I finished this model earlier this year – in preparations for doing a bit of a WWI battlefield trip in the summer of 2011.  I envisioned trying to represent the muddy wasteland that bogged down these mechanical monsters and made them relatively simple targets for artillery.  I decided to open up the body of the tank to show it in a recently abandoned state, but prior to crews having returned to salvage anything from it.  So I opened the rear door and one of the sponson doors.  To do this effectively I needed to build a little bit of an interior just in case someone decided to have a look inside.

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I replaced the kit tracks with the far superior Panzershop (http://www.panzershop.cz/inshop/) versions and added the grousers. The ditching beam also came from Panzershop. I also added a lot of details from various references and fixed the reversed nature of the ditching beam rails.

For the colour I spent a great deal of time researching and finally came to the understanding that the closest match was Humbrol 29, which was approximated by Tamiya XF-52.  So an alternate to an approximation was used!  This actually came very close to the colour of a Mark IV in the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels.  I weathered the model with an oil wash (black and rust colours) and some lightening of the panels.  The base is simply some ground cover mud covering some contour pieces of basewood.  The water is Woodland Scenics Realistic Water which is very easy to use and dries super clear.

Lots of fun to build and it looks right to me!

Graham Symmonds

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