Painting American Tanks for Bolt Action..

So over the weekend I had the chance to actually sit down and paint. It has been a long time since I was last able to sit for a good portion of a day and just paint.

With that in mind, I got stuck in on more than a few pieces to paint up. I did paint up the Sherman first after the Stuart, but it came out quite green.. like plastic army green. You can see how badly bright green they are..

Can see in the above photo how different it was compared to the other versions.

So you can see that I went ahead and updated an older vehicle to see if a new lease on life would improve them. Apparently it did for the Chaffee with some easy work here being an oil rub of yellow, then the weathering actions to it. Not to mention the inclusion of the decals from the Rubicon sheets to finish it off and tie it into the other new kits more.

With all this behind me, I decided to give another vehicle a go.. the M3 Halftrack.

First off this kit is decent enough to be able to work in some parts. Had I not glued in the turret section then I would have had another piece to paint separately. No excess baggage here as well, as I wanted to paint it up stock for the most part. Showing off the kit a bit more since the review I had done already last week.

Instead of going full black/white 2K priming on it, I went dark grey/light grey to reduce the contrast.

This time instead of the Andrea green set for the base colors, I tackled it with Vallejo Model colors in a dark green, and olive color. A much more muted tones overall here compared to the bright green monster that is the 76mm Sherman.

The color saturation came back with the Yellow Oil being rubbed into the top sides of the transport. Looked a bit bright in spots, but honestly after the weathering my thoughts were that they would be toned down significantly.

I missed the shot of just the halftrack with the decals on it. I am happy for the chipping though with german camo brown, black, and heavy metal. But this chipping helps to hide the poor application of the decals that I had applied, especially the hood version. Can hide the tear in the decal with the chipping.

Once the chipping are finished, I was able to rub in the brown enamel paint. I really like this technique there as it tints the decals, and helped to make areas that had nothing on them more interesting.

Out of the whole group, I have to say that this one came out the best, and I think I nailed the color scheme finally!

But in the end, the differences between the vehicles gives them more character. Will post up about the Rubicon Crusader later this week! Having too much fun with the weathering aspect here!