10. Under The Pressure

  Now is a good time to do some chaos corrosion painting on the upper hull and turret using artists acrylics and pastel washes, It's basically the same technique that was used on the lower hull and the wheels and suspension, several thick coats of stippled thick body acrylic with various different pastel washes then applied on top, the picture below gives a good idea of what we are aiming for in terms of chaos corrosion painting, this particular tank hull has been left on a beach in Grimsby of all places, I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's a British C something that's for sure.

 In terms of the paints being used for this build the picture below shows that so far I really haven't used all that much in the way of painting products, which I tend to regard as a good thing, and I'm steering well clear of all those heavily marketed products (for reasons that I'll keep to myself if you don't mind) and instead focusing on painting products that can be purchased from your local art shop, you should support your local art and model shops, because you will miss them when they're gone.

 The mortar and pestle in the picture on the right is simply for creating a very fine pastel dust, when you run very fine builders sand (sharp sand) through a beige coloured mortar and pestle you get a very good sandy coloured dust, which is damn handy for a build like this, but anyway, the upper hull and turret got hit with the same stippled coats of Daler-Rowney (heavy body) burnt umber acrylic mixed with a medium rust coloured pastel chalk, It needs two or three coats to get a good base coverage, which takes some time, but not too bad to be honest as it's fast drying stuff, then I just left it for a day or so, ready for some pastel and oil washes.

 Pictures above, and talking of washes, the picture on the left shows a medium rust pastel wash using Tamiya X-20A thinner as a fixing agent, applied mostly all over, but in a varied kind of way so as to create a faded patchy look, then it got zapped with a hair dryer for a few mins to dry it all, and then another wash, this time with oils, mostly Windsor and Newton Cadmium Orange (water mix type) this was applied very sparingly and only in certain areas, not an all over wash like the first one, this wash was done quite a few times to try and build up some colour, and because it's a lot of fun.

 Pictures above and below, now my terrible attempts at sandy patches can be seen, though It does have to said that the camera is showing these as almost bright white, which they are not, they are a very light sandy brown colour, and were done with Naples Yellow, but It is fair to say that they need quite a lot more work, they need the high spots picking out with a much darker colour, and a lot more blending in work, It's all still very much work in progress, and about the only thing I'm happy with at the moment is the sandy patch around the gun barrel.

 The main reason for chucking some paint on the damn thing was to check the surface texture, to get a rough idea of whether it's in the right ball park or not, and in that regard I'm fairly happy with how the texturing turned out to be honest, there is a certain element of complete random chaos going on, and I'm very happy with how the turret turned out, plus the lower hull turned out reasonably well, and the upper hull maybe not so much, It maybe needed more chaos corrosion on the front plate, but then the front plate will hopefully be getting a layer of seaweed/slime/algae nonsense at some point, so it probably doesn't matter that much.

 Picture below, the whole thing now badly needs a wash to darken it all down a bit, all the weathering effects have lightened it up quite a lot, and as can be seen in the picture the engine bay badly needs to be sorted out, it's a focal point, a very big focal point to be honest, and therefore needs some work, It badly needs some interest adding in the form of old junk metal, some more fine detail adding, maybe some engine mounts, that kind of thing, and a big pile of sand for the crabs to play in of course.

 I'm starting to quite like this model now to be honest, so I'll consider that good progress, and it's a lot of fun to work on, I just keep making little changes that make it slightly worse, and then make little changes that make it slightly better again, trial and error, that kinda thing, all still work in progress and not even vaguely close to being finished, I find it funny that about 95% of the model is painted but I haven't done all that much airbrush work, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing, or a bad thing...

 Matt