Mud on tanks?

[Iron Father Rik]

Hi guys,

 

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here unfortunately, but when I came up against a wee problem that I wasn't sure about, I thought, where better to look for an answer than B&C!

 

So, I started a new Space Marine project - a Flesh Tearers force. I decided, as with all my modelling and painting, to try to improve upon my previous project (Sons of Medusa) and I'm going into extra detail with these sons of Sanguinius. One such technique for this was modelling mud caked onto the sides and tracks of tanks, as I wanted to make my Flesh Tearers rhinos look like they have been right in the thick of the battle, churning through mud, blood and all sorts of other, fouler battlefield mess to deliver their deadly cargo.

 

Anyway, I trawled the forum and the Librarium for articles and tutorials on how to model mud onto tank tracks, but my search came up empty. I had thought about mixing up some sand and PVA glue for this, but I was wondering if anyone else had any good methods, or general tips, for modelling like this? Or could point me in the direction of a tutorial I may have missed.

 

Thanks.

 

Oh, and I should point out, I live in the UK, in Glasgow, so please don't suggest any products that are not available in the UK.

[tomasta]

Hiya, I've heard that the best products for this sort of effect are 'MIG Pigments'. I've personally never tried them, but i did recently purchase a dvd from this website i seem to remember it was about £10 and you can download directly from the website:

 

Painting Miniatures DVD Guides

 

I bought it because i am considering getting an airbrush but he goes into great detail in explaining the different ways to use the pigments and the effects you can achieve. I have always liked video tutorials over text tutorials because you can see the process. Having said that, the video quality on these ones isnt that high but he does explain everything very clearly ;)

 

Another thing i have heard that you can use is ground artist pastels. I think they are effectively a cheap replacement for the MIG pigments but i am not sure if they achieve the same results. It would probably be worth getting a small pot of 'proper' pigments and a couple of pastels and comparing what you can do with them. Perhaps you could tell us all the results! :)

 

Hope I helped

 

Tom

[Iron Father Rik]

Hey, thanks Tomasta. I'll look into that when I get a chance.

 

From what you are saying, that sounds like a painted-on effect (though I will check out the video and see for myself). I was wondering mostly about a modelled effect, such as a paste mix that will look like caked-on mud. I'd thought about a simple sand and pva mix, but I was wondering if anyone else had a better, but easy to do, technique to achieve that 3-d caked-on mud look. I didn't want to go ahead and do it without exploring all my options, because once it's done, it's done, and if it didn't look right it would be a wasted rhino.

 

Cheers.

[tomasta]

Actually thats the main way in which he goes into talking about the pigments: he explains the different things you can mix them with (like tile grout, for example) and then details how to apply the mixtures. Sand and PVA sounds like a good idea, but one idea i had was to recycle the way people do snow bases for this effect, i.e a mix of paint, PVA and Baking soda. That always seems to get quite a clumpy effect on peoples bases, and if you mix enough brown paint in you might be able to get some nice mud effects :P I would love to see some pictures of what you come up with in the end :)

 

Hope I helped

 

Tom

[Iron Father Rik]

Ah right, sweet. Cheers tomasta! I'll be watching that sometime this evening and then hopefully having a go at it over the weekend.

[Araziel]

I've had fantastic results using charcoal.

 

If you buy a bag of the stuff, crush it up in a bowl into small chunks and then add cheap paint to the mix (I get mine at The Works, buckets of the stuff for dirt, dirt cheap) and then apply it to the tank treads, you'll have great, realistic mud ready to be painted.

An important thing to mention though, is I find it best to apply by hand - you can really push it in to all the little nooks between the tracks and chassis of the vehicle. After that, I'll paint it up and apply small amounts of static grass to the large chunks of charcoal for an extra touch of realism, but that's entirely optional.

 

Let me know if it works out :D

 

 

Araziel.

[stinkenheim]

Apologies if this isn't what you were after I was skimming through the topic (not normally a good idea).

I have had good success with using artists chalk pastels. Simply use an upturned sieve and then grate the pastel over it to get the powder, a single pastel will give you a good amount of powder.

You can then mix up different colours and shades and apply them in exactly the same way as mig pigments. Runs a bit cheaper and you can make a variety of shades.

[Krakev]

Have you considered trying cork instead of sand? I got some from my local craft store relatively cheaply, comes in a variety of sizes, some of it was finer than sand and it soaks up the pva instead of just being held in place.

 

Much lighter to work with, I always find sand to be quite heavy, especially when trying to stick to the underside of anything.