This is a work in progress. Inspired by the excellent work of "Troop of Shewe" I bought an IWATA airbrush (my third airbrush, since the other two didn't work out for me.) Over the past months, on and off, I have been putting together WW2 and modern vehicles. These soviet vehicles are my first trial. They are not finished. I still have to 'dust' the vehicles with my airbrush. Since that could trash my work I decided to take some interim photos.
What I like about Troop of Shewe's work is that his vehicles seem to 'glow'. I tried to recreate this by painting the vehicles dark green, over a black undercoat, and then 'high lighting' with successively lighter colours, but only in some spots of the vehicle. After this was done I used heavily diluted black ink wash to 'blend' everything together. It was nerve wracking to coat the vehicles with black ink! I think it worked out OK (so far.) I applied some dental cement to the vehicles in places to simulate dirt, and then brushed this with an earth tone, when the model was painted. I am not sure if I will do this for other models (although I have a few dozen undercoated models which have this dental cement in place, so I am stuck with the system for the next batches of vehicles.)
It is difficult to get the contrast on the vehicles right. The black ink wash toned everything down. Now I will 'dust' the vehicles by spraying Vallejo pale sand onto them from a distance. That is going to tone down the contrast again. Finally I will varnish with vallejo matt varnish, which does take some of the contrast out of any subject.
I am painting 12 BTR60s, 3 BRDM2 scout cars, 3 BRDM2 command variants and 3 BRDM2 with Spandrel A/T vehicles in this batch. I photographed the lot. A bit boring, but otherwise one vehicle may not be representative of my system. If I now find I trash the vehicles with 'dusting' and varnish, I will know roughly where I got to.
This white background, for the photos, is something new. It is actually a silk 'Panjabi' with an interesting weave (that doesn't show up in these photos.) I was concerned that my previous use of a static grass background, with some buildings, wasn't showing up the figures themselves.
I also have been through about 3 airbrushes before I finally found an IWATA airbrush that worked long enough without clogging and well enough for camo on 15mm and 28mm vehicles. But of course, now I am looking for a better airbrush, but it is not out of frustration this time!
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