StuG IV Early

Es-haq Khosravi
Great job!

Ingmar Stöhr
Looks great so far. Like the skirts. A bit clean compared to the road wheels. Maybe you can also add a fee horizontal scratches to the skirts. I think vertical scratches are a bit unusual if you drive through some bushes.

Patrik Spett
Thanks for the advice. I'm not quite happy with the side skirts and as you said a few horizontal scratches will be nice. I did splash mud on them but i'm not sure it looks good, I will upload a picture when I get home.

Lionel Marco

What a job you did!

Gábor Bélik
Great job. Nice weathering!

Patrik Spett
Thank you all. Anyone have any advice on how to do the woodgrain on the tools?

John Van Kooten
Very nice! I really like the weathering! 👍

As for woodgrain, my personal favorites are Vallejo Model Color Clear Orange ( # 70.956 ) and Vallejo Model Color Woodgrain ( # 70.828 ). Both are transparent paints which you paint over a base color. In thin stripes, building up the effect (meaning, multiple layers), thus creating the grain effect.

You can add some dark (very) thin stripes to the base color to pre-paint some of the woodgrain but it isn't really necessary. The base color can be uniform, if you want. The transparent paints in overlapping multiple layers are what creates the grain effect.

Base color dark yellow + Clear Orange ( # 70.956 ) = rich yellow-brown wood effect
Base color dark yellow + Woodgrain ( # 70.828 ) = rich dark brown wood effect

You can also use Clear Yellow instead of Clear Orange, which would give you a somewhat lighter wood effect. but I usually just use a lighter base color + Clear Orange if I want that. Darker base colors give you darker wood. Lighter base colors give you lighter wood. I feel Clear Orange gives a richer effect compared to Clear yellow.

As a final touch you could add a satin or gloss varnish layer but it usually isn't necessary. The paints themselves contain enough gloss to look realistic.

Now, it does take a little practice for this to work properly, so my advice is to not do your first try on a "real live" model😉

Patrik Spett
Thanks for the advice, I will definetly try out as you suggested. I have plenty of spare tools to practise on 🙂

John Van Kooten
Oops, sorry for the "sunglass" smilies where it should read the Vallejo paint number. That's what you get when you type in a hurry and do an " 8 " and " ) " without a space 😉

I can promise you, once you get the hang of this technique you will never need another one for wood effects 🙂

Jan Hazes
Nice job Patrik 🙂 and tnx for the tips John.

Ingmar Stöhr
I like the mud splashes on the skirts. Maybe you can add some lighter and/or darker splashes to simulate some dried and some fresh mud. You are on the right track!

Patrik Spett
Thank you Ingmar, I will add some brighter splashes. I have to put some on the wheels as well.

Ulf Petersen
Wow, that's a hell of a worn out shoe!👍 It yells for a dio. Any plans?

Patrik Spett
I plan to have a base with mud and snow, springthaw. I'm concerned it might look too worn and I will probably refresh some of the wintercamo a little bit.

Olena Blyzniuk
Nice job, Patrik. I really like photo etch parts and good weathering. May be add some soot on silencer and exhaustion tube would be nice, just looks too clean for such worn out vehicle.

Patrik Spett
Oh, it is far from done, I diddn´t get so far as painting the exhaust yet. Now I'm painting the details like tools etc. I'm not sure how I will paint the exhaust tube yet, I guess rusty.

Christian Bruer
Not my special topic but this one looks pretty nice. A lot of PE work done, clean and sharp build and an excellent weathering – I raise my had of this!

Hunter Cummins
Count me in

Patrik Spett
Thank you all. 🙂 I got this PE set that included everything and it took three times the time to build it, double price too but what the heck. 🙂

Choppa Nutta
yeah it looks good !! 🙂
though I see the maintenance crew are slacking again... just can't seem to get the staff these days😉

Patrik Spett
I think I have to dust of my whip... Should I whitewash the flipside of the schurtzen perhaps?

Choppa Nutta
no, it's war !!! or at least that's my excuse for my spit looking like it has been left in the oven too long 😄

Patrik Spett
If it were a desert aircraft it could look like that after flying through a few sandstorms 🙂 But take pics of it when the canoy is unmasked, I think it will look great. Now, I need to add some different colors to my build in the form of accessories, now its all brown, yellow and white.

Hunter Cummins
Patrik, dont add the white on the imside, the crews jist did visible parts and left the inside dark yellow just splatter some mud there 🙂 looks awesome to me

Holger Kranich
Awesome work, Patrick! But leave the Schürzen away, it looks extremely far better!

Es-haq Khosravi
Great job!

John Van Kooten
Really good, Patrik! Well done! 👍

I agree with Holger! 🙂 The Schürzen are hiding a lot of the very nice detail you have done. Would be a shame not being able to see that.

Patrik Spett
Thanks all for the nice comments. I might remove a few of the schûrzen plates, i did take of one of them but it isnt that visible on the picures, good suggestions.

Soeren R.
Looks really great!

Choppa Nutta
it does look good though 🙂

Mike Kryza
Really a nice one.

H K
Looks great 👍. I like the mud on the side skirts.

Holger Kranich
Thats some kind of a great build! Some whitewash mixed with dunkelgelbcamo... Very disciplined and clean build! I am really impressed by your weathering skills! Fkn great Job! 😄😄

Patrik Spett
Thank you all. I looked at the PE set and there are loads of PE parts left, I wonder if I forgot something but it is probably parts for middle and late version of the StuG.

Kim Branders
Nice one Patrik. Witch product did you use for the chipping. 👍.

Patrik Spett
I used hairspray technique to wear down some of the white. I used Vallejo dark brown for chipping and then graphite for some edges that are exposed.

Augie
OOOO now thats pretty 🙂 love the mud effects

Gary
Really top notch. I like the way you did the rust on the edges of the skirts. I have a 1/48th Bandi kit to
build one day. Yours will be a good for referance. Gary

Patrik Spett
Thank you Gary. I see that you have a B5N2 in your stash. I have a B5N1 but hasegawa didn´t provide torpedo, just a bomb. 🙁

Dieter Bihlmaier
Gorgeous looking StuG IV Patrik!

In the trenches
This tank is great, your mud is really muddy too, good job....

Christian Keller
Hi Patrick, looks very realistic 🙂
Will you put it on a Dio. It would have deserved a nice diorama 😉

Patrik Spett
I'm making vignette for it, just an IKEA frame with some ground where I will place the tank. My thought is spring thaw with mud and perhaps some melting snow. I'm not good at making dios and have just a vague adea how to do this.

John Van Kooten
Very, very nice, Patrik! Well done so far!! 👍 👍

The only comment I would want to make is that the snow on the ground seems too uniform and patchy. Are you going to sprinkle some baking soda (or similar fine grained white stuff) on the edges of the snow patches, to unify them with the rest of the diorama?

Other than that, the groundwork looks really good! 🙂

Choppa Nutta
now that looks awesome !! 🙂

Patrik Spett
Thanks Choppa and John, yes I will put something on the edges, i'm not quite happy with the snow. I have to get something that looks like snow, I have heard that baking soda turn yellow and attract flies. The grass looked like moss so I airbrushed it brown. 🙂 Next project will be a simple OOB of a Bren carrier.

H K
As a fan of the easy way 🙂 I would lightly drybrush the edges of the snow with some brown tones and call it done.

Phil Marchese
I like the snow for the stage of melt it represents. The thin fringes would be gone.

Patrik Spett
Phil, yes melting snow is more af a challange than I could imagine. I plan to put some small water puddles and that might help to improve it.

Christian Meyerhoff
Excellent work! Very nice base. Some additional figures will make it perfect.

Choppa Nutta
dipping a brush in paint and then use the airbrush to blow the paint off the normal brush gives a nice spattering effect, which I discovered by accident, over laying alternate layers of white and brown around the edges might be effective, but what about talcum powder ?

Martyn Fox
Nice looking diorama Patrik, some figures would really set it off.

Patrik Spett
I think I have to turn the supermarket upside down in the hunt for anything that is white and is a powder. 🙂 Worse still is the the gunsight is gone, the thing that is supposed to stick out of the hole near the commanders cuppola.

Choppa Nutta
it's war, stuff gets broken all the time !! 😄

Patrik Spett
Yes, but the crew tend to get a little bit more upset about a lost gunsight than a lost tool clamp.😉

Fabian D.
You´re shure about that?😉 Can´t you steal that from another Dragon Pz. IV kit, the Wirbelwind for example?

Patrik Spett
No Fabian. the gunsight is like a periscope while the other ones are like a tube. The bloody thing snapped away when I held it in my tweezers, I'm sure you experienced that too. I looked everywhere, amazing how it can disappear.

Christian Meyerhoff
@Patrik: Never heard of the Carpet Monster?

Fabian D.
Sorry Patrik, you're right. The Wirbelwind has the wrong sprue, you could check your Jagdpanzer, from what I've seen it could include a spare one. As even a wrong gunsight is better than no one😉

Patrik Spett
I have an old Jagpanzer IV from Tamiya, I might be able to take that one. The dragon gunsight is a clear part. The final option is to turn my hobbyroom upside down but i fear the little bastard might have jumped in mysterious ways down and up again, and on to the side and then down in the trash bin (whish of course was emptied since).

Ulf Petersen
Amazing work! 👍
Just one point: I would have put more smaller snow spots on the ground besides the bigger areas.

Patrik Spett
Thanks ULf, yes I saw that when I was done, it does look a bit strange now. But I wont use plaster for that.