At last, painting time…
Bill had lent me a set of Lifecolor acrylics so I tried them out. To put it politely, I didn’t get on with them. In fact no matter how hard I tried the paint spat and clogged up the airbrush. I tried all sorts of thinners including tap water and their own brand, all sorts of air pressure and various consistencies. It either refused to come out of the airbrush, came out all at once or spat, when it did come out it formed little droplets on the surface! After much swearing I matched the paint using my favourite Gunze and Tamiya paints, ahhh, back to normal, care free, silky smooth airbrushing!
I varied the paint tone by adding tiny spots of white and yellow to break up the tone on the model. The trendy colour modulation wouldn’t work on this model as it’s too curved, I find that technique best suited to light coloured angular vehicles.
With the base coat down and gloss varnish applied, the decals were added. The hull is quite roughly moulded replicating the rough casting of the original vehicle so I was pleased when the decals behaved superbly. I’ve never had any problems with Hobby Boss or Trumpeter decals, quite the opposite in fact.
Before the filters were applied I added the chipping, these vehicles were kept in good nick so I kept this subtle. The filters, I used various tones here from a dark black brown to a mid grey, each one helping to subtly unify and blend the colours. A pin wash using Mig Productions’ Dark Wash was used to highlight the raised areas by creating shadow.
