So, having added last few pieces to the vehicle I decided to give it some paint today (or rather yesterday as it is past midnight already).

To save time I decided to skip priming the model. I wanted to save 24 hours I usually let model stand to have the primer thoroughly dried. I think in the future I will follow my routine and start with the primer, as I noticed that without this, the paint rubbed off especially on the wheels quite easily.

The base coat in this case would act also as a preshading, so I wanted to use darker shade of Grey for this layer. My idea originally was to use Tamiya German Grey XF-63. However, after testing this at the bottom of the model, I found that this color is still too light for what I needed. So I have added Tamiya Nato Black XF-69, so that the mix was 5:2 of German Grey:Nato Black. I thinned the paint as usual with Tamiya lacquer thinner in a ratio 4:1 thinner to paint. To protect the interior of the turret, I masked the opening for the hatch with masking tape from inside. With the above mix I then gave the model thorough coat covering all the surfaces.

For the wheels I wanted to try the new Tamiya paint (as far as I know this is new, maybe not) – Rubber Black XF-82. I wanted to apply this at all the running gear as a base coat and preshading. This paint would also be my main coat on a rubber parts of the wheels, which I would mask when adding following paint layers.

I like this new paint quite, it is really very “rubbery” shade od dark grey/black, I think this paint will be quite often in my repertoire in the future. It is definitely the best choice for painting rubber wheels.

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