number of times it can be used; how often have you dunked your tracks and then realised that you need more to get an even finish. The method described takes minutes rather than seconds, but as the products are readily available in most countries you have can easily and affordably have the needed items to hand.

Conclusion

I know I have only looked at three of the 25 sections in this title, but the idea is to provide you with an idea of what the contents are like rather than give away the whole game. The three sections I have looked at in this review are areas of particular interest in relation to what I am doing currently and I hope to show you soon how I got on with trying these techniques out. For a price of €20.80 I feel this is a lot of book for the money.