Problem: my winter camo KV-1 looks too clean and white. The dark washes around nuts, recesses, etc. have been done well and so is paint chipping. I need to wash the whole tank with something that will give it a dirtier appearance. You will make suggestions, I will apply the treatments and at the end I’ll post pictures for comparison.
I have the following weathering media:
-A gazzilion of enamels and acrylics in earth colors
-Rustall-the complete set
-A set of pastels in earth colors
-The following Mig Productions earth powders: Europe Dust, Dark Mud, Russian Earth
-The following Tamiya weathering sticks: Mud, Light Earth, Snow
There are a bunch of people who will weigh in on this. I would first make a light grey wash. I would use that to highlight the deep areas and create shadows. Also you can add rust spots and scratches.
After that, it depends on how white washed the vehicle is. Are you trying to show worn winter camo or is most of the vehicle white? How much blending is required with the normal paint color.
I’ve got some ideas for you. I’ve used both of these tequniqus on top of white washes and thay worked well. But I’ve never done them together.
A wash of gray paint on all the panals and flat serfices.
You take a large sort brush (sort is a key because if yo use a hard brush it will make streaks) and some dust pigments and put some piles of pigment randemly on the veical and spred softly on all sefices.
In that case, try using watercolours for the wash. The trick is to break down the surface tension by adding some soap (I use liquid soap, but dish soap works fine too) to the (suitably thinned paint). Then apply it as you would a standard acrylic wash. the paint will accumulate in corners and recesses, as per normal. The weapons bay of this Airfix 1/72 Nimrod:
has a watercolour wash applied to it. The big plus-point is that it’s easy to remove (just add water) if you don’t like what you’ve done.
You may need multiple applictions to get the effect you’re loking for, but that’s OK. Just make sure that the previous application is properly dry first. After that, I’d use weathering powders and pasels, according to the effect that you’re trying to achieve.
When doing winter whitewashes, I like to paint the model in the normal colours frst, and then protect this with Future. When this has dried and cured, I then apply the whitewwash using thinned acrylics. Then I can remove the whitewash where I want to, using cotton buds dipped in isopropanol, or even fine wet&dry paper:
What I would do is first intensify the original weathering on your tank. From the pics in the other thread, the paint chips are almost impossible to see.
Use a thinner compatible with the white paint you used, and moisten certain parts in order to thin the application of the white camo in some key areas.
Go over the model once again, and introduce some fairly prominent chips, cracks, and flaking of the whitewash.
Over that, go with some oil paints to create a filter, using yellow ochre and a light brown.
Introduce some rust streaks, albeit very subtle ones.
After that, attack the model with a deeper wash of whatever you used allready, then add some pastels and mig powders. I’d stay away from using rustall and the tamiya weathering sticks on this.
No, that’s an impersonator. In my 10 years of posting under the nickname MonsterZero I’ve never met another MonsterZero although I know such names have been reserved by Yahoo e-mail users. However, I’m very active at Armchair General message boards which are full of military guys. I can bet one of them has copied my nick and is now using it at Military.com
Chris, I think you have the solution I will actually implement. I never realized soap can be added to watercolors. I will be posting pictures shortly. Should I try putting Tamiya snow (from the marker) on the threads, wheels and hull?
I’ve never tried using Tamiya snow marker, but my instinct is that it might be too bright for what you want to do. I think a gentle dry-brushing of the highlights with acrylic white, to wihch a drop of tan, or pale grey, or even grey-ish green has been added, might be more effective. Remeber to stop just before you think you’ve done enough!
Well, since you’ve found your solution for what you want to do, the only thing I would recommend is to throw out your enamels and use Tamiya acrylics on the rest of your builds–you really open up the possibilities for weathering 100-fold over enamels when you can use actual oil washes and effects. There’s just no replicating them with acrylic washes as you are being forced to do because of compatibility issues.
I’ll disagree with you on that, doog. I use MM Enamels for base painting and weathering. You just have to use an acrylic barrier coat between the base paint and the weathering. I use MM Flat Acryl Clear. Sure, it’s an extra step. But since I like the availablity of colors in the MM Enamel range of paints, I’m willing to do this extra step.
Point taken, Jesse, but the point I’m making is that you don’t have to use any barrier coat if you just use acrylics. I really diparage the unnecessary use of any “extra” coats which can be eliminated if possible. I’m not tryin to sound inflexible–just clarifying…[;)]
Especialy “Future”–which I’ll agree can be a great “tool” for certain applications, but then you have to additionally flat coat–more “extra” coats. [sigh]
The range of acrylics is just as broad as enamels, IMHO. And if you learn to mix colors wtith any accuracy, you can mix up any color at al–I just finished a McLaren Indy Car in that really hard-to-do “McLaren Yellow” by simply mixing it. I’ll be posting it over in Auto’s in a few…
