More shots of my KV-85. Please do not notice the rear turret MG is missing...













Painted with Pactra acrylic and Polly Scale, decaled with parent KV-1's markings. Weathering is Future washes of water oils over spattered acrylics, and pencil.

Wow, nice work! What kit is that? Wasn't aware there was such a tank...

excellent kit! weathering is superb, and are those the kit tracks? becasue they look great
-Shain

Great work!
Scratches, rust and exhaust are superb. Very subtle.

Rust puddles! Now there is something I hadn't thought of, but looks great and I will definetly try.

How did you accomplish those 'steal' colored scratches? Pencil lead?

To echo Shain--Are those the kit tracks?

Mike, Shain and Keith,

Thank you for the compliments.

First, those are the vinyl kit tracks. I airbrushed them with acrylic paint at low pressure and farther away than usual for the paint to slightly dry gritty. Then they have a wash of Future and water soluble oil paint, then spattered them with various earth color acrylics, finally drybrushed steel.

Second, the scratches are just a #2 artist pencil. Just tap-tap-scratch-tick-tapped around various directions and pressures until I was happy.

The kit is defuct (?) MB Models from North Carolina. It is a resin turret and upper hull with metal hatches and gun. The builder must supply and fashion the infantry rails on the turret. Attaches to Tamiya's KV-1 kit. The KV-85 was an up-gunned KV-1, roughly a prototype for the Josef Stalin series. Another Armorama posted a link on my original posting that it was a KV-1 hull modified for the JS-1 turret, IIRC. The kit is innaccurate as she didn't retain the bow MG.

The rust puddles are my thoughts on weathering. I figure rust or dirt, from looking at construction and farm machinery, all but fresh rust gets dark, and dirt and gunk pools where water carries it, drying in whatever color nature mixes it, but mainly a rusty, gummy, dirty brown of various hues. So there are 3-4 washes of various rust-browns, some local, some intense. The Future does a great job of drying with the pigments pulled straight down instead of pullinbg it off to the edges, a'la mineral spirits, alcohol, etc.

Really like the job you've done on the weathering and tracks... I will try your technique for painting the vinyl tracks. Thanks for sharing!

Fred--thanks for detailing your rust puddle method. Another use for Future!

I have been looking at my recently finished TIger 1 and it seems to be missing something which I couldn't put my finger on. This might just be the ticket. Now off to give it a try...