OK: I think we have a wrap on the Kusk T-34/76.
Kit: 1/35 ICM T-34/76
Paints: Golden High Flow Acrylics
Weathering: Vallejo Washes, Vallejo Acrylic Weathering Effects, Wilder AquaLine Weathering Products, Medea Com.Art Paints, Sennelier pigments. MIG oils
Base: PVC Foamboard, Sculptamold, Static Grass – GrassTech USA Applicator I & WWS Weathering Products (2mm, 4mm, 6mm grasses) & Silfor prepared 10mm clumps.
00kursk by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
0base-tnk-n2! by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
This build turned was longer and more complex than I planned. Normally I find the greatest challenge in trying to evoke a historic artifact as realistically as possible – splendid modelers like Mig Jimenez argue this approach is both impossible and no fun. I'll live with the impossible – that's inherent in modeling – and enjoy trying to catch a bit of reality. Aside from that, I don't have the graphic skills to create some of the really fancy effects often seen by elite armor modelers and now even in airplanes. (AMMO/MIG published a jaw-dropping book on aircraft weathering by Jamie Haggo which I found well worth the money. Check Phil Flory's channel for an hour chat with the gent. Remarkable stuff done with panache and skill. But real? No, but if you can master those techniques you could tone things down easily. This is not a right/wrong matter.) Ship modelers, perhaps because of the time required on their builds, are much too restrained in my view, at least when picturing warships in heavy action.
But on this build I wanted to follow the bouncing ball on a 23 episode KV-1 build sequence on YouTube done by Adam Wilder, my favorite AFV guru. So this meant trying to create acrylic equivalents of the multitude of steps produced by Adam often using enamels. Overall, as Wilder himself points out, one doesn't need 22 weathering steps to make a good kit. I just thought I'd try it. I've done bases before and I thought I'd give static grass applied with an electric/ion applicator a try – another new. In other words, I spent a lot of time trying things out. I learned a lot and hope it will pay off down the road. So this was a kind of self-tutorial. I don't think I did much damage throwing everything but the kitchen sink at my humble T-34.
But there was history always in the background. This is a 1943 build, and that means Kursk, especially if you've never built a T-34. (That was me.) The model presented here by ICM was very late 42/early 43 and would have been at Kursk in large numbers. Russians went through tanks fast. Ironically, one of these models could have been a veteran in Russian terms because of the long lull in the East after the early 43 thaw and Manstein's recapture of Kharkov. Once Hitler decided on a 1943 offensive (there was opposition in OKH) the Germans needed to get everything they could to the East to launch an offensive. (It's true Manstein wanted to hit the Kursk salient created by his Kharkov victory in May, but with the strength then available it could only have been a “spoiling attack.” A substantial victory needed more tanks, troops and planes of all types – not just the Panthers and Tigers.) Stalin decided to stand on the defensive which meant an unusually long delay: fun started on July 4. During May/June the Soviets built a multitude of defenses in the Kurk area. The salient was about half the size of England. Was that big? It did dwarf Normandy. But it was much smaller than the Stalingrad/Baku front of 1942, which in turn was much smaller than Barbarossa in 1941. You can see what direction the war was following. Nevertheless a million Soviet troops plus were inside the salient – and more just to the west, northwest (Orel) and southwest (Belgorod). The Orel counter-blow of mid-July was a devastating German defeat almost lost to history because of the more famous failue at Kursk proper. When another counter-blow started south of the salient around August 1, the entire German front was sent fleeing to the Dnieper and Leningrad liberated.
What this meant was that a Russian tank preparing for Citadel would have spent weeks in intensive training. Russian dispositions were changed on an almost weekly basis depending upon fresh intelligence. Everyone would have been moving around a lot. And people were digging. Hundreds of miles of trenches and new roads were built inside the salient including defensive positions of every type. There was a lot of rain, a lot of sun and a megaton of dust. This was the steppe. Under normal circumstances there would have been huge areas cultivated with grain, but with the local population digging this would have been largely fallow ground. But if you look at pics of the battlefield you can see thick grasses all over – probably a lot of it wheat that had planted itself. It was July, so I'm thinking the foliage would have had summer colors. But it would have been spare on trees and no major urban areas outside of Kursk itself. So I was thinking dust, dry mud, serious wear but not damage like missing fenders. There were hundreds of tanks inside the salient and many were literally “dug in.” That would have made a neat base but hid the tank, so I put a well worn T-34 “hull down” on a road behind a mound of earth and pretty dense grass. I think in the real world, the tank would have looked for a little more earth to guard everything but the turret, but that too would have hid the model. In any case, if you check the Kursk photo above, I think you can get the idea.
Back to the tank. Gurus like Wilder and Mike Rinaldi talk about “layering” a tank's weathering. Actually as the steps built up, you could see what they were getting at. Here's the base coat (I didn't keep the exact recipe – think it was platho blue, cadmium yellow, raw umber and SAP green):
meld! by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Here's how it looked after filters, oil dots and chipping. I was actually a little worried about the chipping getting out of hand:
chip1 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
I admit that I elminated some chips with base coat, but not many. What followed was extra fading, streaking (with Com.Art, Vallejo Washes and Wilder's acrylic stuff) and very complex layered pigments. The result is quite different:
1aRT-tank by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
1blft-tank by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Here are some close ups – the surface is much richer than anything else I've done in armor and you can see how much the later steps lessened the rust, chipping etc.
1D-FT-O! by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
1D-Rear-O by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
1Det-Tur-Top! by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
As noted I wanted a base. This vignette really needed static grass and so I got some. This is different stuff from usual flock which is normally some kind of colored sawdust. Instead it's nylon fiber. You attach an electronic gizmo to a nail in the base which creates static electricity, and you dust static grass out of a round sieve on the gizmo (carefully – a shock would wake you up). And sure enough, the stuff stands up. I used static grass from a Brit company WWS in sizes of 2mm, 4mm and 6mm in four different colors. I added some prepared 10mm clumps from the pricey company Silfor – you'd need a larger applicator to apply 10mm grass. The base is PVC Board. This stuff is a real find. It's very light, doesn't warp and is very strong. You cut it with several passes with a good utility knife, so it's much tougher than foam board, but much easier to use wood products. I bought a 12X12X3” piece on Amazon for $6 and have enough left over for another tank dio. The stuff is often used to back photos or make signs – it's much cheaper by bulk. Definite thumbs up, although I'll stay with styrofoam for sea bases. Here's the base and a detail pic:
2base2 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
2base1 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
2grass-D by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Well, below are some pics of the tank on the base and that's it. I hope to get another tank in on this GB before year's end (Panther or Sherman – not sure). But next up, is an Airfix Tomahawk done in Desert Air Force colors that I owe Bish for the Commonwealth build.
Eric
3lft-rearV by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
3lft-ft-V by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
3-RTFT-V! by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
3R-R-V by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
L-Vig! by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr