I managed to finish my Leman Russ at last!
As I told you I coated everything with clear to fix the oily washes. To get a better surface for drybrushing I decided it would be better to have it matt and another layer of purity seal was applied. Then I drybrushed the whole tank with codex grey.
And then it was time for the pigments. Pigments is actually something like a dry paint and you can use it straight out of the box. Another way is to use it with thinner for washes (Mig). And as you can see on the pic below, you can go WAY OVER THE TOP with pigments.
The problem is, it looks great when the thinner is still wet but as soon as it is dry, you see what you actually have done to your model. So lesser is more. And if it is too less, it's really no problem to do another layer. As pigment colours I used Dark Mud (dark), Russian Earth (very dark) and African Earth (quite bright) and I mixed them randomly on the tank. Maybe the darker colours on the lower parts and a brighter mix for the top parts. But again be careful with the amount of pigments.
As this was obviously too much, I needed to get rid of most of it now. That is easier said than done. At first I tried to brush it off but that didn't work out well as it just dispensed the pigments more evenly over the model. Then I tried pure thinner and that was better but it didn't wash off the pigments too. Ok, then, I tried a more aggressive approach and went to the bathroom and "cleaned" the whole tank under running water using an old toothbrush. And that seemed to work out pretty well. The pigments are not water soluble and so I didn't wash off all of it and it remained a thin layer in the recesses and only small amounts on the flat surfaces reproducing a rather realistic look.
Pleased with that I applied more brighter pigments again to resemble dried mud and dust. But as I have learned the hard way, I used really small amounts (when you think you just apply thinner and as good as no pigments, you are going the right way!) And as a side note: a hairdryer works wonders in shortening the drying time to under a minute. that is great for impatient people like me.
So let's take the next step and start with the mud. My tank should fight in an environment pretty much like it is described in Siege of Vraks, a war torn wasteland, shelled for decades, every landmark or vegetation is blown to dust and pulp and when it rains the rain is oily and full of grime and ash. So nothing and no one would stay clean for long especially not when driving through such a quagmire.
There is a wonderful way of making mud: liquid resin (as you might guess again from Mig). You can mix this liquid resin with the pigments for getting the colour you want and it is recommendable to also mix it with sand or something similar to get texture. And you can use plaster for more volume. It is dilutable with water so you can make a mix in any consistency you want. Again I used different amounts of the three pigment colours to get different tones of mud and I used the sand mix I usually use for the bases of my other models. When you are satisfied with your self-made mud simply brush it on with an old brush where mud would naturally collect. (When you are too unsure where this would be, I heard a great advice: go to a construction site and look at the caterpillars and the other machines one can find there as one might guess the least people have active tanks in their surrounding neighborhood.).
So here it is how it turned out with my Leman Russ.
And the finished model, with Death Korps tank commander (actually it's the driver from my stormblade which I won't use).
Now I think I am ready to paint the stormblade. This baby is already assembled and base-coated. So stay tuned.
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