My First Serious Attempt at Weathering a WWII Tank

I’m in England and we are in the middle of a heatwave right now.  I don’t travel but I’m told that heat in England might not be as high as elsewhere but it feels worse.  One thing I am noticing is that the paint I am airbrushing is taking forever to dry.  Normally a coat of paint takes a few minutes to 30 minutes depending on how heavy I’ve laid it down and what opportunities it has to pool (I’m not the best).  This week a layer is taking a few hours to dry, and even then has areas that look wet and are tacky.  It’s making it very hard and slow to get anything done.

Next stage I took a pot of AK chipping medium and sprayed it along any edges and bumps where paint may chip.  This was allowed to dry.

I then sprayed an even coat of VMC Hull Red over that through multiple slow layers.  Once this was dry I took a damp drybrush and worked at the chip areas.

This was then sealed with matt varnish and left for a couple of days in hopes the weather relaxed.  Three evenings later it had rained and I was no longer a sweat golem although it was still hot, so I thought I’d try the next stage.  It ended up taking over 4 hours to brush apply the chipping medium (In hopes of coating a smaller area) and airbrush the next layer due to the thinness of the yellow over the strong red and it being slow to dry.  I used VMC Iraqi Sand.

They were left to dry for more time that it takes to watch an episode of Doom Patrol S2 (Its still good and still super weird but casual about it).  I then dampened my brush and tried to chip one of the smaller parts first.

As you can see, paint is being liberated, but its just being pushed around.  No chipping is occurring.  No undercoats are showing through.  Its just becoming a mess.  I wet my brush and tried again the next morning and the same thing happened again.

This is not working for me and I don’t know why.  Maybe its the weather?  Maybe I applied too many layers of Iraqi Sand but anything less was still red.  Maybe it took too long between applying the chipping medium and me trying to remove it?

Any thoughts?

I’m currently thinking of abandoning this method of weathering and going for more of a John approach of sponge chipping.  Paint it all up, apply transfers (and varnish seal them at this point?), wash the whole thing, drybrush the edges and then sponge chip and rub in pigments.

Got any better ideas?  I’m up for trying new things if I don’t have to buy new stuff (Kinda on a budget right now.  I’m half way through buying a house and I’ve no idea what’ll be left afterwards).  That’s what I was saving this thing for.