Taking a New Technique for a Spin

It’s been a busy year of work and home commitments and this blog has been sadly neglected since February, but better late than never, so here’s something fresh from the workbench.

Okay, it’s not a new technique as such, but the first time I’ve given it a go. I’ve built about thirty armour kits to date and the art of weathering is one that offers endless variation and endless possibility, but I have always belonged to the “less is more” school, in which subtlety is the charm. One day I’ll have the skills to stipple mud onto my tanks and make it look good, but not just yet, so an intermediary stage was to try for a patina of dirt on the underside and running gear that suggested either heavy road grime or worn and dried mud in a fairly even finish over, well, everything.

The trick was to spray the dirt, of course. I have seen many photos of excellent models in which the running gear is the colour of the environment rather than of its materials or paintjob, and I was eager to give it a go, so when cranking out a Tamiya Pz. IIIL recently I decided the time had come. The markings are for a unit in Russia in ’43, end of the good weather, so summer camo with rust, dirt and wear.

The logic of the thing was simple enough – complete a normal paintjob as it would have been laid down by factory and field workshops, and then paint the dirt over it. Working in my usual Tamiya Acrylics, I started with dunkelgelb (XF-60) and lightened it with 25% XF-2 White for a scale-modified base overall. Next I added the green (XF-61) lightened to the same degree with XF-60, and performed the “squiggle” pattern. I did not bother changing down to the fine tip and need this time, I simply pushed the thinning ratio out a bit and cranked the pressure up some, and it flowed quite happily at this resolution.

The next step was to fade the camo, for which I thinned XF-57 Buff  at 20:1, creating a mist-coat which I built up gradually on the top surfaces until I felt it looked right, just enough to suggest faded paint. In the same timeframe I got the running gear ready, with the tyres prepped with XF069 NATO Black, then both sides of the wheels stencil-panted with dunkelgelb and the outer faces of the outer wheels treated with green to continue the effect. Microscale Flat was used to enliven the finish at this point with its low lustre. After that point, the fun really began, because it was time for the dirt.

I mixed equal parts XF-10 Brown, XF-60 Dark Yellow and XF-64 Red Brown and took it out to a 20:1 ratio once again, then slowly built up the mist effect on the belly plates, swing arms and behind the roadwheels, under the bow and stern (overlapping the camo), and then misted over the roadwheels, drives and idlers (the latter two less so as they are higher up). It took considerable courage to hose dirt onto the finished camo, but I quickly saw that it was following the general logic of the shade-and-fade philosophy, just taking it a step further, so I ran with it and in the end was happy. Maybe the red component should not have been there, there was too much warmth in the colour for Russian earth, and in future I’ll keep it strictly to the brown range, but the principle seems to have proven out.

After that it was a standard oil wash, drybrush and pigment process, with decals sandwiched between layers of flat. I got silvering all the same and even though the decals otherwise behaved very well, I might restrict myself to rubdown decals in future.

The end result is a good one, I think, I’m certainly pleased with the visual effect, and eager to try the technique again. I have Zvezda’s (ex-Dragon) Pz. IIIF on order, which should be an excellent subject to give a panzer grey finish a whirl, and I’ll come back to the “sprayed grime” technique for that one too.

I’ll hopefully evolve the full suite of skills over time. I now have ten models finished toward my “History of the Panzercorps” display, with easily over a hundred to go, so I have every opportunity to experiment ahead of me.