RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Stevie, put it this way I wouldn't drink the vodka it comes in a 1l plastic bottle which our local corner shop sells it for £5.95!!

Billpe, looking good I'll definitely give it a go. Just the finish I'm looking to create.

With flat surfaces its a little different, it depends what effect you're after. For giving washed out looks you work with shaded of single colours or colours which work with what is underneath I.e blue with green but it does take practice and does take a while.

My advice is buy a HL king tiger turret and practice on that.

The need for practicing was just reinforced yesterday for me when I did some pinlining on my Abrams, which looked ok, but then I made the disastrous decision to do a colour wash using very very diluted brown acrylic paint. I wound up with a brown tank which was not the effect I was looking for!
One repaint later I am now going to try any effects out first on a small area before extending to the whole tank. A lesson learned the hard way unfortunately! I did manage to salvage the turret by using my airbrush to lightly overspray leaving a lot of the pinlining and some of the dark wash partially visible, and in the end that looked quite effective. The upper hull though was a total mess so repaint and retry. The only way to learn is to try and then fix it I suppose if it goes wrong. Alwyn

A couple of things that can help keep a pin wash tidy is to first use a satin varnish as this helps the paint flow and not stain the underlying acrylic then use enamels for pin washes as they flow much better and are much easier to clean up. Oils do work for pin washes but there is no actual advantage over enamels whereas enamels dry within a few minutes.

THis is 118 minutes long but this is the best video you'll ever watch for painting a tank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqeXw1b7P4g Pretty much covers everything on one practical sitting, very clear on everything and covers enamels and oils.

In the last 24 hours I must have watched 3 hours of videos on pin/dot washes......going to have to watch this one as well now!!

There is a definite split, enamel v oil. In none of the videos I've watched are people using acrylics, as I have been for the last 10 years. So I'm glad I asked the question, I know what my plans for the weekend are now! Its going to be interesting comparing the finishes

That video and his "Weathering Magazine" pretty much cover everything. There is always room to learn but he's very good at explaining what he's doing and despite all the products he champions in his new brand, if you look at what he actually uses himself it's Tamiya acrylics, some dark enamel pin wash, a few different oils and some turps/white spirit and patience.

Thanks billpe, looks like compulsory viewing for me as I don't want to waste any more time, paint, and patience redoing the painting! Alwyn

That is a great video, the finish he achieves in a relatively short time is impressive - no doubt his experience makes it look easy. I can see the benefit of the translucent build up of multiple layers, rather than the do it in one sitting I was doing with acrylics.

Just got to decide which one of my tanks is going to be the guinea pig!

You can pick up a cheap HL turret for a few £ or a cheap 1:35 model for £15. There is a Africa Corps Panzer III with a Rommel figure by Tamiya which is usually very cheap.

thanks for that, it jogged my memory - I have a tiger upper hull and turret in the garage somewhere - the lower chassis was sacrificed for the Cromwell build!