Wednesday, 2 April 2014

Turning Japanese Part 4 - wherein much progress is made, but mostly without pictures.................

The aim as stated was to match some models I had sold to Tim a while ago. Only problem was trying to remember how I painted the originals. Thankfully I still had the pics I used to list them on ebay, so with a bit more thought I cracked on.

Once assembled everything got a coat of black undercoat. Once that had thoroughly dried I reached for the paint I had planned to use as a basecoat – to discover it was not only empty, but also the last tin of FoW “British Armour” in the Northern hemisphere!

Colour matching - Dont'cha just love it

Luckily Plastic Soldier Company has released a spray that is claimed as an exact match, so with trepidation I decided to try that. I was pleasantly surprised as the PSC paint seems to cover well and be a very close match for the old FoW one. 

My second problem then raised its ugly head, remembering which damned brown I had used - a matter complicated by the fact the original had run dry. Fortunately a quick run through to our local "Boyes" store rectified this. As an aside, Boyes is a VERY strange but useful store, a small chain department store that sells PSC, Perry Plastics and Zvezda, all at competitive prices.

I should add that while I appreciate the recommended FoW colours are a khaki undercoat, all the photos of “the real thing” look much greener to me, so I went with green.

The plan is to paint irregular areas of a brick red (Vallejo Saddle Brown), then add stripes of yellow. To get this rather garish combination to blend I’m going to drybrush with buff then wash the lot in a thinned sepia, which gives the yellow about the right effect. Then ink in the engine decks, paint the tracks and MG barrels German grey and highlight gunmetal. That’s the plan anyway


With about 20 to paint I decided a production line would be too long, so went for batches of five, starting with the Type 95 HaGo light tanks.

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