In
Part One, I took my
Flames of War Russian tank hunters up to the gloss phase. Now it's time to do the oil wash, which is really what gives them depth!
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| Where we last left the tank hunters |
This! This is my jam. Use an old brush to apply this, and utilise capillary action to watch the oil fill in the recesses. Shake it up between each tank.
Initially, I apply it fairly liberally.
I then use white spirits and a Q-tip to clean up the excess. It wipes up quite quickly, and the white spirit won't affect anything else on the model
After touching it up, I let it dry for quite a while. It goes on easily, and cleans up easily. I burned through these 20 vehicles in maybe an hour. I find it acceptable to be a bit sloppy still as it looks a bit like weathering. Again, we're trying to get these on the table, not win competitions!
The colour I used is designed to go on green, but I found it worked fine on the yellow base as well.
The next step I do is apply additional gloss over the areas where I'll be putting my decals. I then let the oil and the gloss dry, usually overnight.
In the meantime, it's finally time to do the tracks! I usually start with a dryrbrush of gunmetal over the tracks. It looks MUCH better to paint your tracks brown initially, but I find that step just takes way too long. Instead, I make sure to liberally hit my tracks with brown when I do my weathering, and it makes it look almost as cool, at much less effort.
The colours I am using for the road wheels.
I apply the road wheel colour a bit sloppily. I figure any minor mistakes will be covered up with the liberal weathering.
Decals applied. I kept the Soviet decals very minimalistic- just numbers.
The Germans got a bit more.
After applying the decals, I attach the tracks. Now they're looking like tanks!
Nearing completion now!
Now it's time to get rid of that glossy sheen. This Tamiya Flat is about the best spray I can find here in NZ. My absolute favourite is the small can of Testor's Dull Cote, but it's prohibitively expensive here. I do have some Dull Cote in a bottle that I mix with Testor's thinner and apply through my airbrush that works fantastically. For these, I had picked this up anyhow, and decided to use it.
Protip: place the bottle in a bowl of hot water (just from the tap) and let it sit for a few minutes. Then shake vigorously and spray the tanks down. I've never had an issue with frosting since using that trick, even when applying in a bit of humidity (though don't risk high humidity!)
After the matte.
Cool! At this point you could be done if you wanted to stop there. The last step for me is a quick and dirty weathering.
Using a big, worn out brush I liberally drybrush "Flat Earth" on the wheels and lower hulls (with some extra attention to hitting the decals). I follow that up with a quick, light drybrush of beige brown.
And that's it dudes!
They're far from award winning, but they won't do you wrong.
Besides, they look better painted and on a table than sitting in a box unassembled!
Happy painting!
You know Steve, he used to work here. I know he left the country, but apparently the Fed's are still after him. Good luck out there on the run Steve... Good luck.
