My panzer IV is neering completion, here is what I did today



I added copper wire to hold up the spare tacks on the side and frount. At first I tryed a piece of balsa wood, didnt work. Next I tryed black string, it looked waaaaay to thin and would not "stick" good . Finaly I noticed I had a roll of copper wire, so I drilled a hole in the tank (with e-xacto) and stuck the wire in and painted it. :-)

After that (no pic) I covered the wheels and bottom half of tank in wood glue. It should be dry tomoro and I will get pics up soon as possible

I'm getting the big red "X" where your pic should be. You may want to recheck it........

Not me Mr Fritz, try to update pic by right clicking then choose "show pic" might work

big red X

Ok here is a new pic. (I uploaded it on MSN, finaly got room. thx Jim )

I tryed something new for the first time, I covered the bottom half of the tank in wood glue (put on by a brush) and shifted dirt that I had found out side over the tank. I like the effect and will do it in models to come. What do you think?

While I am not much of an armor guy I think it looks good. There was a very good article on how to put mud on armor. You might want to check it out.

USMC0321

The wood glue thing didnt work that well because it didnt get into every crack and corner....
So I had some musted yellow spray paint around,
sprayed the entire bottom half of tank (coved the top with cardboard), re-covered it in dirt.
I must say It looks waaaaay better than if you use the wood glue.
The dirt is now everywere and has a nice consisticy. :-)

The pics are here







Tell me what you think (still not done)

Nice, but the paint looks a little too Blue looking. Maybe the pic.

I like the heavy dirt and weathering on tanks. And I suppose in reality they do get this dirty. But (this is my opinion only) I try to find the point where it looks dirty but not hiding the detail of the model. This is not easy to achieve. But i guess its up the individual on the look he/she is going for!
Are you going to add this in a dio or have a base with some ground work? It should be equally mucky and then this will show the tank and really pull this off!

(I was going to delete this message... as it might sound very picky..... but I guess you could say Im thinking out loud! I just thought i would throw in my point of view!)

Now That`s a real dirty tank.

Congrats on that you can really see that it`s driving on a very bad road after very bad weather I`m impressed. I would say to that the paint is maybe a bit too blue but that could easily be the pics

Nice model and some extreme weathering :-) :-)

I liked both methods you used to "muddy the tank. You could have presprayed the bottom of the tank with a brown color (close to the color of the dirt) prior to using the wood glue. keep in mind that some of the mud would dry and there is also variations in dirt/mud color, so this would work quite well . Either method has a great effect!!! REalism

I think the mud itself looks very good.
However, if this tank has moved since getting all that mud on, perhaps the wheel and track contact surface and all the moving joints should have less mud on them?

Just an idea...



Toni

Nice job. The mud came out very well. Very convincing mud. The technique you used is very good.
I have seen pictures of tanks this muddy so I have not problem with the quantity of mud.

Couple of comments - The back left top track looks a bit on clean side. My humble opinion would say to add a bit more mud on the top track (not a kit crusher if you don't).
Secondly - I would look to put this one on some type of base with a muddy bog/road. In my opinion this tank on a plain base would loose some of its visual appeal. If you have a bit of road or bogg that this tank has just gotten stuck in or pulled out of then it will really add visual connection to the quantity of mud you have. It will add credence to the entire thing.

Nice job, keep up the good work.

Looks pretty good.. although that does look like a lot of mud to me.......and for a tank that muddy, the shovel on the side looks a bit too clean......

thats my 2 cents worth..

I do like the mud a lot but I agree with some of the posts here. There seems to be a bit too much mud on this tank. The only way i can see it being this dirty is if it got stuck in a large mud hole or a bog and it was being pulled out by a tank recovery unit. This is must my humble opinion.

Imo this amount of mud is surely possible (long live the Russian muddy season)... Some of the pictures I have seen are incredible... add to that crews smearing mud on their vehicles for added camouflage, et voilá...

Though in my humble opinion the contrast between the muddy parts and the clean parts is a bit too great (especially on the starboard side of the vehicle)...IMO you would not only have to deal with mudd thrown up by the vehicle itself, but also from other vehicles (especially tracked vehicles) in the vicinity... and possibly mud smeared on from the crew stepping in and out of the tank.

Ok thanks guys for the comments

To Do List: Dirty up the back
Make dio base (fun part :-) )
dirty up the shovel
do dif. colors on the mud
add mud footprints======trees
======================|=|===_---__
Here is my idea for the dio _|_|___TANK___=mud===
==================================_hole__/

so the tank just came out of a big mud hole and Is rideing twards the battle.
....To the batcave! #:-)