After a long hiatus on this project I’ve finally made some progress. Not a heap of progress mind you, but still a decent amount. The next step after the base colours is adding a wash to bring out the panel lines, rivets and other details.
I use oil paints as they have a long working time as I do the wash phase in a couple of steps.
- Apply a gloss or satin (semi-gloss) layer of varnish to the model – this step helps keep the washes off the flat panels.
- Apply the wash only to the panel lines, rivets, creases and other areas where you want it to end up.
- Using a brush damp with enamel thinner clean the wash from areas you don’t want it (e.g. flat panel surfaces, tops of rivets, etc).
The pictures aren’t great, sunlight is pretty harsh to miniatures particularly when they’ve got a gloos coat on them. The washing process above also keeps the surfaces fairly glossy.
This technique gives shading and depth to the model, while avoiding the pooling and splotches that you get when using just a wash. The wash I’ve used here is AK Interactive’s Dark Wash for Green Vehicles (AK-045) and their odourless turpentine (AK-050). I’ve also started to add some of the other details (pipes and cogs) that I’ll finish before the next step (chipping).
I may be transitioning away from AK Interactive products. In December Mig Jiminez (the modeller and front man of AK) split with the other people involved and started his own company called ammo. From a quick glance through their website it looks like most of the washes, pigments and weathering products are available through both companies. I’ve still got a fair bit of AK stuff so I will keep using that, but I suspect new stuff will mainly be coming out from Ammo so it’s quite likely that those products will start to appear here and there.
More details of the Mig-AK split can be found on the internet and there’s claims and counter-claims floating about. I’ll avoid getting further involved and just provide both links to round out this post.
