help with project

[Jazz]

one of my side projects is this recreation of an old b/w photo,

would be nice to hear how you would paint and weather it, just cant seem to get a look that i am happy with, this is about its fourth repaint and no matter how i paint it it just never comes out right so help would be very welcome

just to give you an idea of scale, 1/72

 

[stona]

Some of the guys know that I like to reproduce a photo as best I can. Mine are of aircraft but the principles are the same.

I think you've already done a pretty good job with that one!

The first thing is that various reproductions of the same photograph can vary enormously. Secondly the type of film used,the exposure and development as well as the various filters that might have been used when the original was taken all add more uncertainty.

Your original photograph looks over exposed to me to start with.

I can only tell you what I do. I try to match the known original colours as best I can and then weather the model to match the original.I then take a photo,trying to establish the same viewpoint. After that I play with the image using photo editing software. This isn't cheating,it is the only way you are going to get remotely close to matching an original. Sometimes very little adjustment is needed. I took a photo of a Hartmann Bf109 a while ago,took out the colour and was surprised just how much it looked like the original!

Here's a series I did of an Me262. The slight variation is that my model is "coming in to land and surrender" rather than exactly replicating the reference.

Reference.

Model,B+W and minor adjustments.

Model in colour.

You can see that my "colour" model doesn't look much like the B+W reference photo,but in the adjusted B+W image it's close enough for me

Cheers

Steve

 

[Jazz]

now i do like that, its amazing.

did play with the idea of painting the model black and white or do it so that the back of the model close to the picture was black and white slowly gaining colour as it gets further away from the picture but my black and white painting skills aren't that good

 

[mobear]

jazz i have lots of german tanks in 1/72,i think i`ll send them to you lol,lovely paint job on the truck

mobear

 

[Jazz]

send them over they would all get built i can tell you, i will sent you my 1/35 collection since have stopped building in that scale and i have massed a lot of them

the truck now is back in primer since i was not very happy with it at all so starting again and wandered if you lot could help with suggestions

 

[mobear]

i normally build planes,but i took this daft notion to an ardennes offensive DIO in 1/72,however problems with left arm stopped play as bits are small so are the figures lol,so illustrious is on hot plate,in the throws of getting built.i have a suggestion of german panzer grey like its been reused after dunkirk was left with all that lovely stuff

mobear

 

[Jazz]

well every year i get brezzies from friends and family and end up with massess of 1/35 scale and to be honest i not so keen on the big scale,

sorry if i am being rude but what is wrong with your arm?

 

[Jazz]

is there anyone else that can give me some suggestions

 

[AJay]

Nice build, Jason! I'm on my first vehicle build so still a novice. If it were me, though, I would start with the wheels/tyres. In your photo you can see they are much more of a faded grey. You can simply use a matt varnish and work in some pastel earth tones.

View attachment 46336

Above is in example. To weather the wheel on the left I simply used normal, inexpensive artists' pastels.

I can't tell from the photo, but another idea would be a pin wash to make the details 'pop', such as that cooling grille on the bonnet, panel lines, and the wheel bolts, etc. Are you using acrylic? If so you can apply a gloss goat and then use a highly diluted wash of thinner/dark paint. Maybe you already know about this technique?

View attachment 49368

 

[Jazz]

I normally do that, but using Mig production powders, more of the body work colours and shading, the weathering will come later, the body work now is back to primer ready for yet another go

 

[stona]

Be careful not to read too much into effects on the photograph caused by the lighting and exposure. Even the most weathered vehicle still has its basic colour essentially the same over all. We tend to exaggerate the variations to a greater or lesser extent with pre and post shading,filters and modulation on our models but this is largely an artistic enterprise.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Jazz]

to be honest had not thought about that, thanks for pointing that out, so trying to match the photo is going to be harder then i thought.