SU-100 – Photo gallery
In this post you will find the photo gallery of my 27th model, a SU-100 Second World War-era Soviet tank destroyer. It took around 8 months to complete, from January to September 2018.
You can read all the related posts here.
Assembling
The kit is by Revell (no. 03084), and includes 4 olive green sprues, two grey ones for the tracks, an instruction sheet and the decals. Rather than using the plastic gun from the box, I chose a turned aluminium barrel, produced by RB Model (art. 35B62).
The assembling went quite easy, the instructions are clear and the joints good. I found only some little flaws of the plastic in three points, all fixed with a bit of putty.
Painting and weathering
For the base camo I chose Tamiya acrylic paints, XF-67 NATO Green blended with XF-59 Buff.
I also decided to paint the white stripes typical of the Battle of Berlin. They were used to avoid that Allied airplanes, mistaking them for German vehicles, could attack them. To do that, first I masked the surrounding areas with some tape:
then I airbrushed white paint (Vallejo Model Air 71.001 White). With the same color, moreover, I hand-painted (like often happened in the real situations too) the tactical insignia, using a fine brush:
The next steps were:
- scratches with olive green and dark brown, using a fine brush or a sponge;
- a selective oil wash with Van Dyck Brown, to highlight the details;
- some filters to subtly change the otherwise monotonous underlying color (I used the dot technique, which you can see here and here);
- mud, dust and fuel stains effects, with pigments and specific products;
- some edges rubbed with a soft pencil, to simulate the bare metal appearing from under the paint.
Photo gallery
I chose to paint the camouflage of the model of this SU-100 in plain green, as for many actual vehicles of the time. Thus, I used different light pigments to blur the base paint, varying an otherwise boring color. In this way, I achieved convincing effects of dust build-ups and grime streaks.
I created the mud effects with specific liquid products (Damp Earth and Dark Mud by Ammo Mig, Fresh Mud by AK Interactive), mixed with sand and dark pigments. Then I blended them with lighter pigments in the upper areas and I finally splashed them with a mix of pigments and turpentine, to simulate mud drops.
For the fuel streaks and stains I used a dark brown acrylic, mixed with clear gloss and highly diluted. I worked in layers, adding more and more diluted stains (and sometimes overlapping them with the previous ones, once dried). Thus, I achieved a more realistic and convincing effect.
The pole is a wooden rod, rough-hewn with a cutter and then rubbed with a metal brush, thus creating very realistic veinings. An oil wash with Van Dyck Brown, a Naples yellow dry-brush and a second, lighter, Van Dyck wash completed the work.
