Imperial Guard: Tank Renovation Project (Part 2d - Leman Russes: finished!)

In my last post I'd got as far as adding some decals and details to my tanks. That left me with tanks that looked clean and undamaged, fine for play but a little too "healthy" for my liking. Also the chalky effect you get when drybrushing was a little too pronounced for my liking.

So, to finish these guys off a little weathering was needed.

I started off with some very simple sponge-weathering. For the uninitiated, this is a really easy technique for creating rust and exposed metal where paint has chipped away. simply get a small piece of open-cell sponge (something where the "holes" or "pores" are not too small - 0.5mm - 1mm in diameter is fine). You only need a piece of sponge about the size of a peanut for this. Hold it firmly in a pair of tweezers or similar and dip it in your paint. Dab excess off on a tissue and then start working on the model, aiming mostly for edges and corners. Don't go overboard or you end up with something that's almost leopard-spotted.

I normally work in just two layers - I start with a Terracotta layer (which can look like exposed red-oxide primer or rust depending entirely on how the viewer percieves it) and then add a layer of quite a bright metallic (Citadel Chainmail in these pics). That's it. Done.

I then brought the whole look of the mini's "down" a bit. At this point they're too bright and clean for my liking - I wanted something a bit more dirty and oily looking.

I recently picked up on a technique known as an Oil Wash (also known as a Pin Wash). It's normally used to pick out seams between armour panels, but I applied it to the whole model in this case. You need some white-spirit and artist's black oil paint. Mix a little paint with some white spirit in a container until you have a runny paint that will run down the side of your container in much the same way as milk would in a glass (maybe a little thinner than milk, actually).

As a pin-wash you would then pick some up on a brush and touch it to the panel seam on your model and capillary action would draw the oil from your brush and flood the seam. Any excess can be cleaned off with a cotton-bud (q-tip) with a little clean spirit on it.

I went in much more heavy handedly and used a large brush to coat the whole model. It's given a nice oily patina, picked up a lot of the seams and also taken out a lot of the chalky brush-marks my earlier heavy drybrushing had introduced.

And that's it, aside from a squirt of varnish.

First Tank:

Second Tank:

Third Tank:

Whole Squadron:

Chimeras next!

More Imperial Guard-related stuff:
More Imperial Guard Tank-related stuff: