Let the desertification begin! (Patreon)

Ma frens, I'm finally back at the workbench, and to do some muscle stretching, I started with one side of the running gear. Sort of testing out which colors will work and what effects to use, you know. 

Well, turns out having the entire running gear as a sub-assembly is indeed awesome! Painting details isn't so fun, but weathering definitely is. 

The base-coated assembly (which you can still see on the other side of the tank in the background), received a generous wash of Dry Earth and Rainmarks Effects from Ammo, these established the basic dust/sand effects. Then I added a few subtle stains with Earth from Ammo to add some variety. The rusty colored areas of moisture (which is just desert sand mixed with water in real life) are Light Rust Wash and Earth mixed together, similar to what I did a year ago on the T-90. Really dark grimy stains on the wheels were done with Sepia and Engine Grease from 502 Abteilung, those were obviously the most fun 😁Finally, the outer cleats were dry-brushed with Rust Dark Shadow from Lifecolor. Again, tracks on Syrian tanks are mostly rusty, no signs of polished metal, which is not only really interesting, but also plays in our favor because it creates more contrast with the light dust effects than polished metal would do. 

At first I wanted to make all earth effects from oil paints to keep the "spirit" of this model, but after a quick thought, I feel like it wouldn't quite work out, because in 1/48th and 1/35th scale you can really appreciate the added texture of enamels, especially the Mud range from Ammo, and pure oil paint weathering might look better in smaller scales. But hey, we'll have to try that out sometime! 

So next I obviously need to finish the other run, do the same on the lower hull and then we can cover the upper surfaces with rubble! 

Cheers friends, sorry for the longer wait, I didn't do anything over the weekend and yesterday I was working on the video 😊