The Chief first posted this in a thread in the Armor forum. I suggested he put this into Techinques. So, since he’s still learning the ropes of the forum I thought I’d help him by putting this here.
Johncpo posted the following:
I’ve been building armor since Monogram had its collection 30 years ago and now work with Tamiya, Italeri and some others. All WW2 and mostly North Africa, Italy and some winter dios with the Ardennes Forest as a theme.
Weathering is the key to any model and detailing goes along with that. You got that right ! Here are are few things I learned along the way from 30 + years with 1:35 WW2 armor, 1:48 WW2 aircraft and believe it or not 1:87 H-O model railroads, because it all fits.
Acrylic paints and the color matching problem, these paints are available at any craft store or department, i.e. HobbyLobby, Walmart and other outlets. They come in colors that will match all military colors for all the armies. If you can download a color chart from a hobby shop on-line you can get right-on colors. These airbrush on for aircraft and armor with a mix of BLUE dyed windshield wiper fluid and will dry on solid when heat is appied form a hairdryer set on LOW ! Above all they clean up with water just as with any acrylic.
Weathering, when using acrylics I like to weather as I go, I use artists chaulk or billiard chaulk as they come in a variety of colors. This technique is simple, once the base color(s) are dried, give the model a wash of thinned black paint and water, while this is air drying scrape the desired colored chaulk onto the model. The dust will adhere to the drying paint and cause a deading effect to cut out any shine. Apply as many coats of this as you wish to enhance the weathering. I use baking powder for snow and mix this with brown paint to get the mud effect for my winter scenes in which the tires or treads of vehicles has frozen mud stuck to them.
Wear and tear, this is so simple and yet very convincing, and drives my wife nuts to think I spend time on this ! Pencil lead, ground up, using sand paper to grind up pencil lead, apply with black paint to achieve the gunmetal effect on guns, and related equipment. Also wear and tear on handholds, hatch covers and everything else held onto or picked up. Rusting occurs on the mufflers and engine parts, I use pencil lead with rust colored paint mixed in to get this.
I would say that you covered everything on you model, I’m certain we would all like to see more. Also for barbed wire, try this, window screen, cut the strands with a sharp hobby knife, close to each strand to get the desired effects. I like the looks of Verlinden, but I have always found alternatives in my parts box ( now a whole drawer 0 and common household items.
Best of luck and I hope these ideas work for you.
John M. Staehle
My trains run on time, my armor sits on the display shelves waiting for the call to go into action, and my planes are suspended from the ceiling keeping the skies friendly ! What more could my wife want from me ?