Back on my feet! Also, the plot THICKENS

My friends, I can finally walk without a crutch, and it doesn't matter if it's just around the house or it's a long walk outside! You must've sent me tons of calcium because my bones look MINT. So now I can fully focus on regaining all the lost strength in the leg 😊 

In other news, I found some time to outline every panel and detail with the trustworthy black + brown "grime" mixture, and also to apply the first light layer. I was getting tired after the whole day though, so only the hull is lightened and "tidied" up. 

To be fair, I have no idea if this tone resembles the real post-war "Boring French Green" and also I feel like it looks light enough already. But I'll play around with more tones... and also tone down the strong outlining in a few places, but not all of it! The Panzer II pops in my mind - the final highlights were almost pure white and everything got toned down a LOT in the end. In fact, the only successful post-shaded model I've done so far is the T29 IMO, and I had to really hold back with every weathering effect on that one. 

That's another thing... the mottled surface sure looks interesting, but because I'm used to more subtle effects, it feels "wrong" 😁 I'll have to stay strong in my beliefs, because from what I've learned this year: if a model looks perfect after post-shading, the surface is gonna be meh on the finished model. 

Re: the visible print layers. As I wrote in the previous post, I'm okay with them because I'm tackling the model as a 3D printed kit, not a perfect replica of the real tank. How am I going to obscure them? Well, paint and contrasts do wonders. Also, varnishes do even bigger wonders. A glossy surface makes everything very noticeable, but a flat or a satin coat reflects less light and the sheen isn't so "strong", so they'll be immediately less visible. It'll also require a slightly different blending technique once it comes to enamels and oils, but yeah, that's the theory. It worked so far on my small 3D prints, so we'll see if it works on a bigger surface.