October 28

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Finished painting and weathering the cockpit and added the Eduard Zoom PE kit.

The nose of this plane (as well as all clear plastic parts) is a problem area and required a fair amount of putty, sanding, Mr. Surfacer 500 and re-scribing panel lines and rivets to look passable.

Two nicely detailed Daimler 603 engines are included with the kit. The only modification made was adding brass wire instead of kit parts for some of the hoses.

Built up the front cockpit of the Meng 1/48 Me-410B.

Vallejo Black Primer and RLM02 where indicated.

After a coat of RLM66 and some highlights, it's time for the Eduard Zoom PE set.

Finished! Dragon Models 1/35 scale Tiger I Early.

Bases By Bill really came through with the amazing custom base for this one.

I also added the matching Dragon figures and finished them in acrylics and oils.

So much dirt.

I wanted to give this tank a really worn look, as common on the Eastern front.

Painting the crew uniforms was quite the challenge.

Made a small base from modeling clay and covered it with real dirt and pigments and added in a Tiger track imprint for good measure.

If you haven't checked out out Bases By Bill yet, you are missing out. A small 8-32 machine screw and nut secured the Tiger to the base.

Holy sh#t, this looks good. Do I really have to give this to the customer?

I'll be building this kit for the SprueCutterModels #mottlemania build. Of course, had to add a few aftermarket goodies...

Here is the built-up cockpit with the molded on details removed in preparation for the Eduard PE set. Also sculpted some additional details from Tamiya Epoxy Putty.

Advanced Modeler's Syndrome? Guilty as charged. Wiring was added to the back of the instrument panel with lead wire.

Cockpit pieces are ready for primer and paint!

Completed the detail painting and outlining of the dark Panzer uniforms.

After base coating with flat black and pre-shading with Panzer Uniform, I mixed black and white oils into a gradient of grays for highlights and shadows.

For the first figure, I started by adding the first highlight to the lighter pre-shaded areas, thinning the oils with white spirits.

I then added shadows with the darker end of the oil paint mix into all the recessed and shaded areas.

Using a dry soft brush, I blended the highlights and shadows together, creating soft gradients.

Here is the comparison between the previous steps and the base figure.

The pants on the first figure turned out a little too gray for my liking - I will tone things down with some glazes once the oils are dry. 

The heads for the Wittmann crew are primed and pre-shaded.

After much scraping and puttying, the figures have been primed and pre-shaded by spraying the base uniform color from above.