Winter Camo T34
Recently I have winter Camo’d several vehicles for various customers and thought to take some pictures while doing this T34. As a result here is a quick “How I do…” on winter camouflage.
Step 1 First take your painted T34. Here I’ve got a Bolt Action 28mm T34 and painted up and varnished in the usual manner with the modulation probably overdone for the purpose. Subsequently I’ve discovered that cruder slightly darker modulation actually works better with snow camo. Some minor weathering is already done as the AFV will usually have some ‘history’ before being whitewashed and some will show through ie some chipping.
Step 2 Spray the whole thing with the worn effects/chipping fluid, I used ak interactive because it’s what I had but other makes seem to be just as good. It took 3 fine sprays for a decent coat. I then left it for 30 minutes to dry. It looks quite shiny once its done.
Step 3 As I had gone to the trouble of decaling the model and I probably wouldn’t remember where the decals were under the whitewash I popped a bit of panzer putty roughly around the decals and the stowage, then sprayed several very fine coats of thinned down ‘white’ over the superstructure. It was actually model color off white or ivory. Pure white looks a tad harsh I think but that’s purely a personal choice. It may well be that the chemical composition of whatever they used as whitewash was really white but I don’t know and prefer my way…. The result below.
Step 4 Wearing away the whitewash. I have never whitewashed a tank - or anything else actually - so now it was imagination time trying to think of where on the model would the whitewash wear away quickest. I imagined on areas where there was footfall or friction and where rain, or melting snow, would cause run off speeding up wear. This process involves using a brush and just gently brushing on water onto the areas you want to wear away and letting the magic of the previously applied chipping fluid do its thing. You can control wear by the type of brush, amount of water and pressure of strokes.
The photo above shows some harsh wearing using the stubby short brush which produced quite hard flaking with very little water brushed on. For the softer additions simulating water action I used the longer haired brush brushing the water on gently in a vertical direction. The T34 has some nice sharp edges I rubbed with a cocktail stick to reveal the paint underneath. Its nice if the white is more transparent in some areas as well which is best done when laying down the spray.
Step 5 Once you are happy with the wear and distribution of the whiteness spray some varnish on as otherwise it will keep wearing when you don’t want it to….hard lesson learned there! Now its weathering time. When I first started weathering I used to get carried away and the vehicle ended up looking like a scrapheap. Less really is more and especially over the ‘white’ as its effectively a blank canvas. Here I used a bit of winter streaking and normal streaking from the AK interactive range(?).
Step 6 Final step was to add the snow and ice on the tracks. It is possible to add the snow/ice to other areas but again my lack of tank based experience means im not 100% sure where icy snow would stick. I assume it would slide off sloped surfaces as it does off your car when in motion and not last near the engine.
The snow was made using a proprietary snow mixed with some crushed glass and a water effects liquid. Just varying the amounts produces drier or wetter snow and good ice. I think I got mine from secret weapon miniatures but there are probably other sources. I also used the wet effects on the mud gloop applied earlier to the tracks.