Trumpeter 1/72 Finnish T-28
Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of armour or aircraft with whitewash finishes. This is partly due to the fact that I had little confidence in my ability to pull off a convincing whitewash paint job and partly because, well, they're usually kinda boring. The jury's still out on whether I succeeded or not in this case, but I did find a picture of this actual T-28 and, as I have a soft spot for Finnish subjects and I already had the decals in my possession, I thought I'd give it a go just for something a bit different to add to the collection.
Paint is Humbrol 86 Light Olive overall with Tamiya Flat White brush painted on top. I tried to replicate the sloppy brushwork as best I could, though I did make mine a bit dirtier than the tank in the picture which looks to be freshly painted. Interestingly, the national insignias seem to have been painted very neatly over top of the whitewash finish, rather than the latter being painted around the insignia as is more often the case.
Mud is Humbrol Dark Earth weathering powder, a product I am quite fond of for reproducing mud and dirt. Markings are from Star Decals which worked fairly well. The cute little flag was hand painted on a piece of cigarette paper and super glued to a chunk of Albion Alloys 0.2 mm nickel silver rod. Clear varnish was used to set the droopy shape.
The Finns used a different mantle to the one that came with the kit so I scratchbuilt this from plastic sheet, rod and tube. The kit gun was used with a bit of modification. There was also no antenna array circling the turret on this tank (very few Finnish T-28s seem to have had this, judging by the many pictures I found online) so I removed the mounts from the turret sides. I'm not sure if the large star moulded on top of the turret was a feature only found on Russian T-28s but I couldn't be bothered sanding it off so I left it in place.
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