Modeling Workshop: Treads, mud, and weathering

Greetings!

This morning I have for you a short selection of pictures I took while adventuring. They are of construction equipment playing in the mud, so hopefully will be a useful reference in muddying up your tanks, construction equipment, or what have you.

Muddy muddy tracks! This shows it might be quite useful to simply use something like Stirland Mud on your tracks. Remember two things though: You still want it with very fine grit, due to the scale, because otherwise it'll look way too bloppy. Also, the mud on the tracks is darker than the mud you see on the chassis there, since it's newer and churned up and is still retaining some moisture, while the caked on stuff is completely dried out and light.

Let's move on to the dozer blade.

Their is bare metal, because obviously painting it would be a waste of money when it's going to be constantly dinged up and scratched. Here we see the two colors of mud again: dark and smeared on the lower two thirds, and dry and caked on the upper third.

It's interesting, because normally you see weathering articles showing mud on a dozer blade being stippled on more than being brushed on, but here we see there is quite a bit of smearing! I think this can be easily replicated by taking a ratty old brush where the bristles have spread a bit, wiping off a good chunk of the paint (but not as much as you would for drybrushing) and then doing a quick, streaky stroke (again and again). Easy!

Here is the back of the blade, showing how mud splatters up and dries on the rear. Overall, the machine is quite muddy and dirty, but wait! What do we spy down there?

Oooo, so shiny. This is one of the pistons that positions the blade, which means it must be well-oiled to keep it moving easily. This keeps it incredibly clean and chrome-like in the face of all that dirt, mud, and rust. A nice shiny steel paint will work well enough.


Hopefully these pictures provide a good reference, and maybe inspire a few tricks to make your models stand out something extra. Til next time!