+ inload: Leman Russ Battle Tank +

+ Shades of Father Ted +

+ Having pontificated at length in the last inload about using a paint scheme to unite disparate models [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], I proceeded with panic painting for the event in Bristol... and ended up painting a tank the wrong colour. +

+ The Lovely Girl here was intended to go with the Catipürnan World-Turners and their associated PDF – the neutral black and white scheme I was outlining in the earlier inload. +

+ Not really paying attention, I ended up using (warm) sepia ink instead of (cool) Payne's grey. After working this in, the tank ended up looking like my Lamb's World vehicles [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and I guess muscle memory just took over. + 

WIP: The sepia ink granulated beautifully; helped along with some granulating medium.

+ Mainly an experiment in creating texture quickly, I wanted to give the impression that the Lovely Girl is an old mothballed tank, pressed into service by the local PDF. To achieve this, I created wells of sepia ink, Scorched Brown diluted to a watery consistency and Chaos Black, also diluted to a watery consistency. I then pulled the wells together in my palette, and added flow enhancer to the freely-mixing colours. +

+ This was then painted liberally over the surface with a 12mm (½in) flat brush. Working wet-in-wet, I rinsed the brush and used it to apply generous amounts of granulation medium, particularly to the flat surfaces. This medium causes the pigment particles suspended in the paint to clump up, resulting in a grainy appearance. It works best with media that naturally granulate, like sepia ink. +

+ I then rinsed and dried the brush, and used it to selectively lift off the wet paint/ink/medium mixture from the surface, by touching the clean dry brush to the tank's flat areas: the brush draws up the paint (just like loading your brush from your palette), leaving an area of clean highlight. +

+ The pict-capture above shows both the good and the bad effects this has. The speckled high-contrast finish produced by the granulation is most obvious around the hatch, and I think it's pretty successful here. The rear of the sponson, however, just looks a bit mucky. It's not a convincing illusion here. The engine block (on the right of the image, above the trailing part of the track) shows the effect of lifting out – the underlying colour is revealed once more. +

+ It also shows off some of the quick detailing – handprints, hazard striping and shading around the rivets. It's a bit crude, but not bad for a speed paint – in all, this took me around two hours from start to finish; so in terms of quick texture, I think I'll count this a successful experiment. +

+ In terms of painting it the right colour, not so much! +

+ Small details like hand prints – presumably a post-battle superstition adopted by the crew – go a long way to personalising a tank, and implies more detail than is actually there. Like the lenses on the turret, and the weathering scratches and dings, they help to break up a surface that can otherwise just look a bit messy or dull. +