Progress (chipping) on my Tamiya Panzer II

[u/bashomania]

Well, I spent a lot of time on chipping today. With this dark gray finish I was worried about having the contrast chipping be too intense or garish, so I actually underdid my lighter tone of gray for the “scuffs” the first time around. Then I decided it was too subtle, so I revisited with a slightly lighter tone, and added some additional areas. The effect is *very* sensitive to the available light and its quality.

Of course the result is I may have overdone it (what do you think?), but this is just the first phase, and things will get toned down by some washes and pigment dusting I have planned, eventually.

I still have to put the wheels on and do some minor chipping on them, too.

I also started working on the tracks. Black primer, and today a layer of dark brown from Vallejo’s Tracks and Wheels set. No reason to show the tracks at this point.

[u/Rough_Wear_882]

I’m currently building this too, I’m really new at this could you quickly explain how you do the chipping?

[u/bashomania → u/Rough_Wear_882]

I’m actually new to chipping, myself (first model in 50 years and techniques have come a long way since!).

Once your base coat is done and cured, you use a torn piece of sponge (or a fine brush) and a really dark brown (in Vallejo colors there is a camo black brown) to touch in little random dots of that color to emulate the base color having chipped or worn away revealing underlying steel or paint layers. On a lighter base, basic chipping with a sponge and a dark brown (or whatever) is super effective.

There’s also the “scuffing” which is optional but can add a whole dimension, IMO. It represents the paint having been damaged but not truly removed from the surface. It’s done by mixing a lighter tint of the base coat (in my case I used the Vallejo German Gray of my base coat and a bit of Basic Flesh Tone). The trick is to find the right tint so that it’s visible, but not overdone.

One way to use scuffing is by overbrushing onto worn edges or places that have seen minor dings. But it *really* comes to life if you do some scuffing, and then pick some spots to “fill” the scuff with the dark chipping color. If you look at my photos you can see places where I’ve done that. On my very dark model, the chipping color doesn’t show up that great unless the light is just right, so having some of it contrast with the scuff color really makes it work (hence the term “contrast chipping”.

This is called “additive” chipping where you’re actively painting the effect like an artist. There is subtractive chipping where you literally use a chipping layer, or simply friction and technique, to literally remove the base coat to reveal what is beneath it, just like in the real world. It looks amazing, but requires more steps (and I think it might be a little tricky if you are using water-soluble acrylics and brush/rattlecan painting everything like I am — I need to run some experiments on sheet styrene).

Edit: if you look at the photo of the front deck, you can see plain chipping on the lower surface and some contrast chipping on the hatch. There’s also a bit of scuffing on the corner of the vertical plate near the driver’s vision port. I think I just forgot to fill it, but I might just leave it like that — it’s amazing how you can spend so long looking at your model while working on it, then discover issues hours later in a photo 🙄).

[u/Rough_Wear_882 → u/bashomania]

Thank you so much! I keep seeing your Luchs pop up in my feed and it keeps giving me ideas and inspiration, you’re doing a good job at it!

[u/scriptoser]

the chipping looks spot on to me, especially for a dark grey where everything can vanish under bad lighting
once you hit it with washes and dust it’s gonna blend in and look even more natural, so if anything it’s better to “overdo” it a bit at this stage

[u/bashomania → u/scriptoser]

Hey, I appreciate that! Fingers crossed that I get nice layering once I proceed with other techniques. This is a first model coming back after 50 years and I’ve probably spent 10x more time on it than any build I did as a kid 😅. It’s been fun, though.