75th Anniversary of Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Army Build)
A Company of Churchills
I’ve been looking at some reference pictures of Churchill tanks in Italy and a few show the crews covering their tanks in branches, effectively making them mobile shrubberies. Here’s an example:
For a couple of the tanks (not all, there’s plenty of images of clean tanks in Italy) I’m going to try and recreate the look. I’m going to use some lichen for the branches but as this is 15mm, I’m going to need very small pieces.
The lichen is also green, so I’ll dip it into some brown paint and leave it to dry.
I then mixed up three types of fine flock of varying shades of green. With a very small brush, I applied PVA to the tips of the branches and dunked it in the flock and left it to dry.
I’ve then stuck the branches to the tanks using superglue. I will go back and apply some watered down PVA to them as well to harden them up.
The two Churchill V's with the 95mm Howitzer
I am going to be doing the same with my Panzers for Normandy, you have given me another idea of how to do it, cheers!
The lichen is a little flimsy. I’m hoping the watered down pva will toughen it up. I’m hoping the next step of adding the mud and final varnish will protect it
Maybe I will experiment with some hairspray! I think @cpauls1 has used glycerine on lichen in a recent project of his, but I don’t know why or the science behind it. Perhaps he could enlighten us?