I thought of this as an idea for a whitewash, but have yet to try it on a tank. I was thinking to take some ground up white chalk pastels, and mix in a little water to make an almost runny paste, kind of like the real thing, and apply it to the tank. When the water evaporates I assume there will be the chalky residue and white pastel left behind. Has anyone tried doing this? I figure it would be better than throwing on thinned down flat white paint, as when that dries, it kind of has that opaque look to it.

I tried this and wasn't very happy with the results.



Since doing this model, I experimented with mixing pastels with rubbing alcohol instead of water. I'm using it to add dust to my M4A1 and think it will also work as a whitewash.

When you put on a pastel-alcohol wash, it looks like there is barely any pigment going on -- wait a few minutes until it dries. I think it looks pretty good.If you find it is spotty or too thick somewhere, take a soft toothbrush and tone it down a bit. If it's too thin, you can apply more washes.

If you're using pastels, be sure to get them ground up very finely. Using alcohol as the carrier will give you better results than water. I had pretty good success using regular artist's tube watercolor as whitewash. Dilute it fairly thin and brush it on. When dry it can de fairly easily "weathered" off with an old toothbrush. Here is an example.

Jim

I bought a package of pastels a while ago, and had an old coffee grinder kicking around so I ground them all up, and put the pigment in one of those "Daily Pill Holders", works wonders!
Ok, I'll try the alcohol instead of the water, it'll evaporate quicker! And at least the wash can look sloppy, with all of the brush strokes and such showing, as the whitewash was just slapped on in the field. Thanks guys!

Just finished doing my Ardennes Jagdpanzer IV in whitewash.
I used children's blackboard chalk - cheap and easy to find, but I found when I'd ground it that it was coarser than the chalk artist's pastels. I mixed the ground chalk with water 'till it looked like milk, a bit lumpy, but it was ok. I slopped it onto the upper hull only - I figure that the lower hull probably wasn't done, brushing downwards to simulate rain washing. I also blotted the bottoms of panels where it was pooling, but I don't think I really neded t oworry about it.
After a couple of hours of sheer panic - It looked terrrible :-) I got a fairly stiff hake brush and began to scrub it off the high wear areas (hatches and walkways, and almost all of the armour skirts)
I was surprised at how easily it came off - the brush wasn't very stiff, so I got a very soft brush and rubbed to soften the hard lines I'd made.
Tomorrow I'll airbrush a mix of Kleer and Tamiya flat base (my favourite matting spray) to fix the whitewash, as it looks like it will rub off very easily.
I'll then wash thinned earth acrylic into the panel lines that are now very white :-) and drybrush a bit of mud onto the lower panels.

If I was doing it again - well I might try alcohol, and perhaps a drop of dish washing liquid to help smooth it out - I'd certainly try to grind the chalk as fine as possible. Give it a try - I think it's worth practicing with
Let us know how you get on too

I tried that before, and got almost the same results as you did. I then used watercolor(the cheap kind) and diluted it and brushed it on, it actually looks pretty good now, with the chalk looking like bits of snow.

Hi:

I tried the exact same method using white chalk and alcohol/water mix. The results can be seen on the t34/76 1:72 scale tank I did. It's in my gallery here:


https://armorama.kitmaker.net/photos/showphoto.php?photo=27888&password=&sort=8&cat=500&page=2


I was pretty happy with the results.

John

hiya I tried it and loved the result I did it with water and the mig pigments but I didnt mix them but just sprayed water on the model and paint the pastels on like you would normally do with dusting up. it became like white paint and then I just took a hard dry brush and started rubbing it off...




wich I think looks quit alright