Painting our tanks

[Martin Donnison]

Need some help and advice please,
I have painted my tank in green brown and black camouflage. My question is how do I make it look used and dirty. At the moment it just looks painted. And brand new.
Thanks Martin.

[Steve McEvoy]

There are several ways that I use to make mine look used, Oil paints, Spraying with a very light coat of buff thinned to 90% thinners 10% paint or pigments. usually a combination of all 3. Seems to come out ok. There are loads of videos on you tube about weathering, one I would recommend is called nightshift. He does some fantastic weathering, you just need to scale up to 1/6 scale.

Hope this helps.
Regards
Steve

[Steve Stuart]

There is another technique, which is the beauty of 1/6 scale, get your Tank out and run it! Find somewhere dry and dusty and then the opposite, wet and muddy and allow your tank to accumulate a natural covering, it won't be static and it will not be fixed, just like the real thing. As you use the Tank it will get the occasional knock and bash which replicates another aspect of weathering, physical damage.
This saves a whole lot of worry about keeping a "weathered" Tank pristine. Natural weathering takes the edge off artificial weathering in the long run and imposes itself inevitably, with a certain integrity as well?
Steve

[Jerry Carducci]

As Mr. Stuart stated I subscribe to the 'natural' weathering technique; especially scale dust which I excel at.

Loading/unloading, running,tinkering on all add a certain joie de vivre to our models with scratches, worn patches, nicks and bent parts. If you want to add a blotch or streak of light rust here and there as the mood strikes over time or rub a high-use area with news paper (ink) the look will be complete.

I've never much cared for the 'we just dug it up from a bog' look. I realize crews in the field didn't often have the chance to wash and carnuba wax
their vehicles but I doubt they looked as bad many make them appear either. From what I've seen I think most vehicles were probably pretty drab, low key.

Jerry

[Stephen White]

Martin I wrote a couple of Knowledge Base topics on weathering , which you can find in the Knowledge Base Topics section. For the second one, you’ll have to follow the links as Kian described.

[Steve McEvoy]

I agree natural weathering is best, but if you have just finished a build and don't want to go to a show with a tank that looks like it's just come out of the factory then I don't see a problem with giving a head start and then let natural wear and tear take its course. Just my opinion of course.

[Gerhard Michel]

Hi guys,

weathering is an old and long lasting topic. What will be enough? When is it too much? Well, on the first hand all vehicles were new when leaving the factory. Therefore it can't be bad when a tank model looks new. On the other hand many (German) vehicles were damaged within the first 3 months; long before they could get some patina. Well, they became muddy, but that was all, I think. It's nice to see a very fine and complex weathering, but I fear only museum objects had the lifetime to get such a surface.

Here some pics of my Jagdpanther, which I bought as a used model though it was unused . I for myself would not expend this efford...












Another possibility to show models is to 'weather' the photos. May be like this:













Jagdtiger at full speed.



Used a special app to weather photos