Dusty, Dirty Sherman

Well with the completion of most of the details on the tank I got on with the task of making it dirty. Much of the photographic evidence of tank on campaign in Italy shows them appearing very dusty and dirty. I wanted to replicate that look on this vehicle. Starting with the running gear and lower hull I got to work using a three stage process. The first was to make a damp mud mix which consisted of MIG liquid resin and European Earth pigment mixed with plaster dust. This was liberally slapped on to the bottom and sides of the tank, once dry it kept its satin sheen.  

The next stage was to add dried mud on top of the wet mud. For this I took direction from one of Scale Model Medic YouTube tutorial uploads. 

For his stage I used, mixing European Earth pigment and PVA glue and dabbed it on to represent  dried on mud building up on the hull sides  behind the running gear as per the tutorial.  In addition the running gear was given a heavy wash of a European Earth and water. Once this dried I started stripping back the dirt. This is still a work in progress and need a bit  of fine tuning.  

 The next stage involved giving a liberal brushing of Light Sand pigment which was fixed with pigment fixing fluid

 

The final stage so far was to give the upper surfaces a general dusting with the airbrush using Tamiya Buff to represent a dusty coating. 

Well its so far so good, I want to thank the members of the Military Modelling  Forum  for their  advise to date.