Right, well, part of the problem is learning a bit more about my camera. I've started playing about with a few settings, but still have a long way to go and don't really have the time to learn....so this is as good as it is likely to get. Nevertheless, the colours are showing a bit more true to life in these next photos.
First job is another layer of even lighter colour on extreme highlight edges and so forth. You can see I've taken the masking tape off the guns, which need a bit of a touch up. It's all pretty stark at this point.
Next I added some filters (or glazes, if you prefer)....just a very thin solution of paint and thinner, applied with a damp brush. It's not a wash...you don't want to get it in the recesses. My purpose was to bring different shades a little closer together and somewhat blend them. You just want to make the surface wet with it.
This is after a filter of raw sienna, a mustard colour. I went over some areas a couple of times more. Effects are just visible.
Next I added filters of raw umber...an olive drab sort of shade.
I kept on with it, and in the end as you will see in the following pics I was very pleased with the overall effect from the filters...the paint developed a richness and depth to it that it certainly didn't have with the initial coat. I thought about brown filters, but decided to leave that as I am going to do an overall burnt sienna oil wash later.
While I was doing all this, the tracks were getting some decidedly amateurish attention. Earlier I'd sprayed them a mix of gunmetal and dark sea grey, followed by a wash of thinned black...but it hadn't really given the effect I was after; it was all a bit weak. So next I applied a wash of thinned hull red, intending it to get into seams and along the track teeth and give a bit of a rust colour...but the wash was far too heavy and the tracks now too reddish. Sigh. So I brush painted gun metal like a very heavy dry-brush over the length of the track and followed THAT with a heavy wash of the same panzer grey/black mix I used for the road wheel tires. And voila....that produced an acceptable pairs of tracks, still with a bit of darkened red in the crevices for a light rust effect....very light mind you, I envisage the Crusader Mk IIIAA as a fairly new tank not long in Normandy.
As mentioned, the road wheel tires got painted, and hoses to the air filters, and the tracks were joined....a tricky little exercise getting them to fit round the idler and driving sprocket and lost a little paint there, but overall it adhered to the vinyl tracks really well. Hot knife saw the tracks joined, and then there was an evening dry-fitting and then gluing on the road wheels, followed by all the side skirts.
This evening it is ready for a satin gloss coat before decals and the main wash and pin washes....and it looks like this:
The towing cables are just resting on their own weight....they need some touching up and a wash of brown. Slightly puzzled over how I can get them to conform a bit better to the hull.....I may risk one of them with a bowl of hot water to soften it and see whether it survives some bending.....
Tomorrow is decals (I've just finished spraying the gloss coat), then it's a trip to the artist store to get some windsor & newton burnt umber oil paint. I'm really enjoying this, because it is just one thing after another that is new to me. Whatever happens, I'll finish this build having learned a lot if nothing else.
