Creating mud stains

dried or wet mud??? tamiya buff mixed with elmer's glue i heard gives a dried look.....

i use tamiya flat earth or MM dark earth for wet mud

I'm looking for the dry mud. I’ve always used putty to simulate the mud, but I want try a different method.

Thanks for the help and your reply

I airbrush a highly diluted tamiya buff for a dust look. I have used celluclay for mud, came out with so so effects. Just be sure to add bits of grass and small rocks, adds loads of realism to the mud.

Best mud I ever saw was water colors mixed with corn strach or baking soda. I was watching my kid paint with water colors and finger paint and when they were done they bowl of water I had them clean their hands and brushes in dried to a lovely brownish black muck that looked alot like mud of the worst order!! I mixed it with the 2 above mentioned mediums and had really nice yucky mud.

Thanks for the help and the replies


I heard of another method for creating mud stains using brown paint and talcum powder. Does that work well too?

This is my opinion, but I really like the look of the mud I applied on this Panzer.





I simply ground up some pastel dust, and fixed it in place with Gunze Clear Gloss.
After it had dried, the parts I wanted looking 'wetter', I went over them with some Pledge One Go (Future), and was impressed with the results, considering it was my first ever armour model.

These different suggestions work good on 1/35 scale and larger, but if you're working on a 1/72 or 1/76, then try some of the stuff in your wife's make-up case. What they call Base or Foundation comes in some pretty muddy looking shades. LOL Between my wife, my daughters, and my grandaughter; I've seen every shade of skin-tones, browns, blues, and blacks in their face and eye make-ups and the fine-grains of the material works more to scale on those smaller models.

Thank you Tweety1 and Tinker for your help.


Tweety1 the mud stains on that Panther looks very realistic! Thanks for posting the pictures.

Not a problem wooverstone8

Like most people here, we do trial and error, and more often than not it doesn't work out.
But when it does, the results speak for themselves (that Panzer won 1st place in 1/35).

Glad to be of help!

the way i do it is mix tan paint with flour and course black pepper it works great

Just to add a bit to the above posts... For "mud splatters" on your tank, mix up the paint color that you want, and then dip the bristles of an old toothbrush into it, and then hold the brush near the tank's upper track and then flick the bristles with your finger to spray the paint onto the tank hull. Works great if you get your angles right. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the ones I've done.