P.K.A. Ausf G Gustav

This was my first time revisiting a Ma.K kit I had built before - I wanted to try a more aggressively colored paint scheme on a PKA and the Gustav seemed like a great candidate. This was actually built from the Friedrich kit that came with the Küster box, just with a standard Gustav style engine vent. The two designs are extremely similar and for all intents and purposes, the Friedrich and Gustav from Wave build up identically.

The standard arrangement of replacing the guardrails with brass rod, the power pipes with coil springs, and the joints sculpted with epoxy sculpt. 

The kit was painted with Gaia Notes lacquers, and I believe it was on this build that I discovered the joys of adding Retarder to lacquer paint and being able to freely blend the colors over the base coat. The wall section is a resin terrain piece from a table top games store, and the planking on the floor is made from drink stirrer sticks weathered with oil paints.

The numerals were hand painted, and the wonderfully characterful skeleton hand decals were added to both arms. The pilot bust has a gas mask which thankfully means less skin to paint.

Revisiting a kit was a great exercise in learning how to gauge my progress and both be able to see what was working and also figure out things that I was unsure of still . This is without a doubt one of my earlier Ma.K builds that I can still look at now and feel relatively good about. The Gustav is such a wonderfully evocative design with lots of potential, I wouldn't rule out making another one sometime!