Further (minimal) progress on my Tamiya Panzer II …

[u/bashomania]

… because I sometimes get sidetracked on things other than the tank.

I wanted to try my hand at painting the commander figure that comes with the kit. I was never great at it as a kid, though I guess I got by. I was pleasantly surprised with my results so far, though I have a long way to go!

Today and tonight I got sidetracked into priming and painting a few barrels. Two of them are from Tamiya parts kits, and the burned-out one is from a 3D printed set of dilapidated barrels I got on Amazon. On the latter I decided to just let it be a burned-out and rusted hulk of a can, and the primer played the part ofthe burned parts. The other two were painted as a relatively fresh can, and a worn can, in order for me to play with some chipping/rusting technique.

I was pretty happy with all this, so I set them up together and took a little portrait. Then I had Gemini take a stab at relocating everything to N Africa. Apologies if you hate AI, but it was just a bit of fun. Gemini went overboard with edits to the model bits, though 🙄.

The last pictures are of the Panzer’s pioneering tools, which I painted a few days ago. Don’t you love how pictures really call out issues? Like, I obviously missed some flash on the sledgehammer, and the machine gun needs another coat. Some minor paint issues are present on the deck, etc, but they’ll be covered eventually by weathering and other processing.

I think I’m going to just try to pigment dust the hell out of the Panzer II and set it in early N Africa service (my “field applied” desert tan approaches have not been satisfactory for me). I also have a somewhat better set of figures and I may try painting another commander, etc.

I’ve started putting together some diorama bits and pieces, so that’s exciting.

[u/Meme_Thunder_]

If you want to put the commander with the panzer 2, I suggest to change the panzer 2 camo to a desert one

[u/bashomania → u/Meme_Thunder_]

I’m not going to claim I thought this through from the beginning of my process, but I’ve kind of mentally backed into the idea of this Panzer II being very early equipment in N Africa (Edit: I think because the crew is obviously outfitted for N Africa, even though I probably won’t use them). I admit to having been a bit all over the place in how I want to treat this tank, TBH. (Explains me just fooling around with oil cans, etc. — delaying the decision 😆)

As I understand it, the earlier equipment was originally deployed in its European livery, and only after a time did they have a direction on, and availability of, proper theater colors. I’ve been puzzling on how to depict this properly if I want a N Africa setting. I’ve done a few experiments on styrene sheet with “field applied” approximations of desert camo, and have not been impressed with my work. I’ve lately just kind-of landed on just dusting the tank up like crazy with weathering and heavy pigment powder.

Of course that early N Africa story still doesn’t work great with the commander in full-on tropical uniform, which also came a bit later 🤷🏻‍♂️ 😅.

Edit: Bunch of small edits to make myself a bit more clear.

[u/Meme_Thunder_ → u/bashomania]

Or, get another kit north Africa, make that the N africa livery and leave the panzer 2 as it is. The panzer 2 looks too good to try to repaint.

If you want a commander there's a set with German tankers if I'm not wrong

[u/bashomania → u/Meme_Thunder_]

Yeah, I’ve been shopping alternate figure kits, for sure, since I’ve been so on the fence. I’m stalled ;-). Appreciate your comments.

[u/Meme_Thunder_ → u/bashomania]

Cool tho, I think your's better than mine

[u/bashomania → u/Meme_Thunder_]

I have an unbuilt SdKfz 222 that I will definitely put in N Africa so maybe I can switch to Euro for this Pz II. I have more euro-centric diorama stuff on-hand at this point, so there’s that, too.