f2k
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2011
- Messages
- 301
While we’re waiting for the big contest to start I’ve decided to take care of a small project that’s been on the backburner for a while – namely the repainting of my SU-85 unit.
I painted it quite a few years ago. And I wasn’t being very neat about it, to put it mildly...
I was in somewhat of a hurry to get it done (needed it for game-night a few days later) so I simply gave it a spray with War Paint “German Armour†undercoat, picked out a few details, drybrushed the tracks and roadwheels with metal and then dunked the whole thing in Fanatic Army Painted “Light Shadeâ€. Very quick. Very dirty. Very, very ugly...
Normally I’d simply keep the whole model submerged in acetone until the paint had stripped off. But since this would damage the resin I couldn’t do that. So instead I soaked an old toothbrush in acetone and used that to scrub the model until the paint started to come off.
Didn’t really work that well, as you can probably tell. There’s still a bit of paint left on the tanks, but so be it. Hopefully it won’t matter too much once the undercoat has been applied.
For now, there’re still some minor details to take care of. The remaining fuel tanks must be cleaned and glued on. Two of the tanks had casting errors on the lower front plate which will have to be corrected with a bit of greenstuff. And I need to sculpt a hatch for one of the tanks.
Why?
Well, take a look at the SU-85 on the right. Notice how the casemate is slightly different?
I didn’t think much about it back when I painted the models the first time. Just shrugged my shoulders and got to work painting it. But now that I’m repainting it I did start to wonder about it.
A bit of googling later, and I discovered that the different casemate was, most likely, from an SU-85M tank. How it had ended up in a SU-85 blister...? Well... Who knows?
Not that it matters much in game terms. Okay, so it might not be entirely period accurate for a mid war army, but I’ll just pretend that it’s an early production prototype or something. One problem, though, is that the SU-85M has a cupola from the T-34 – and the hatch for that copula was missing from the blister. So out comes the greenstuff and sculpting tools...
In addition to repainting the tanks I’m also making a few custom bases for the tanks (well, any T-34 based tank really) to be cast in resin. Why? Because I can, of course! And because I’m one of the few Flames of War players who seem to like basing his tanks...
I painted it quite a few years ago. And I wasn’t being very neat about it, to put it mildly...
I was in somewhat of a hurry to get it done (needed it for game-night a few days later) so I simply gave it a spray with War Paint “German Armour†undercoat, picked out a few details, drybrushed the tracks and roadwheels with metal and then dunked the whole thing in Fanatic Army Painted “Light Shadeâ€. Very quick. Very dirty. Very, very ugly...
Normally I’d simply keep the whole model submerged in acetone until the paint had stripped off. But since this would damage the resin I couldn’t do that. So instead I soaked an old toothbrush in acetone and used that to scrub the model until the paint started to come off.
Didn’t really work that well, as you can probably tell. There’s still a bit of paint left on the tanks, but so be it. Hopefully it won’t matter too much once the undercoat has been applied.
For now, there’re still some minor details to take care of. The remaining fuel tanks must be cleaned and glued on. Two of the tanks had casting errors on the lower front plate which will have to be corrected with a bit of greenstuff. And I need to sculpt a hatch for one of the tanks.
Why?
Well, take a look at the SU-85 on the right. Notice how the casemate is slightly different?
I didn’t think much about it back when I painted the models the first time. Just shrugged my shoulders and got to work painting it. But now that I’m repainting it I did start to wonder about it.
A bit of googling later, and I discovered that the different casemate was, most likely, from an SU-85M tank. How it had ended up in a SU-85 blister...? Well... Who knows?
Not that it matters much in game terms. Okay, so it might not be entirely period accurate for a mid war army, but I’ll just pretend that it’s an early production prototype or something. One problem, though, is that the SU-85M has a cupola from the T-34 – and the hatch for that copula was missing from the blister. So out comes the greenstuff and sculpting tools...
In addition to repainting the tanks I’m also making a few custom bases for the tanks (well, any T-34 based tank really) to be cast in resin. Why? Because I can, of course! And because I’m one of the few Flames of War players who seem to like basing his tanks...