Ludwig for Dust Warfare Completed

Worked on the Ludwig for Dust Warfare these past 2 days and am pleased to present it to you guys. Melvin has commented that my snow didnt look slushy enough. Any suggestions?

Painting the Ludwig was a pleasure and certainly one of the walkers I was looking forward to. I did some research on white washing tanks in WW2 and they all pointed to one thing - the soldiers then did not have access to proper vehicle paint and had to slap on wall paint diluted with water onto their vehicles hence a "wash" on them. 

The following pictures are actually of my completed model. I went with Space Wolf Grey (GW) instead of Skull White (GW) as I was going for a worn out look. In my mind, I visualise this walker to come out of the Eastern front having fought the entire winter and as you can see, bear a heavily worn out exterior.

I wet brushed Space Wolf Gray on the primed Ludwig (FFG did a good job priming the model saving me a lot of time) covering most of the original gray but left it a little transparent so the basic greys can show through. I did this in a few layers to build it up (roughly 3 coats, allowing ample drying time between coats), constantly imagining that I am the German soldier with a massive mop just slapping on the paint.You have to be patient and let the coat of paint dry before the next layer. The consistency of the paint should be milky thick so that it does not sink into the crevices. Do not let the grey pool into the crevices. I will explain in stage 2.

Once the base coat was on, I started working on weathering the exterior. I started with a very watered down Devlan Mud (GW). I added water to the base Devlan Mud and made it super super thin. This should be as thin as water. It will pool in crevices and you can let it do this. Again, you will have to be patient as it takes quite awhile to get a few coats in. You need to allow each coat to dry in between.

Now change it up with Badab Black (GW) and repeat the process. I went for 2 coats each but I rather prefer you work to how much you want the tank to look aged. The more you do, the more aged it will look.

Now starts the interesting bit. Take a sponge, any sponge will do. Dab it into your Codex Gray (GW) and then dry it a little on a piece of paper, much like dry brushing but using a sponge. Use the edge of the sponge (parallel) to the edges of the tank. This video on YouTube helped me a ton and will help explain it much quicker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgiEOjA3ec4&feature=relmfu

Once this is done, your walker will look like it has had some of it's wash removed from all the activity it saw. I then took some Brown Ink (GW) and added in rust. For all barrel and smoke stacks, I went in with a drybrush of black followed by metallics.

Completed my walker with a base of sand, base coated with browns and drybrushed with Bleached Bone (GW). PVA + flock and then some coloured sand to simulate melting snow, I have now completed my walker!

I enjoyed this process a lot and hope you will too. Let me know if you've got one too!