1/512. Jagdtiger and Ostwind Painting Progress!

No really!  Occasionally I actually manage to PAINT some miniatures.  I've wanted to try out AK Interactive / Ammo of MIG paints on Flames of War miniatures for quite some time.  One reason I hadn't was modulation of a multi-tone camouflage scheme is difficult at 15mm scale (I want to be the guy at Heresy Brush when I grow up!), and the simple fact that my Testors Model Master Paints work well for most mid through late war vehicles.  However, 1945 provides the modeler with several new paint options as the Germans began changing the paint schemes in late 1944.

Many of the artist renderings of the vehicles in the Ruhr pocket are done using the 1945 colors.  For my vehicles I'm using the AK interactive 1945 German Late War Colors set (AK 554).  Since the split between AK Interactive and Mig Jiminez, I've tended to buy the Ammo of MIG products.  An analogous Ammo of MIG set would be his Late War German Colors Set (A.MIG 7101) - although this one replaces the Schokobraun with a Olivgrun variant.  

My longer term goal is to be able to do panel shading on multi-tone paint schemes, and for that I need some sort of masking putty that will allow me to put down successive layers reliably and shade them individually.  For my first attempt I'm simply using Silly Putty.  Yes, Silly Putty.  It is cheap, easy to use, and doesn't adhere to the paint surface.

Using the 1945 colors really shakes up your world a bit if you're an avid German modeler used to seeing the typical Panzer Dark Yellow base.  The most commonly depicted 1945  "Dark Yellow" is really far more cream in color than it is the more familiar yellow drab.  As you can see from the photos below, the 1945 base color, AK calls it Duncelgelb aus '44 DG III, is striking, and very different.

 

After the base coat and the putty job, I moved on to the green.  Keeping with the very late war theme I used B Resedgrun for the green on both the Jagdtigers and the Ostwind.  

The green went on very smoothly with no issues.  I then added more putty to the models to protect the green as I painted the Schokobraun:

By this point, the miniatures are starting to look pretty much like blobs, but just enough exterior is exposed to get the paint down properly.  The Schokobraun gave me a bit of trouble whereas the other two colors had gone down pretty much without issue.  I'm not sure if I was getting some clogging in my airbrush because of the heat or if the pigment wasn't well dissolved in the paint.

I took off the putty and blue tape as soon as the dark brown was try enough to handle on the Jagdtigers, and overall the effect looked pretty good:

Bringing them inside I ran a test fit and the paint schemes came out pretty well.  A little touch up was needed in a few spots to line up the turrets properly on the Ostwinds and a couple of small pin-point touch-ups were needed on the Jagdtigers.

So now the base coats are down, and one thing you'll notice is the colors are BRIGHT!!!!  Part of the reason for this is that the colors are designed to have later washes and filters applied over them which will tone them down a bit and allow for decent blending and highlighting.

At this point the AK Interactive paints are getting high marks overall, though the Schokobraun was a bit problematic.  The Silly Putty works okay, but it tends to "move" over time, and if you're trying to do panel shading you simply can't tolerate instability in the mask.  I may give blu-tac a try - of course, any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated!

At this point these are ready for a gloss coat followed by decals and weathering.  I'm going to try and make up some of my own markings as the Jagdtigers represent vehicles X1 and X8 of 1/512.  If I get the markings to work, I'll have enough for all of 1/512 as well as vehicle "Y" of 3/512.