Superfuelled Painting

 Right, let's see. I'll take you through this step by step. First, I undercoated the super with Halford's Grey primer. Then I hit the vehicle with a coat of Lada Green. Quite why Lada should have chosen a colour more evocative of military endeavour than civilian life is a topic I shall leave to historians of the USSR. Next I applied a coat of varnish, as transfers sit more easily on such a smooth surface. Unstoppably came on the transfers, helped by a generous application of a solvent (Minisol, perhaps) designed specifically to break them down a little, to weaken them, and make them happier to sit on even a rough or uneven surface. I designated the vehicle B1C, showing it to be vehicle C of the 1st company of Regiment B of SFOR (the Supply FORce). I stuck on a few eagles, hazard signs and wee bits of text to add colour. The fuel tank itself is an S90 type, er, obviously, and its factory serial number is T123647. In a word, I had a wealth of transfers to choose from, and knew this vehicle would be unique. So I chose to go wild and give it stuff from all sorts of kits. SFOR is from an AS90 kit, the serial number's from some WWII vehicle kit, B1C from another, and so on.


Having applied the transfers, I took a few comparison shots with a Chimera-sized vehicle I had to hand (which needs a good clean-up, if not redoing completely, I agree) and a Cadian officer. Having done so, I decided to try my hand at a technique I have seen in some modelling works. One applies streaks of oil paints, then brushes turpentine over the top until the streaks are invisible (I notice I haven't been wholly effective in the second picture). I then did some work on the weaponry and applied rust to the body of the vehicle. I knocked up a mud mixture from black paint, Burnt Umber paint, PVA glue, sand and some Polyfilla-style powder and some "leaves" courtesy of Antenociti. Having applied this to the tracks, I took the vehicle off to dry. I'm lucky to have access to a place I can dry the vehicle quite quickly, so I was able to apply another coat half an hour later. Finding I still had a lot of "mud" left over, I decided to knock up a base for the vehicle. Having again allowed all this to dry, I applied a gloss varnish to both, and am currently in the throes of deciding whether to leave the vehicle gloss-varnished, to suggest it is caught in a rainshower amid all the mud or to matte-varnish the parts of the vehicle not tarnished by mud. Behold the pictures. The final update should come on Monday, dear readers.