Hello and welcome,
Looks like I published last week's build log under the wrong blog type, so this week you get two for the price of one. :-)
First things first: the BT-42. I added some chipping and a bit of rust runoff, in preparation for further weathering:
As the underside is covered in wet mud, my plan was to make the top side look like it's wet from rain. I decided to use Ammo-Mig Wet Effects for this, after looking up a how-to video by the man himself. He makes it look easy, but it's not...
I started with the hull, to test out the technique before I moved on to the large, eye-catching turret. First I did as in the video, and made some streaks along the sides of the tank. The effect is subtle and only pops out under certain angles of light. In one small corner I used some Europe Earth pigment, and I liked the look of that, so I broke out the old dirt box and proceeded to dust the entire upper hull. When scrubbing off the pigments with a broad brush, it wipes off more from the semi-gloss wet effects than the matt paint, so my previous work wasn't entirely wasted.
Here's the back plate. The effect is hard to photograph, so please excuse the quality of the pictures. I tried to continue the water runoff from the upper to the lower back plate.
The front of the BT has the driver's position with a couple of large hatches: here as well, I tried to make the water marks follow the angles:
You'll see several dots spread all over the surface. That's the second layer of the effect: I tried to represent rain drops falling on the dusty surface by flicking drops onto the tank with a large stiff brush and a toothpick. Honestly, I'm not entirely convinced of the effect... I'll see if I can find some more videos on Youtube for tips. Again, the effect is hard to photograph, and keep in mind the turret has not been treated yet:
On the right side air intake (just above the eye of the bottom tow cable in the picture I 'painted' the rain drops manually. It gives me less randomness, but more control over the size of the rainmarks. I'm not sure which method looks better. If you'd like to see it for yourself and give your opinion, please visit the shop, your input will be welcomed. :-)
Okay, that's it for the rain. On to the Williams. I've painted the yellow and white and started decalling.
First off, you need to decal the sides of the front/lower body:
Why now? Because in this case the front suspension would get in the way:
Thierry also needs to be seated before we can fix the body to the ground plate:
I'll have to go over his seatbelts with some matt varnish, I think. The decals are way too shiny.
The front wing is then set under the nose, to be sandwiched between the nose and belly plate. Tamiya provides a white decal for the background of the 'Canon' titles, but I decided to airbrush this, it's cleaner and easier. I also painted and installed the brake discs. The 'gold', once again, was
Silver overpainted with
Clear Yellow:
So, here's where I'm at with the Williams. Front body is fixed to the belly plate, the nose cover has been decalled, the upper/rear body is in the process of being decalled (I also need to correct some of the white paintwork).
What I'm having trouble with is the blue. All the blue on the car is coming from decals. But these decals need to fit around curves and details, which is not always possible to pull off without causing small tears. The age of the decals does not help with this, of course. Usually no big deal, you can correct it with a bit of paint. But that's where the trouble begins. Tamiya states in their instructions to use
X-4, their version of gloss blue. However, that colour is way too dark. So I've been experimenting and mixing Citadel Kantor Blue and
Macragge Blue, together with
Vallejo 266 Dark Blue and Mig-209 Light Gray, but I find it very difficult to get a good match to the blue used on the decals. I'll search online to see if someone has a paint ratio or (even better) an out-of-the-bottle match for it...
To be continued.
See you next week!
