The Terror Of Tiny Town: December 2020

Here are my Soviet tanks and miscellaneous pieces. The models I'm showing in this post are the result of many, many, mistakes and subsequent corrections. I am a novice model builder and I often go on YouTube to find new techniques which I apply to a varying degree of success.

Here is how I painted these models. First I painted them with Vallejo for 4B0 primer. 4B0 is supposed to be the color of all Soviet armor as I understand it. I'm not an expert on this and was mostly going by what the Forum posts and guides were saying on the internet. Then I painted them with a solution of 75% Lahmian medium to 25% Nuln oil.I really slop the Nuln oil on without a whole lot of regard for how even it was. Then I went back over the tanks with a pretty heavy dry brush of the for 4B0 primer again.

Once I had the tank base coat looking pretty much the way I wanted it I painted the details. This included painting the handles on the axes with Vallejo mahogany and painting the Axe Heads and cables with Vallejo Gunmetal. After getting the entire base coat and details the way I wanted it it was time for my first mistake.

I am always looking for new ways of doing things and sometimes the new way that I try is not as good as the way I was doing it. Take for instance rust. I usually create a rust effect by just diluting paint and water and painting it on in streaks or by letting it settle in cracks on the model. Brown red and orange mixed together with water works great and I really didn't need to do anything other than that.

What I did do was to purchase AK-47s line of pigments and pigment fixer. I painted the dry pigment onto the model with brushes until it looked pretty good and then I figured I was done with the model. This created a problem because what I did not realize is that if you don't put a pigment fixer on the pigment after you're done applying it whenever you apply any liquid to that surface that the pigment is on its going to run all over the place and get all over everything. So if you see some of the tanks that have brown which is over the white this is a result of that happening.

In retrospect I wouldn't have used the pigment on the tank body and would only have used it on the wheels in clumps to simulate hardened rust and then I would have used pigment fixer and I would have been a okay. What I found out after using the pigment is that it's really best for simulating textures and clumps. So if you have dirt which has gathered on a surface or rust which has accumulated into some sort of a texture these pigments are great because all you have to do is just drop them in whatever texture you want and then gently apply the pigment fixer and it'll dry exactly like that. I would not necessarily use the pigment for making a rust effect which doesn't have a texture and is just paint on a surface. For that I would use a standard wash or diluted paint.

The next step was yet another mistake. I was looking to do these as winter tanks. This meant applying whitewash. I ran across the method of using salt to create chipped paint and this seemed like a great idea and I was all set to do it when I ran across the idea of using Vallejo paint chipping medium. This stuff seems like magic and I was super stoked to see how it worked.

The way that it worked wasn't great. A lot of this has to do with my own technique which is not very good. I would say that if you are a beginner and not really sure of your skill to avoid using the chipping medium on a large project. I would start with it on smaller models just to see exactly how it works and then go from there.

I used the chipping medium with an airbrush and sprayed the entirety of every model with it. It dried and after it dried I sprayed Vallejo white paint over the models. Then as directed by the instructions I took a toothbrush, put a little bit of water on it and proceeded to scrape the models. The first one went great and gave me that kind of streaky quality that I was looking for and didn't take off a lot of the white wash. I think what happened was that I spray painted the Vallejo chipping medium too heavily and thus when I began to scrape a lot of the white paint off too much of it came off and did not give a realistic effect. I think the models look okay but I think if I had taken the chipping medium and just stippled it onto the model instead of painting it on with an airbrush I would have had a much better effect. If I use it again for some reason this is what I will do.

It was at this stage that the mistake I made with the pigment started to become obvious as removing the white paint with a toothbrush and water also caused the pigment to liquify and run everywhere. I was able to mitigate this with a damp paper towel and the models only look slightly dirty and as if perhaps some of rust streak over the white paint. All in all I think it looks okay.

Once I got all of this sorted I then painted the Tank treads black and after looking at some photos of some tanks in the winter traveling over snow it looked like they mainly had snow on the outside of the treads. I have a container of Vallejo Rough White Pumice and I put a coating of that on the outside of all of the tank treads using the blade of an exacto knife to kind of trowel it on. This may not look 100% like realistic snow but at a distance of 3 ft it looks pretty good and was generally easy to apply.

I then painted the tank Commanders in the same manner as my troops depending on what uniform they were wearing. And I painted their tank commander helmets with 25% gray Vallejo paints I forget which and 75% Vallejo Black paint.

I hope that this was helpful. All in all I'm pretty happy with the way the Army turned out. I spent about $80 for the Soviet starter Army, about $30 for a box of winter troops, about $20 for A Squad Of Partisans, about $20 for A Squad of Naval Brigade, about $20 for A Squad of Combat Engineers and about $10 for a squad of K-9 Anti-Tank Troops. As far as the tanks are concerned I spent about $40 for A Platoon of IS2s, $40 for A Platoon of T-34/85s and $20 each for three KV1/2s. That comes to about $140 for 9 tanks. Then I spent about $15 each for the BA-6 Armored Car, the SU-76 Self Propelled Gun, the ZIS-3 Divisional Gun, The Stuart Tank and about $12 for The Universal Carrier. All in all I think this ended up Costing me about 370 bucks or so which for the size of the army is pretty impressive. I got it all on sale online a couple of years ago.

There are a lot of other games that will cost you a great deal more for a lot less. I'm looking at you Games Workshop. Bolt Action really is a lot of fun and I recommend it wholeheartedly. My next project will be the British 8th Army. Stay tuned.