M31 Recovery Vehicle

[Ozzy]

Nice going Andy, there both coming along nicely, your figure is looking good mini art do some nice figure sets.

[Andy Moore]

Still waiting for the paint order to arrive so it'll probably be next week before it gets hit with some OD. In the meantime though I've given Bob some colour. He'll probably get a little more dusty weathering and a few oil and grease stains eventually. I did consider ordering some Archer transfers for the 2nd Armored Div patch but it hardly seemed worth it for a single figure, so it's been, rather roughly, painted. The second smaller head looks reasonably in scale now it's painted

 

 

 

Andy

[Bullbasket]

He looks perfect Andy. Nice paint job.

 

John.

[Richard E]

8 hours ago, AndyRM101 said:

Still waiting for the paint order to arrive so it'll probably be next week before it gets hit with some OD. In the meantime though I've given Bob some colour. He'll probably get a little more dusty weathering and a few oil and grease stains eventually. I did consider ordering some Archer transfers for the 2nd Armored Div patch but it hardly seemed worth it for a single figure, so it's been, rather roughly, painted. The second smaller head looks reasonably in scale now it's painted

 

 

Andy

Very effective figure work Andy - that's the war weary face of a fitter (not sure if what the correct term for a GI is) who's spent the last couple of hours recovering a disabled tank under enemy fire. 

[DaveyGair]

Superlative work, I wouldn't get away with producing photo's that blown up!

 

 

Davey.

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys,

 

11 minutes ago, Richard E said:

that's the war weary face of a fitter (not sure if what the correct term for a GI is) who's spent the last couple of hours recovering a disabled tank under enemy fire.

 

Yes, I agree. I hadn't realised his eyes were half closed until I got some paint on. If nothing else, it's saved me from making a pig's ear of painting the eyes.

 

 

So, it turned out I was misinformed when I said I was still waiting for the paint order to arrive. It had apparently come yesterday while I was out and the courier decided the ideal place to leave it was in the recycling bin. I only noticed while taking the bin to the end of the drive for collection tomorrow. I just happened to look inside to check how full it was and saw the small package nestled on top of an empty cat food box. I'll just say one work... Hermes

 

Anyway, the upside of this is I've managed to get some paint on this afternoon.

 

Prior to that I got the final details on yesterday, including the main cable for the crane. The cable that comes with the kit is only long enough to reach the end of the jib, but I wanted mine to be extended a little further so I swapped it for a length of Eureka copper cable. The original plan was to hook the end onto the front tow hook on the transmission cover, but that complicated things in terms of keeping the turret separate for painting. In the end I've just hooked the cable onto one of the brackets on the jib

 

 

You don't actually get a hook for the cable with the kit, so I've used a spare one left over from the Scammell Pioneer I build last year

 

 

Once everything was ready for paint I gave it a prime/basecoat with Mr Color satin black

 

 

Now, this is the bit I was looking forward to, as I'd ordered a couple of the new AK real colour paints and I was keen to see how they'd perform. What I'm using here is their No. 22 OD which should be the perfect shade for WWII US OD. I wasn't totally convinced about the colour in the jar (a bit too yellow for my liking) but I went ahead and gave the model a coat of it. I added a little Tamiya X-22 into the paint as I prefer to have a semi-gloss finish, and it's a good job I did as this paint is really matt. It did spray very well though, and does leave a smooth finish.

The colour was way too green to my eyes though. The black basecoat does affect it to some degree, but it certainly wasn't olive drab

 

 

 

As you can see, the colour in the jar has a very distinct yellow tone. To me, it needs more red in it to get it closer to what I think of as olive drab

 

 

To that end, I mixed a good dollop of Tamiya hull red into the AK OD and that gave me a shade I was far happier with. It will still need a little fading and panel highlighting adding before I do the sand camo, but this will do as a base for now

 

 

Andy

 

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Now I'm properly settling in.....My favourite bit's just starting! 

 

New 'small-head' Bob is definitely better proportioned. 

[Ozzy]

Nice going Andy, on both the figure painting and your crain building and painting. Those AK paints look nice, I will keep any eye out for them.

[Andy Moore]

2 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

New 'small-head' Bob is definitely better proportioned. 

Yep, a definite improvement

 

1 hour ago, Ozzy said:

Those AK paints look nice, I will keep any eye out for them.

They're very nice to work with. Quite thick in the jar, which suits me as I can then thin them to whatever degree I need. A bit too matt for my liking though. They definitely benefit from having some gloss varnish mixed in.

 

 

I've added some panel fading and highlights to the OD now. I might add some more before doing the camo. I'll have a fresh look in daylight tomorrow. I got a bottle of the AK faded OD along with the regular 22 OD, and that was the basis for the fade coat. It was warmed up with a few drops of Tamiya flesh and red plus a bit of black to balance the tone. After the highlighting was done I added some AMMO dark tracks into what was left of the mix and sprayed that as a shade around some of the panels and rivet lines

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andy

[Andy Moore]

Forgot to mention. If anyone else is considering building an M31, Resicast is going to release a rather nice looking conversion set. If it had been out before I started the build, I might even have done it myself

 

 

Andy

 

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Love the way you've applied the colour, is it my imagination or are you experimenting with smaller 'clouds'? 

[Hewy]

Very, very nice job on the painting, and bob looks ace too

[M_Sinclair]

The profile shots look beautiful. Great photography as always Andy Love this stage of the process.

 

-matt

[Hockeyboy76]

Really really nice Andy. 

This may seem a daft question ( only stupid question is the unasked one) 

what do you gain by using a black primer/ base coat?

[Andy Moore]

On 12/02/2018 at 20:29, Sgt.Squarehead said:

is it my imagination or are you experimenting with smaller 'clouds'? 

I've done it a few times before. It's essentially like scribbling over the surface with the airbrush. It helps the paint finish look a bit more complex without getting the artificial look you get with full colour modulation.

You can see a bit of it on the back of this KV-5

 

 

And on the turret and hull front on this T-15

 

 

 

 

It was a bit pointless on the M31 though, as a lot of it has now been covered by the camo

 

9 hours ago, Hockeyboy76 said:

This may seem a daft question ( only stupid question is the unasked one) 

what do you gain by using a black primer/ base coat?

 

I just find it easier to work up from dark to light. You can leave some of the black as shade in the corners. You can see the same kind of effect on the shot of the T-15 above. The colours tend to be a bit more muted over black as well, which I prefer the look of on military subjects. If I want more vibrant colours on a build I'll go with a white or pale grey base.

 

 

I've got the camo on now. Not 100% happy with how it turned out, but it should be okay once it's had some washes and weathering. I started off using Gunze radome which is a warm sandy colour, but it looked a bit too yellow so I switched to the recommended colour which is AMMO new wood (despite it being referred to as tan on the paint guide). That was better, but when I'd finished I still wasn't sure about the tone, so I went over it again with AMMO yellow grey which is paler than the new wood.

 

I'd also started off by masking the camo with silly putty, as the shot of 'GO GET IT' on page 1 (which has the same camo as the one I'm doing) shows a pretty tight demarcation line. In the end though, I gave up on that because of all the fiddly and delicate surface details, and sprayed it all free hand. That, combined with the various colours changed, led to a lot of over-spray which I had to tidy up with some thinned, brush-applied olive drab.

Also, the OD probably looks like it's lost some of that highlighting here. It hasn't, but it's less evident as I gave the whole thing a light gloss coat before adding the camo. That was mainly to help the silly putty come off cleanly, but of course I didn't use that in the end, so it was really an unnecessary step. Hopefully some of the highlighting will reappear when it's matted down at the end.

 

 

So, as I said, it's a bit messy and I'm not completely happy with it, but then I doubt the original would have been perfectly applied either, so I can live with it.

Oh, and if you think I've cocked up because the camo on the turret doesn't match the hull, my working theory is that the camo would have been applied while the crane was in its stowed position which is facing to the rear, so it does match up when the turret is t'other way round.

 

Andy

 

 

 

[wimbledon99]

Looks rather good from where I’m sitting!! 

[Andy Moore]

When I built the Lee last year, I got some poor results from the kit decals. They were very thick and the carrier film had a foggy look when it was dry. It was worse on the star decals for the turret as they had to go over the moulded cast texture, and they just looked like stickers sitting on top of the texture. For that build I ended up masking and spraying the stars, but I didn't want to do the same here because it would require masking the segmented ring around the star, and I didn't fancy doing all that mask cutting.

So, to avoid that issue, I ordered some Archer rub-down transfers for the stars. These were a bit harder to put down that I'd imagined as the carrier film is quite stiff, and getting it to lay down over the various curves and bumps on the turret wasn't easy. The transfer did separate from the film quite easily though, so I managed to get them on with only a few small cracks which were easy to fix with paint

 

 

 

I hand painted the turret number again to avoid using the kit decal

 

 

For some reason the star transfers on the rear stowage bins didn't go down as well as those on the turret, despite being on a flat smooth surface. They didn't separate from the backing film very easily, and I had to burnish them so hard that I ended up damaging the paint underneath in places. Nothing irreparable but annoying none the less. I used the kit decals for the rest of the markings and sure enough they fogged in several places. I should be able to fix that with some overpainting here and there

 

 

Andy

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Oh yeah.....She's starting to take shape now! 

 

Was a bit concerned the camo was 'too much cream and not enough honey' at first, but I reckon you'll soon warm it up with a few filters & so forth.....Looking forward to the next installment. 

[Robert Stuart]

That's looking very good now.  The hand painted numbers look very realistic.

[beefy66]

This is looking stunning Andy shame about the decals but you have pulled it off again this is tempting me even more now to get one of these kits 

 

beefy 

[Bullbasket]

Catch up time. Nice work with the camouflage painting and excellent result with the decals.

 

John.

[Ozzy]

Nice going Andy, the camouflage looks very striking.

[Andy Moore]

9 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Was a bit concerned the camo was 'too much cream and not enough honey' at first, but I reckon you'll soon warm it up with a few filters & so forth.....Looking forward to the next installment. 

 

Yes it's a bit on the pale side. It started out too yellow but I think I overcompensated and took it too far the other way. It's better like this though since, like you say, I can warm it up with a few filters.

I've started that process now and given the whole thing a light filter of ochre oil paint, together with a few pin washes of various AMMO and AK enamel washes. Before that I did some chipping with olive drab over the sand camo, and a bit of heavier chipping with dark brown on the crane and some of the damaged areas I'd added to the fenders. I'll let all this dry for a day or two then give it a light matt coat before doing any more weathering

 

 

 

 

Andy

 

[M_Sinclair]

This is looking awesome! I think the camo looks really good in an imperfect kind of way. Would've been a rush job in real life anyways right? 

 

I'm not sure if I find anything as frustrating as decals that frost up despite adding a healthy clear coat before hand. Same thing occurred on my lil' Lancaster. Keep going Andy. She's a peach.

 

-matt

[Hewy]

Exellent andy, love that chipping