A few years ago I purchased the Watchtower "Ruin Nalog Top" from Ziterdes. It is a rearly nice model and good value for the money. It comes like all models from Ziterdes prepainted and flocked. I decided to repaint it with my new painting technics and to test the high quality vegetation from "Mini Natur" (Silflor) for the first time. The next pictures show the model in the as-delivered-conditions.
The model had to much "golf like" flocked areas for my taste, so I smothed some with some ready made filler from a DIY shop.
As a first painting step I primed the smothed areas with a grey acrylic color. The flocked surface was given a heavy wash with thinned down dark brown acrylic color. Then the whole model was given a heavy drybrush with a very light ochre.
Then started the vital part of the process. I
coloured the masonry with washes in differnt shades of brown, grey (thinned black),
ochre and dark green. I used airbrush colors from Schmincke (AERO COLOR). This colors are
very thin but have a high proportion of pigments. So I had to dilute them down with water.
By varying the proportions of color and water one could achieve shades of different
intense. By combinating the different colors, either on the palette or direkt in several
coats on the model, one can get milles of different shades. I applied the paint with a
medium sized brush and gave the neighboured stones different colors. Good effects could
also been acchieved by removing some paint with a paper tissue before it becomes completly
dry. The next pictures show the used colors and the ruin after the application of the
washes .
The next step was to tone different parts of the masonary with dry pigments. The used colors (from Busch) are shown in the next pictures. Sadly I forgot to shut some pictures at this stage, but the effect can be seen on the photos of the finished model.
The last step was the application of some vegetation to give the whole model the impression of age. I used the very good but expensive materials from "Mini Natur" (SILFLOR) for the first time and glued them with superglue. I can say that the quality is fantastic and the the achieved result looks very realistic.
Here comes the pictures of the finished ruined tower. I am very happy with the way it turned out. The vegetation can be seen very good on the detail shots at the bottom of this page.
Here comes some detail shots of the finished model.
Thank you for your interest. I hope I could give you some inspirations or useful hints.