Winterize!

My friends, the whitewash is on. Turns out a lot of the post-shaded 4BO remains visible, as the tank was apparently camouflaged, well, just partially, as seen in the reference photo. 

I tried some kind of post-shading in the white as well. I sprayed it in a random mottled pattern, then chipped it down. This, as expected, led to pretty horrible results in most places, but I hid any errors and added more volume with the second layer. This also softened some of the harsh chipping, giving it a more natural and appealing look IMO. BTW, the first coat was a mixture of white + a small drop of 4BO, the second was pure white. I took some inspiration from another photo of a German Beutepanzer with what appears to be a washed-down white coat, most likely caused by runs of dripping water. I've seen this effect on some other tanks as well.

The red numbers were sprayed through a stencil that I've drawn in Photoshop using the original image. It's uploaded in this gallery for anyone who would decide to build the same tank in this scale (it's designed to be lined up precisely with the upper and lower edge of the side turret plate, and you'll need to scale it up for a 1/35 model). Then I gave it a more hand-applied look with a fine brush and a mixture of Cavalry Brown and Flat Red from Vallejo, and finally, the numbers received a fine, random mist of very diluted white applied with an airbrush.

In other news, the figures arrived! The one sitting in the hatch is probably the only usable figure, the rest have pretty serious casting flaws, although I'll try to "save" one extra as a protagonist for the vignette. It's a set of 5 resin tankers from Reskit.  

Up next is a pin wash - Interior Wash for the white parts, and Winter Streaking Grime for the 4BO. And then some mapping with a paintbrush and diluted white. I can't wait for this step because it's when the winter camouflage starts to "sing"!