SPA Modeler

Lately I have come to enjoy painting monochromatic schemes. Monochromatic doesn’t have to mean “boring” at all. It’s been fun letting my imagination go bananas with this stuff.

After I laid-down the black primer, I went over all the edges with Tamiya Red Brown, thinned-out 3:12 paint to thinner. Sprayed it in a diffused, marbles style. This is like pre-shading, but not, in the sense that the brown isn’t necessarily darker. It’s more like pre-pre highlighting:



Next, I sprayed the inside of all the areas wardened-off by the brown, same diffused, marbles style, using Olive Drab, thinned 3:12 thinner to paint. This is just a foundation, to begin gently bumping up the opacity:



After that, I over-sprayed the brown pre-pre highlighting, using the diffused marbled pattern with the same paint mixture as in the previous step:



Next came the pre-highlighting, I mixed Flat White with Olive Drab, 1:2, and then added 12 drops of thinner, and sprayed over the inside areas, again, marbling the paint on:



After that, I sprayed a blend coat of Olive Drab, thinned 3:12:



And then I highlighted some areas I thought would look nice a bit lighter, same heavily thinned 1:3 Flat White and Olive Drab mix:



And then gave it one more blend coat of thinned Olive drab, and here we are:










So there we go! I’m pretty happy with his this came out. It’s a not boring, relatively monochromatic paint job!

Looking Outstanding!!!!

Thank you Carlos!

As is custom, I let the coats dry and set up all day, and then went over her one more time with a heavily thinned blend coat. This time however, I blended with the lightened shade and not the base coat color. I normally use the base color. I didn’t here. I felt like using the lighter shave of Olive Drabz







I’m comfortable calling the main paint work on this fella “Done.” I’m gonna let him sit awhile, let the paint cure and do its thing, I’m still waiting on my shipment of more Tamiya gloss Clear to arrive because I ran out, so he’ll sit and chill until sealing and then decals.

I’ll probably start on the tracks shortly.

As to my StuG, he got a flat coat today and pigments will start shortly.

I’m gonna distill this further, too. I want to see if it’s repeatable. This was just a crazy idea I had. And it worked. I want to see if it’ll work again. I’ll keep documenting.

The OD on the Sherman looks fantastic! Yes, it is not a homogenous superficial color but has some great depth due to the tonal variations. It makes the tank look...HEAVY.

I’m calling the StuG done.

I’m happy with where it’s at, after washes on the wheels and tracks, and pigments. I’m not happy with a few of the decals, though. The red ones didn’t vanish like I’d expected. The crosses did just fine, as did the little white tank logo decals. Admittedly, I was being conservative with the Solvaset. I’d read horror stories of it eating paint, disintegrating decals, and the like, so I took it easy with it.

My plan for decals moving forward is:

1. Pick a few off the sheet I know I won’t use on the build

2. Lay down the same paints I’m using on the model on the paint mule, and seal with the same clear

3. apply them to the paint mule

4. Hit em hard with Solvaset

5. See what happens and if it’s all good, move forward

Here’s the photos:

speedgraflex wrote:I never thought I would apply this to describe a tank, but here goes—beautiful.

Thank you, Bruce!