Friday Quick Tip: Tabletop Tank Tracks

Tank tracks are one of the easiest things you can weather on a vehicle.  The method breaks down to painting the metal, giving them a heavy wash, drybrushing metallic and a final dusting.

I can't just give that little info though now can I?  In this I'll run you through the basics of painting and at the same time weathering tank tracks to a great tabletop standard.  Again, it's all from my latest Sons of Medusa Razorback!  That APC has been a well of great tips!

I always start off with a black base color for my tracks.  Paint the tracks, the road wheels, sides and inside of your tracks, you really want to be thorough with this step, it's the cover up that will keep things from looking off should you miss a few spots with the later steps, in this case, I would have a bright green showing through on my track if I wasn't sure to hit all facets of the track links.  By the time your finished the first spot you painted should be about dry, unless you use really watered down paint that is.  Watered down paint helps when painting tracks, but you need to wait longer and do a few coats to get even opacity.

Boltgun Metal is applied loosely and heavily.  Slightly watered to give me a bit more speed of coverage in those hard to reach spots.  For nearly all of the painting you can use a larger brush that will hold a larger volume of paint.  It's as simple as 'Larger area, larger brush'.

To give that rusty look, I use a VERY heavy wash of Bestial Brown watered down to a milk consistency.  I slop it on the tracks and allow it to pool all around and in the cracks.  A second wash might be necessary if you watered your brown down too much.  See the above for the final result you're looking for with the wash. 

Once your wash is dry, which will take a while, break out your Boltgun Metal again and give your tracks a heavy drybrush to the raised surfaces.  This is to show the wear to the track by the vehicles operation.  The contact points will be worn away and bare metal showing through.

To finish the tracks off, I use a quick dusting of Bleached Bone.  To 'dust' with paint you simply need to set your brush and paint as if you were going to drybrush, but continue to wipe paint off the brush until almost nothing is coming off.  When painting, start with light pressure and work harder until you get a slight sheen of the color.

In the end you should have a nicely weathered looking tread with little effort.  The longest part of this method is the drying time wait.  I've used this method on a few different models in my Sons of Medusa army, each time it's enhanced the gritty hard fought look I've been going for.

You've seen how, now it's time for you to try it yourself!  Give it a go and see what you think.  Weathering can be a scary proposition for many, but you can't break that fear without trying it out!  I'm hard pressed to think of a better place to start your weathering journey than the treads of a tank! 

How To: Simple Wet Palette

I've run across several wet palette how-to's and I wanted to share what I've been using lately.  This version comes straight from Matheiu Fontaine's Adepticon class and it is cheap, simple and effective and works just as well in a hotel conference room in Chicago as it does in the dry air of my little room down here in Texas.

Here's what you need:

• a plastic plate: not paper obviously, since that will soak up water and paint.  I haven't tried the foam plates, but they looked to porous.  You can get 20 for about $3 at Target or Walmart.
• paper towels: three select-a-size paper towels was just about the right size for my plate
• parchment paper: cut to fit just slightly smaller than the paper towels.  Find it in the baking section of your local store near the wax paper and aluminum foil.  One roll will last forever.

The construction is very simple: tear off some paper towels and fold them in half.  Thoroughly drench them with water.

You can see there's plenty of water.  The towels are fully saturated and there are even a new drops running around the plate.

Next: throw down your parchment paper.

Yup, it will curl up like that, because one side of the paper gets wet first and expands.  Either let it sit for a few minutes or flip it over to soak the other side.  You usually just need to spend a minute or two to get it flat and soaked into the water.  If your paper has a strong curl to it from being on a roll, use that to your advantage and place the sheet so that it curls down.  You'll still get curling, but it might be a little quicker to set.

Eventually you'll look like this.  Squeeze the air pockets out the sides of the parchment.  As you can see the parchment is just slightly smaller than the paper towel base.

I recommend, if you can, to always use the same size of paper towels.  The most involved part of this palette is cutting the parchment paper, so I cut out a bunch of rectangles sized to fit my folded paper towels.  When I fill up and get paint all over my parchment, I just grab a new sheet from the stack.

Don't worry about getting too much water in the plate.  You want the towels to be soaked, and a little extra water running around the plate can be handy.  I grab some of the "plate water" for a little extra thinning when I need it.  

I also use the exposed edges of the paper towel to wick away paint if I load up my brush too much, but keep a dry paper towel handy for drying your brush and keeping it from loading up too much thinned paint.

That's about it.  When the towel dries out, just add some more water.  If it gets a little funky from use, chuck it and get a new set of paper towels or even replace the plate.

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Field Report: Declates Crusade Emperor's Champion

"Pardon me, I seem to have broken off my sword in your skull."  From Support By Fire comes a fantastic Emperor's Champion and presumably the skull of Gitzmott.  Check out all his Black Templars, and wash the taste of Blood Angels out of your hobby-mouth.

Field Report: Crater Making

I'm cranking back the time machine to dig up ideas for my Macragge board.  Ghidorah on Dakka shares a great crater tutorial that will be a perfect complement for all your wrecked vehicle markers.  In fact if you use a different shape for the base, you could make excellent vehicle-sized craters by throwing in a few extra bits.

Links, links, are good for the heart!  We want em!  Send your links for great articles around the web to ThePaintingCorps@gmail.com!

Ask The Corps: Polar Fortress

The BoLSCon Narrative Track has shifted and it looks like the Tyranid invasion of Macragge is going to replace Anphelion.  Of course I plan to build a Polar Fortress for the final battle!  While Dagobah was going to inspire my Anphelion, I am definitely not going to use Hoth for my Polar Fortress inspiration. Hoth was a temporary fortification cut into the ice while the fortresses on Macragge will have been in place for millennia.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen a lot of art on the Polar Fortress.  I like the look of the Forge World Imperial Fortress Walls (except for the Cinderella towers) and there is a great rock-fortress in the Black Templar's Codex.  We recently featured the Fortress of Eagles in a Field report, but there's not much else I've seen out there for large emplacements.

Got links?  Where are the big impressive Space Marine fortifications out there?