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Sitting on a beach, Culebra Beach, Puerto Rico to be exact, there is a very curious tourist attraction in the form of an ex Marines M4A3 HVSS 105 Sherman, It's slowly rusting away and covered in green seaweed and slime, plus large amounts of graffiti for most of the year, she tends to get a new coat of graffiti with every new tourist season I think, and therefore changes in appearance quite a lot, I have a sneaky feeling that there's a beach bar close to where she sits in the sand, plus, there's a great deal of pictures online now of this tank wreck, due to it being a popular tourist spot, which is very handy for projects like this, but anyway, I think the above picture would make a good little vignette, and it does have to be said that painting is not my strong point, so this could go south very quickly indeed, luminous green seaweed is not in my skillset... A little history on this particular M4A3 HVSS 105mm Sherman and how it came to be sat on a beach in the Caribbean, and this is all based on snippets of information gleaned from the internet so is probably not entirely correct, but here goes, during World War II the Americans had some bases on the islands around Puerta Rico, these bases were mainly used for testing purposes and as firing ranges for the duration of the war, most of the bases were maintained for quite a long time after the war, right up until around 1973 (ish) They were then shut down and abandoned, due mainly to protests from the locals I think? And when the Americans abandoned all the bases, for reasons unknown they left behind two or three ex Marine M4A3 HVSS 105's, which have been slowly rusting away in the sunshine and sea air ever since. Pictures above and below, this seems to be the most popular style of graffiti, judging by the pictures online, and is obviously the most favoured style by the youth of today, and statements like that make me sound very old, As far as I can tell the interior of the tank is pretty much fully gutted out, there's no engine left in the engine bay, just a load of old rusted metal junk, the sponsons are mostly rotted out as well, as far as I can see from pictures, but I'm guessing there's probably the remains of a transmission in the front, and probably a gun breech still in the turret, I need to hunt more pictures... Pictures above and below, there is a no luminous green seaweed option, which is a damn good thing for me at least, because that's probably going to be the hardest part to do, so I can always chicken out and just do all over rust, plus some graffiti on the turret and hull sides maybe, but it does have to be said that the green seaweed is what kind of makes this picture, for me at least, It takes a rusty old M4A3 105mm and turns it into something curious to look at, and provides good contrast and colour for a very nice picture. Picture below, this is as far as I got about six years ago, I was just messing around with various forms of destruction on some fairly good plastic kits (Dragon and Tamiya) plus an Aber metal barrel, and doing a little experimentation with various ways to create very badly rusted and pitted surfaces on armour plate and castings, mostly using ca glue and powder, and some very crude use of plastic card to create the areas where the armour plate has flaked away in big chunks on the hull sides, but apart from that, I didn't get very far with it, the prospect of green seaweed/slime scared me half to death. Comments on the build and ideas on how to do the bright green seaweed/slime/algae on the front plate are more than welcome folks, plus it has to said that this is just a chill out kinda build, just a little bit of fun in a world that has gone insane, accuracy of the model itself is not all that important to be honest, it just needs to look vaguely like a badly rusted and corroded M4A3 HVSS 105mm Sherman, covered in bizarre graffiti, and something that good old mother nature is desperately trying to reclaim as her own. You can all blame @Bertie Psmith for this build log, so when it all goes south, just remember he twisted my arm... Matt