Old-school Panzer II

1
March 21, 2025
Lower hull and wheels all built.
2
March 21, 2025
Turret built, too.
3
March 21, 2025
Upper hull built and fitted to the lower.
4
March 21, 2025
I did fill the typical Tamiya openings in the upper hull underside with some plastic card.
5
March 21, 2025
Kit basically completed, which took all of 2.5 hours including a break of perhaps just under an hour 🙂
6
March 21, 2025
For the diorama, I first drew the pieces needed for the ruined building and the base in Adobe Illustrator, then printed those out, cut the individual pieces from the paper and stuck them to 1 cm styrofoam and 9 mm plywood.
7
March 21, 2025
Ruined building pieces glued together, and with the paper removed as much as possible. To strengthen the joins, I stuck cocktail sticks (cut in half) through the styrofoam to pin the pieces together.
8
March 21, 2025
To get rid of the styrofoam texture, I smeared wall filler from a tube all over the walls.
9
March 21, 2025
Once dry, I sanded the wall filler reasonably smooth. It would have been less work if I had smoothed it better while it was still wet, but I’m out of practice making buildings like this 🙁
10
March 21, 2025
For the base, I first used an electric jigsaw to cut around the outside of the base shape, leaving about 5 mm beyond the line so I could then use a coarse wood file to bevel the edge to the line. Once that was done, I sanded the edge to get rid of the file marks.
11
March 21, 2025
Two figures made from those in the Panzer II kit, though with their helmets replaced with caps from Dragon. The one on the left has had his head turned to the right so he can be a grenade thrower instead of an NCO; the grenade is from the Tamiya German weapons set, his ammo pouches are from my spares box.
12
March 21, 2025
I sprayed the tank with cheap grey primer from an aerosol can, and then sprayed Tamiya XF-63 German Grey where the markings will go and over the whole lower hull.
13
March 21, 2025
Next, I applied markings from the kit’s decals, not per the instructions but just something I thought looks good and is plausible for an Afrikakorps vehicle.
14
March 21, 2025
I then sprayed AK 3rd Gen RAL8000 over everything except the markings and the lower hull sides.
15
March 21, 2025
This was followed by blotches of Agama Light Khaki 8th Army in the centres of panels to highlight them and relieve the blandness. The photo rather distorts the colours, though, and makes the model look much lighter than it really is.
16
March 21, 2025
Then, I applied an overall wash of Army Painter Soft Tone thinned about 1:1 with water, and when that was dry, I drybrushed the whole model with a number of lighter shades of the base colour.
17
March 21, 2025
And then I took a tin of Humbrol 67 Tank Grey (an old tin, from about 25–30 years ago) and heavily drybrushed the parts where the sand-coloured paint might have worn away.
18
March 21, 2025
On the base, which still had the paper on it, I cut out the areas from the paper where rubble is to go and coloured them in with a black marking pen, and then glued the cut-outs onto 5 mm foam board so I could cut out the rubble. I also drilled three holes and glued in cut-in-half cocktail sticks to pin the ruined building on, and chiseled out where a crater is to go. All the paper was then removed because it would prevent filler from sticking properly.
19
March 21, 2025
The wall is glued to the base here.
20
March 21, 2025
And the rubble is too. I made an edge around the crater with some bits of wood that I cut an edge to.
21
March 21, 2025
Here, there’s wall filler applied to the rubble as well as between the pieces and around the outside of the crater.
22
March 21, 2025
I also made the ground inside the building from wall filler, textured with an old, stiff brush.
23
March 21, 2025
And the road is now done too. I put a layer of wall filler over it, like the rest, and impressed track marks into it and drew some lines with a sculpting tool. The crater was made in the same way.
24
March 21, 2025
Here’s how to make track marks: put some cling film over the still-wet groundwork and then push your model into it. If you don’t use clingfilm, there’s a risk you pull the wet filler from your diorama.
25
March 22, 2025
The building and the rubble first got a coat of Tamiya XF-57 Buff.
26
March 22, 2025
After that, I painted random blotches of lighter tan colours, making sure to smear them out so they blend into the surrounding colour. Don’t be afraid to use your finger to do this 🙂
27
March 22, 2025
The broken parts of the wall now have a coat of Italeri brown wash.
28
March 22, 2025
After the wash had dried, I drybrushed the broken parts with Tamiya Buff and then those same parts plus all edges and corners with the lightest of the three colours I used on the walls. I then lightened that with white and drybrushed those again, then added more white and did it s third time.
29
March 25, 2025
Here’s a good example of how your phone or tablet tries to improve your photos but UTTERLY fails. By painting the road in a sand yellow colour (base + red-brown wash + lighter yellow drybrush) and the diorama edges in brown, the camera software in my iPad “helpfully” turns the walls grey instead of the beige they actually are.
30
March 25, 2025
With a white background, though, the colours are much closer to what I can see before me on the real diorama. The scribblings in the wall have been painted in red, but do look much darker here than IRL.
31
March 26, 2025
The tank is now finished.
32
March 26, 2025
33
March 26, 2025
34
March 26, 2025
35
March 26, 2025
I’ve also started painting the figures, though it’s hard to photograph them with an iPad. Only the flesh parts so far, now the rest …
36
March 29, 2025
Uniforms also painted. The figures look OK from a distance but not up close like here — I think the shadows especially are too stark, so I may add an intermediate colour to soften them a bit.
37
April 2, 2025
With the figures finised, I glued them to the base and then added the tank as well — and with that, it’s done!
38
April 2, 2025
39
April 2, 2025
40
April 2, 2025
41
April 2, 2025
42
April 2, 2025
43
April 2, 2025
44
April 2, 2025
45
April 2, 2025
Family photo with left front the very first tank kit I ever built — age 8, IIRC — of the Matchbox Panzer II. Right front is a Revell reissue of that, bought around twenty years ago but not finished because its tracks were already brittle when they came out of the box back then, and broke when I tried to put them round the wheels.

Comments

21 21 March, 16:13

Rui S
I'm in 😎

1 21 March, 16:16

J K
Watching love how you describe how you made the dio, will have to give it a try.

1 21 March, 22:01

Simon SW
I love the idea of making a 1/35 diorama, to represent a 1/76 scale kit base, that represents a (probably) imaginary 1/1 scale original... Very 'meta' 🙂

1 26 March, 14:30

Jakko ‌ Author
Thanks 🙂 It's an idea I already had 15, 20 years ago or so (though not with a Panzer II) but never actually did. Now, a group build on another site gave me the perfect excuse to do it after all.

26 March, 18:52

Doubtingmango
Excellent demonstration of how the extra work can make an ancient kit relevant!

1 30 March, 00:36

Jakko ‌ Author
Heh, the only actual improvements I did to this kit were to drill out the gun muzzles and the exhaust on the tank 🙂 Everything else is straight from the box.

30 March, 08:58

Doubtingmango
Don't short yourself on the figures! In spite of their age, the detail on the figures isn't bad, but the poses have always struck me as awkward and unnatural. Your improvements seemed to have fixed the issue.

1 30 March, 15:40

Jakko ‌ Author
TBH, the figures look worse in the photos than in the flesh. My iPad's camera app does a lot of processing on pictures to make them "better", as the two pictures of the diorama with blue and white backgrounds illustrate very well. The figures suffer from that too, in that the highlights look much brighter and the shadows darker than they do IRL.

My real problem with them is that I could paint figures better than this twenty years ago, but I'm not only out of practice, my hands also shake more than they did back then so I can't paint as accurately anymore 🙁

1 30 March, 17:26

Doubtingmango
Great finish Jakko! It all came together nicely. I love the perspectives through your modeling career!

1 2 April, 13:11

Jakko ‌ Author
Thanks 🙂 I couldn't find my old Tamiya Panzer II (I'm certain I still have it somewhere, though) else I would have included that as well for an even more complete picture 🙂

2 April, 15:01

Rui S
I'm amazed how could you still have your first kit 👍 My first kit's are long gone.
Very interesting progress 😉

2 April, 15:37

Project info

Old-school Panzer II

45 images

1:35

Completed

1:35 Panzerkampfwagen II Ausf. F/G (Tamiya 35009)

1:35 Infantry Weapons Set (Tamiya MM211)

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