For the love of Terrain!: M3 Stuart Recce Tank

As the latest lockdown has dragged on for months, I have been finding it difficult to work up much enthusiasm for anything, including gaming. When I say "gaming", I mean the hobby in general, because over the last 12 months of the pandemic, I think that I have managed to squeeze in 3, possibly 4, actual games; the rest of my hobby time has been spent painting, terrain-making, reading, blogging etc.

Anyway, over the last several weeks I have managed to finish off an M3 Stuart tank, which I intend to use in a reconnaissance role in NW Europe-based scenarios in Iron Cross. What inspired me to dig this old Blitzkrieg Miniatures resin model out of the unpainted pile, where it has languished for years, was a book I have recently finished. "Tank Commander: From the Fall of France to the Defeat of Germany: The Memoirs of Bill Close" was an excellent book, which I can thoroughly recommend. It follows a tank commander, Bill Close, from the start of the war all the way through to the end of hostilities 6 years later. It is quite an incredible story, not least because he was involved in so many theatres of war and managed to survive them all. Anyway, in the book he regularly refers to the recce troop, which used Stuarts to scout out enemy positions. So, at a time where little is inspiring me, I felt compelled to paint this model so that I could push it out in front of the main troop of Shermans.

A couple of things that I have been trying out this year are using an airbrush and using oil paints to weather and "distress" the paintwork. I don't know whether my photography does it justice, but the paint job has turned out pretty well, even if I do say so myself! lol

The base colour was Vallejo Model Air 71.330 Khaki Green No.3. I then highlighted some of the panels and upper-facing surfaces with a 70:30 mix of Khaki Green and 71.075 Sand Ivory. I applied a very small amount of chipping and scratches with a manual brush. A light dry brush on the straight line edges brought out some of the detail.

One thing that I have noticed when reading a lot of memoirs and other accounts of tank units is that the tanks themselves did not seem to last very long before being destroyed, so it seems strange to me to paint too much superficial damage onto them, especially rust effects, because the vehicles seemed not to survive long enough to become rusty. Perhaps some German vehicles on the Eastern Front, perhaps, but the pace of advance and almost daily combat in NW Europe seem to make it implausible that they survived long enough to become as well weathered as some of us seem to paint them.

Once I had finished painting all the acrylics, I sprayed the whole model in matt varnish and applied the decals. Next step was to use an oil-based dark wash from MIG Productions to place shadow into all the crevices and around rivets etc. Another oil-based step I have been experimenting with is to use highly diluted oil paints (white, yellow, brown and green in this case) to give the flat armoured plates a mottled appearance. I was initially put off this technique because it seemed hard to do, but after a couple of experiments, I found it really easy and I think the results look good. It replaces the need to "over-chip" the model and creates IMHO the impression of a vehicle that has been on the battlefield in the thick of it.

Here's a photo of a Japanese Ha-Go tank, which I took on a visit to Bovington Tank Museum a couple of years ago, which I think illustrates the mottling effect (in between the camo scheme).

I feel slightly ashamed that I cannot confidently identify this vehicle (a Panzer Mk.I command tank?), but the mottling effect in both the grey and brown colours is evident.