hi,

im creating a m41walker bulldog and was wondering how to create the weatherd effect by adding mud, rust and dust to the tank.
any techniques, tips, hints or web sites will be appreciated.

thank alot,
blind_man

There is a weathering set sold by Micro Mark that has a number of small containers that have multiple colors of dirt, dust, mud and rust powders. You can dust these on or mix with water into a paste and apply with a brush.

There are more techniques for weathering than you can shake a stick at. And not only do you have to know what to do, but where to do it, and how much of it you should do.
A simple weathering on the M41 could include the following.

A. Rust.
get a bottle of testors "Rust" they come in the tiny rectangular bottles. Paint the entire track in this color. When it dries drybrush the tracks first in gun-metal and then very lightly with a lighter metalic color. Use silver only if you can really controll yourself with the drybrushing
When all is dry, paint the rubber pads on the tracks a lightened black. Black paint mixed with some dark grey about 3:1. Voila! you have a rusty track.

B. Mud
There are many things you can do here. The easiest will be to do the following. You can check my post on the M5 Stuart in Model Rivet board to see the results....
After painting the base coat. Take some artist acrylics, I like to use lamp black mixed with burnt umber, and dilute them in water, so that you have very watery paint (not just dirty water), use this to wash the entire undercarriage. Do one side at a time and sit the tank on the opposite side to prevent the wash from collecting in puddles at the bottom. Make sure your dark paint gets into all the crevaces and nooks and crannies, and rub out any water that collects into "drops". Let this dry for a day. Next take some Polly S British Dark Earth paint and liberally drybrush the area with it. Once that dryes follow up with a drybrushing of Polly S British Middle-Stone.
If you have an airbrush, mix the two colors together and mist it slightly up the fenders and other low portions of the tank.

C. Dust
I have trouble with dust, but I noticed that scrubbing lighter colors of the base coat into the finish, in combination with a dark wash and drybrushing gives me a nice dusty/faded effect. Do the scrubbing after the wash but before the drybrushing

This is certainly not the only way to do it, nor is it the best way to do it. Maybe some of the other guys on here can give you better advice.

Ralph

Here are a couple of things to consider also.
For Rust I have seen people drop a piece of steel wool in a glass of water until it rusts. Then remove it, scrape the runst into a small container (soda bottle cap maybe). Using a still bristle brush mash the rust bits into the brush then dab/blot/poke the brush where you want the rust to be. This is the same technique as used with pastels. To keep the rust there Lightly overspray with a dull coat.
Dust - two options. 1st you can lightly airbrush with tamiya buff or similar color. Spray a fine spary fairly far away from the kit. Don't spray a thick coat, leave the base coat showing though. 2nd you can use the same technique mentioned in the rust portion only with pastels. Take a pastel of color choice (or a few to mix), using a knife scrape off a fine dust of the pastel crayon. Using a stiff brush coat the brush then dap/poke the dust onto you kit. Again a light coating of dull coat will keep in place.

Hi

You've had lots of great tips so far.
I think the best/wisest investment you can make is to get some oil paints (earthtones, black, white, raw sienna etc) and some chalk pastels (same colors). Then experiment. You can make camo patterns, mud, dirt, dust etc. Chalk dust gives the best dust coat I've seen given a) it's dust and b) see a).

Cheers
Andy

thanks alot for the help!

Hi

If your doing a tank with the vinyal tracks, be sure to spray the tracks with a enamal primer. If you just spray or paint them in acrylic paint it will just flake off.. I always use Model Master Flat black enamal as my primer but any color will prob do... I usely use the caned stuff as i'm trying to get rid of it. The enamal bites into the vinyal more holding a bit better that waterbased paints.. although in the end it still doesn't hold up to a lot of flexing and bending after painting. If you decide to paint over the enamal with acrylic paints.. don't plan to do a lot of flexing of the track as it does flake and be sure to give it a lot of time to dry after painting.

I do one side of the tracks and give it a couple of days to dry and then the other side.. I do this before I do a lot on the model.. I leave the tacked to a peice of cardboard then giving them a long time to dry well. while i'm working on the rest of the tanks.



:-)
the following url is a closeup of a Pz II showing the tracks using the above method.

http://home.ceinetworks.com/~delbert3/PzII/PzIIpicture3.html

Buy some pastel chalks. It gives excellent efect.