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Forums - Modelling / Painting

The painting forum is for the discussion of techniques on the painting, decalling and weathering phases of AFV modelling and the tools and materials used.

Topics	1365
Messages	6917

Subject:

Re: Chipped Paint becoming a Fad?

Date:

Mar 3, 2008

From:

Gerald Owens

Indeed, as with all fads, it's being over done. By all accounts, factory applied enamel finishes in World War Two were quite durable. Now some specific finishes are not durable at all--winter white wash, and field applied cammo in extreme environments, for instance. German and Russian winter cammo looked very bedraggled after a short time, and Afrika Korps finishes, at least until they came factory-painted, degraded very quickly in the desert. In 1991's Desert Storm, the tan paint sprayed on after vehicles arrived in Saudi chipped badly, especially after dust storms, but the underlying factory finish paint was barely affected.
These chipped finishes look very dramatic, and it's awfully tempting to do a paint job that will demonstrate how hard you worked. So before long, these finishes start to appear on all tanks, not just winter or desert machines.
The problem snowballs when model builders use other models for reference instead of period photos of the actual subject, and the herd mentality kicks in. In the 1970's, everybody wanted to be Shep Paine, in the 80's it was Francois Verlinden, now it's Mig Hernandez.
We've seen many similar fads. In the early 90's everybody was supposed to bounce a burr in a Dremel tool over their models to apply "armor texture" to their armor kits. Trouble is, most armor plate doesn't actually have random gouges all over it, and eventually enough people pointed that out that the fad died out. Faded paint is another, since it's so easy to do with an airbrush. But most "fading" we see in pictures is just a layer of grime over fresh new paint (it takes many years for weather to fade real paint, and most battle tanks had careers that lasted just days or weeks). Preshading is yet another fad. Looks cool, but unless it's done with great subtlety, you end up with a highly dramatic, visually interesting model that doesn't look like anything in real life.
The modeler's credo should always be, "moderation in all things." When weathering, always stop just before you think you've done enough.

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