This was always main the thing I disliked about Tony Greenland’s models: the artsy paintwork. Yes, he had (has? I don’t know, I haven’t seen one of his models in literally decades) great skill in spraying camouflage as faded and applied with too-thin paint, but just like a lot of models of Second World War German fighter aircraft you see, the whole thing soon looked too artificial to me. Not on the first model I saw like that, but when every model had that look, I don’t think he was aiming for realism but for his style of painting.
I should really try to find his book now However, all I come across just now are copies at twice or more what I’d be willing to pay for it.
That book also seemed to me to mark the decline of painting and marking panzer models any old nonspecific way.
Since then, it seems the focus is more on emulating specific factory-applied camo patterns and modeling specific vehicles. At least here.
As regards paper panzers, anything still goes, but I believe that say, a Panther II with a Rheinmetall turret ought to be represented as to how it would likely appear, had it gone into production. But that’s just me.
It’s a position few if any of us can really argue with – I think we’d agree we’re each free to do what the hell we like for our own satisfaction. Either like it, or don’t like it.
I just wish he’d ALSO done a diorama in which, he claims, he would do some weathering – has anyone seen such an animal?
I very much agree with him that it’s your model and the only one you need to please with it, is yourself (as long as you don’t intend to enter it into a competition, anyway).
I very much disagree, however, with his position that weathering is merely a way to disguise a poor paint job. Making a model look properly and believably dirty and used is a lot of work that requires just as much technique and an eye for painting as artsy camouflage does.
Yep I concur. I don’t really understand the logic of replicating an AFV which has just emerged from the factory – in fact it’s not even that, camo was typically applied in the field or close to it. Whatever, I don’t believe any of Greenland’s models ever looked like that at any point in their existence. So I don’t understand why he went to such extraordinary (and let’s be fair, brilliant) lengths to make his models look authentic/realistic in terms of construction and painting, when the end result was – to my mind – totally unrealistic.
And to say mud/weathering was an excuse to hide errors is just crap.
Later in the war, camo was factory applied. Examples include the Daimler-Benz, MNH and M.A.N. Panther G schemes.
Here he says:
“There is, however, some inherent skill in understanding what paint scheme will look best on any given vehicle. This cannot be taught; you must try to use your own imagination.”
So here we have it: camo schemes based on one’s imagination. The point about “what scheme will look best” seems rather unclear in that it “cannot be taught.” So, you cannot ever teach yourself about actual camo schemes, you just use automatic writing with an airbrush to determine the scheme?
Eh, it mainly shows where his interests lie, really. If he had been building modern German vehicles instead of 1940s ones, for example, he would have pretty much zero choice in which camouflage looks good on them so that argument suddenly falls flat. Really, him saying what you quoted reinforces my idea of his painting being artsy rather than attempting to be realistic. Which, to be fair to him, he does really well — it’s just that it makes him seem rather like a one-trick pony if every model he makes looks like that.
Funny thing: Back when I was naive to a lot of late war panzers, I thought his models of the Panther II, E50 and so on, were actual historical vehicles.
But I also thought about the lacey delicate patterns, no way this is real.
Things were definitely more freewheeling back then. Build a Panther with a tactical number 899 and Afrika Korps palms. Could happen…
Edited by: Chris Ellis Publisher: Patrick Stephens Limited, 1970
This is a follow-up to How To Go Plastic Modelling, reviewed above, and is largely in the same style — which is not too surprising, as it was written and edited by much the same people at much the same time. However, I think this one is actually more useful for a modern modeller than its predecessor. It still mentions a good deal of outdated materials and manufacturers, of course, but it is much better at showing how to build and especially convert models, with many of the techniques shown still being relevant today.
Still not a book you absolutely cannot do without, by a long shot, but if you find yourself in the (probably quite rare) situation of wanting to buy one of these two, but not both, I would recommend Advanced
Written by: Lee Thomas, Joe Morgan, Cookie Sewell, Ed Gilbert, Gérard Deygas, Art Loder, Dan Tisoncik, Terry Sunday, Andrew Crutchley and Hilber Graf Publisher: Kalmbach Publishing, 1995
This book is a collection of articles about military vehicle models, originally published in FineScale Modeler magazine circa the late 1980s, early ’90s — I recognised a number of them from issues I purchased back then. None of the articles are concerned with building a kit straight out of the box, so they assume some basic modelling skills already. Instead they’re intended to show how to do conversions and add detail, just like the title says, of course. They vary from reasonably simple, like swapping a tank turret for a different one, to adding extra armour plates to a tank, to using a resin hull, turret and other parts on a kit, to a few vehicles with almost entirely scratchbuilt upper sides. Unfortunately, the articles don’t seem to have been ordered from most basic to most involved, which I think would have been a better idea than the essentially random order they’re actually in.
On the whole they explain things quite well, though in the typically terse FSM style: the text usually explains in quite short order what the builder did, frequently — but briefly — also how he did it, and hardly ever the why of it. Still, there’s a lot of good techniques being shown here, even if a lot of it is once more on models that you may as well pass up on these days because so many better ones are available. You can’t hold that against it, of course.
Well actually it couldn’t, not the DAK palms anyway, because by the time the Panther got into service the DAK didn’t exist any more. But as to numbering, there were units that deliberately numbered their vehicles in a confusing way, or not at all. The vehicle that springs to mind is “7301” at Arnhem.
Back in the sixties Scale Modeler magazine built an Aurora King Tiger with Afrika Korps palm trees. They admitted they confused the Tiger I and II. I think the did the same with a Kursk diorama.
If you ever get that out, I would love if you could make some scans or take some photos and post them.
I suppose now, it would be termed a “What If?”
I may have my own version. When I was 12 or 13, I took a 1/76 Fujimi Tiger II kit up to the counter in a hobby shop and asked if it was used in the desert.
I was told it was. Either he was just trying to make a sale, was guessing or probably both.
To put things in context wood, paper and plastic were the modeling materials. Plastic was the new guy on the block. Molding technology was no where near what is today. Models were toys for children. Wooden airplanes and ships were for the big boys. The careful research effort was not put into producing plastic model kits. So it was anything goes for painting. I had a spitfire that was grass green and lemon yellow because those were the closest colors I had and I was OK with it.
I had a tiger kit from the 60’s that was so bad even I as a child knew it was wrong. The barrel was way too thick, the turret was way too narrow. Nothing was dimensionally correct. I have tried without success so far to remember the Japanese brand of kit.
Any thoughts from the ones who still maintain a memory?
I think this might be it, based on the parts I saw on ebay. I had this kit too. I was fooled by the box art (not the first or last time). The hull was very narrow and the turret tiny and misshapen. Blew it up with a firecracker soon after completion.
However, all I come across just now are copies at twice or more what I’d be willing to pay for it.
