So after spending a bit of time away from the painting table doing actual painting, I figured it would be good to get back at it. And the urge to paint came quick and fast this last week, and with the Rubicon models in arms reach they were the first victim.
I will preface this with not only were they within arms reach to inspire me to paint them, but watching how the Rubicon Community Manager had gone and painted up the M10 Achilles on YouTube was also motivation to do mine up.
Now I do not have all the colors nor paints ( regular or special ) go along step by step with Jamie here. Though I did have some greens, and some of my other armor books to make a go at it.
One of the biggest advantages on this vehicle compared to the others was mentioned in the Stuart review already here.. and that was that it is built to be painted in parts. Which is great for me as I love the ability to get into some of the harder to reach places at times, but only if I can do it without having to worry about glue lines to fix later on.
No worry with that here, and so i was able to prime up the vehicle in a dark grey, and white overspray to each part. Jamie had used a pure grey on his, but I liked that this would give me some extra contrast to begin with, or at least that was the plan.
I then tackled all the lower edged areas with a darker green. Can't remember the color, but it was darker except on the white sections obviously. Already I am messing up the painting of this tank, and I have just laid down the first color.. typical Mr Lee approach :D
Here I skipped one of the chances for a photo, but you can see that I laid down a brighter green in the areas that were left before. And then all the rubber, or grates, or metal areas were laid down with some Tamiya Grey. I normally would have gone with a straight black, but more and more I am seeing people use a dark to mid grey here and darkening them up later on. So I thought why not attempt to go the same.. worst case I mess it up more later on right? :D
The 2 tones were not as good as I had hoped at this point so I would attempt to add a bit of Sunny Skintone to the green to brighten it up for a highlight.. it didn't work really... But the theory behind it is still sound though :D
So to correct some of my issues with the color modulation that I was attempting here, I layered on some gloss varnish, and then began to apply some oil paint. First my notorious black oil wash. Which darken up the sections between panels, and the grey areas quite nicely.
I then pull out the brightest yellow I have in my oil collection, and begin to place dots of it onto the upper most top sections of the vehicle where it would be bright anyways. And then took a big flat dry brush and rubbed it into the paint. Much better result here for me and gave the look I was aiming for. And the black wash helped to dirty up the grey sections like the tracks and rubber on the track wheels.
I had left it for a bit, and then re-varnished it to seal in the oil colors. Letting that all dry up before attempting the decals. Something that I normally avoid like the plague, but this time thought why not give it a go. This was a test tank anyways to me, but it was coming out much better than I thought it would be going, so best to keep it on going.
The stars came out ok, but the first Vehicle ID tag got all tangled up and muddled before it even left the sheet.. I should have stopped there and picked another one, but I kept on going with it. Meh.. It was looking very very bright to me though at this point, and I was not sure if I liked them, but I was willing to give them a go anyways.. so why not.
After yet another layer of gloss varnish to seal in the decals, Including some additions like the one on the turret and the weight number on the front left corner, I could begin to weather it up a bit.
Idea here was to begin with some chipping using a sponge. Starting with some German Camo Brown, and then some black to give it a bit of variation. I even put in some Black Metal from Scale75 to the last bits to give an extra rubbed metal look to the section.
Once this was a bit more dried up, I then was searching through my boxes for some sort of enamel paints to add a bit more weathering to the piece. I know that Jamie had used MIG for some rain marks on it, but I don't have any MIG products ( terrible I know.. ).. but I did have some Humbral Brown Enamel paint kicking around. So I began to streak that out over the sides, and move it into the crevices throughout the piece. Again taking a flat splayed brush to rub it in so that it was a bit more worn instead of fresh looking. Am quite happy with this part, and it helped to cover up the muck up of the decal, and tone them down a lot more also! Huzzah, result!
I still need to add some weathering to the tracks with pigments I believe, but I am holding off on that at the moment as I am not sure how I want to tackle it just yet.
After all is said and done though, I think I am enjoying doing the vehicles once more, and might even attempt to update or correct some of my older American vehicles which do not look as good as this one at the moment. Which is not surprising considering that I painted them all in 2 days compared to the 4 nights on this one single vehicle :)
Hope you enjoyed this.. and catch you all in the new week!