Here's a look at the kit in its unpainted state. You can see the armor and cast texture I added to the turret with diluted Tamiya putty and liquid cement. All the dark green plastic came from Tamiya's old T-34/76 kit (I know I know, not the best replacement parts but I was working with what I had on hand). I replaced the grab handles with wire and added the anti-splash board with some styrene that I textured to look like wood. The rubber skirts are rubberized sheets of rubber. The tarps are sculpted from Green Stuff while the .50 cal and Grease Gun come from an ancient Tamiya weapons set.
Here's the base coat of rust for the hairspray chipping to follow. I sprayed a mix of Tamiya Flat Yellow and NATO Brown over a coat of Tamiya fine surface primer. This was my first attempt at hairspray chipping
And here's the tarp and flag painted. Not an incredible job on my behalf, but its passable (and it covers the missing vision port on the cupola!) I love the chipping on the turret roof and hatch and the rust effects in that area.
Side view. I went with a pretty dusty/dry clay look for the mud effects, using Mr. Weathering Paste Mud White. An awesome product if you can get your hands on it.
I love the look of these mud spills down the side of the chassis. Lacking any real weathering products aside from the Mr. Weathering Paste, I used some Revell enamel paints to approximate that darker shade of mud.
Rear shot. Note the fuel stains on the oil drums. I used generic black and brown oil paint which I blended with enamel thinner to get the look of the fuel spills.
Building a Yugoslavian T-34 with rubber skirt armor has been on my bucket list for a long time. I finally got the chance to make the dream of building this kit a reality when a fellow IPMS member (S/o to Brian) gifted me a built yet unpainted T-34/85M he had picked up. After some modifications to the base kit and the addition of magnetized rubber sheets, I had a respectable model of a T-34 in Yugoslavian in service.
