When I heard that Mustafa Dombay had assembled a 1/72 Matilda tank and thrown it away, I immediately asked him to send it to me instead. He had fully built the tank but discarded it before painting. The craftsmanship was excellent—those who know Mustafa are well aware of how obsessively meticulous he is. All that was left for me to do was the painting.
I started by priming the tank in gray. Over the gray primer, I applied black pre-shading to prevent the tank—painted in a single tone—from looking too flat or dull.
After priming and pre-shading, I applied a dark green base coat over the entire model and let it dry.
Once the dark green layer was dry, I followed up with a coat of duck egg green, a much lighter green shade. I chose a light tone knowing that the following steps would naturally darken the paint.
After finishing the main color, I moved on to painting the details. The most difficult part was painting the tracks through the narrow spaces between the side skirts.
I painted the track segments on the hull in rust colors, and then painted the few tools and accessories using appropriate tones.
Once the tracks were done, I painted the shovel mounted on the hull. The metal part was painted anthracite, followed by dry brushing with steel, while the wooden handle was painted using Vallejo tones.
After completing all painting, I sealed the tank with a semi-gloss varnish. Since I’ve already discussed varnish types extensively in past builds, I’ll keep this part short.
Once the varnish dried, I applied Polish Army decals from my own stash—Mustafa hadn’t sent any decals with the kit, so I had to improvise.
After the decals set, I sealed the model again with varnish. This sandwiching method protects the decals by placing them between two clear coats and prevents silvering or glare.
Once the varnish dried, I began oil filtering. Because the base color was quite light, I wanted to darken it slightly. I used Winton brand oils in green, gray, and burnt sienna, in that order.
I then added yellow and blue to the mix and applied color modulation using the oil paint dot method. Still, I couldn’t quite achieve the darkness I was aiming for. While I often struggle with my tanks turning out too dark, this time it stayed too light.
Once the oil work was done, I moved on to washing. Although I’ve stopped doing full washes on most tanks, I made an exception here and used Humbrol’s black wash. Unfortunately, even this didn’t darken the model as much as I had hoped.
To bring out the surface details, I used Tamiya’s panel line accent colors. This really sharpened the model’s features, and it’s a technique I enjoy using for its effectiveness.
After all the paint-related work was complete, I applied a final layer of matte varnish. This sealed in all previous layers and also provided the slightly rough surface needed for weathering.
For this build, I decided to keep the weathering very subtle. I started with dust washes on the lower hull, allowing them to settle into recesses to simulate accumulated dust.
I then applied pigments to the areas most likely to come into contact with dust. The result was a lightly weathered appearance. Finally, I used a pencil to rub metallic shine onto the raised edges, simulating worn metal..
Reviving a model that had been scrapped by Mustafa and bringing it back to life through painting gave me great satisfaction. I proudly placed the tank in my display cabinet.
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