Winter T-34

I finally decided to try my hand at a winter whitewash camouflage scheme. The model is a Soviet T-34/85 from UM, a Ukranian model company. The kit itself was a good one, with a photoetch engine grill included, link and length tracks, and vinyl roadwheels. I liked the way the looked, but I’ve heard that vinyl doesn’t hold up well over the long term. We’ll see. The kit fit together well, without any major problems. I did make one mistake in that the radio antenna mount on the right hand side of the body should not have been placed, as this was a later model tank, with the radio antenna mounted atop the turret. I had always thought that Russian tanks did not have radios at all, but it turns out that they did later in the war (the tank with this particular gun was produced in 1944-45).



Winter camouflage was usually painted on with a water-based paint and done with whatever was at hand – brush, rag, broom, whatever. This paint tended to wear very quickly when subjected to combat, harsh weather conditions, etc, so the overall effect was very motley, depending on how much action the vehicle had seen since its last “touch-up.” I achieved this effect by painting a base coat of the standard Russian green. Then over that I airbrushed a not-quite-even white, leaving a lighter coating around panel lines and areas that would see a lot of wear. Then I heightened this effect by drybrushing the green base color on certain areas. I especially wanted the look of a tank which would transport troops into battle, so I hit the engine deck pretty heavily with this. Then I added some scratches and scrapes with small dots or lines of the same base green. Then a thinned white was brushed over some of these areas in a haphazard fashion, imitating the effect of several touch ups done by the crew at the front. Over this mishmash, I did a fairly heavy burnt umber wash, to give the tank a “muddy” look, as well as to tone down the color contrasts. A light dusting of white pastels tied it all together.



The base is my standard sand and white glue mix covered with talc. There was also some darker dirt sprinkled over the track marks, as well as glued onto the wheels and tracks, to simulate mud. From this angle you can see the headlight, which was an aftermarket deal, with a separate lens and reflector. The antenna is made from a nylon paintbrush strand. I had long been too intimidated to try something like this, but it actually turned out to be not as difficult as I had thought. In general, when I do weathering, it seems like too much while I’m doing it, but on the final product it always looks like not enough. On this one, I also worried that I had overdone it, but the great thing about winter camouflage is that it’s almost impossible to overdo. I ended up very pleased with the results – hope you like it too!

A-10 Thunderbolt II

Here’s another project I finished a little while back. This is an A-10 Warthog in 1/72 scale. The kit is by Academy with some extra details added in. The ordinance was somewhat lacking in fine detail on this kit, so I did some upgrades with Hasegawa AIM-9 missles on a kitbashed launcher (shown on the right) and rocket launchers from the Testors/Italieri NATO aircraft weapons set. There are also some cluster bombs from the Hasegawa set, which are not shown on this angle. If you look closely, you can see that I modified the Maverick missles by scratchbuilding a clear seeker head made from clear sprue. This was done by sanding down the tip of the missle to where the seeker head begins, gluing on clear sprue and sanding it down to the proper shape and size with finer and finer grade sandpaper. The final grade was wet sanded to get a nice finish, then dipped in Future to remove any scratches. The same technique was used on the Pave Penny system mounted on the right hand side of the fuselage beside the cockpit.
I also added aftermarket photoetch cockpit details from Eduard. The HUD even has a clear piece of acetate over it. I was very satisfied with the final look of the cockpit. Another nice thing about this kit was the decals. There were lots of technical markings that added a lot to the kit. All of the decals were included with the kit, no aftermarkets were necessary. This was also my first kit to use MicroSol and MicroSet decal setting solutions, and I have to say that I am sold on these products. Even the lightning bolt decal with the blue background on the vertical stabilizers laid down nicely with this stuff. It took a couple of coats, but ended up looking painted on, with no wrinkles.
These figures are from the Italieri Nato Pilots and Ground Crew set. On this go ‘round I used acrylic base coats with a darker wash and slightly lighter drybrush, then finished with an oil wash of burnt umber to bring out shadows. I also did not paint eyes on this group, and I think they came out looking pretty good. The burnt umber oil wash in the eye sockets left enough of a shadow to look like eyes, even on a fairly close inspection.

You also get a rear end view of some of the ordinance. The Maverick missiles included in the kit also did not have the exhaust detail, so I drilled this out with a pin vise. On the far right of the wing understores is an ECM jamming pod, also from an aftermarket weapons set. The chucks under the wheels are scratchbuilt from sprue and twine.