The Black&White Technique. Tiger I 1/48 by JOSE LUIS LOPEZ. (II)

The Panzer Grey base colour: 

I just used Tamiya´s XF-63 with a little bit of pure white and I applied this extremely thinned paint mix (90% thinner) in several coats. I insisted with the mix more or less depending the place but, as can be clearly seen in the pictures, all the underneath effects can be clearly seen and look integrated with the base colour. Just at the end, I airbrushed pure white in a few parts to get the maximum light.

Is very important to airbrush slowly the base coat, no hurry. Just see how it covers little by little the weathered base to your taste. You can hide the awful dirt spots or the illogical and ugly chips.

And most important: From this moment, you have a base colour that will be really helpful in the following steps as you have a map, a guide to highlight, chip and weather your kit. From now ahead, you have your second chance.

Now, time to the first base coat for the accessories. Probably once the vehicle is close to be finished, I´ll change some of the colours according to the general aspect of the vehicle. But I like to paint this base coat to the tools, accessories, because it really helps to evaluate the general contrast and finish of the tank. I used different brown colours for the wooden parts and pure black for the metallic parts. 

In this step, I´ll add some light points to the tank. Using a light mix of black, white and medium blue (acrylics) and using a brush, I start to highlight rivets, edges, hinges, etc. Maybe the result in this step is a little bit unrealistic, but it´s the perfect base for future weathering works. These parts will suffer different treatment that will darken them to my taste, but always maintaining a subtle colour and light difference with the neighbouring tank parts.

Is this colour modulation? Maybe, I do not know, but really works for me!

Chipping, as well as adding mud, are the most frightening steps for modellers. Many great kits with excellent base coats, filters, etc, are spoiled in this step. Reasons are various. The first one is that maybe, the last time we made them, was 4 months ago when we made our last tank. Our hand is cold and it´s not easy to get the pulse and the perfect mix of the paint once we´re beginning our work. In this case, just some days ago, we´ve already made plenty of them in our B&W base colour. So, our hand is ready! And now, under the base coat, we see some of the chips and scratches we have already done, so it´s not so terrifying for us, because our terrible enemy, a flat, clean surfaces, is already dirt, showing some chipping effect. What we have just to decide if we increase them or not!

And, as we have seen the B&W weathered step, we already know which chips are right and which are wrong. So, as I use to say, we do not work under pressure, we have a ready hand and a clear idea about where to put our chips and scratches.

For this step, I made three different grey colours for the superficial chippings.

And with a mix of black and red, the deeper ones.

Some detail shots:

The next step will be about washes, oils and more weathering.

CONTINUE TO PART III