I’m still in the middle of the 2020 pandemic, still learning to drive and in the middle of several personal projects, as well as finishing up fulfilment and manufacture of my Kickstarter earlier in the year (which is waylaid by the pandemic and the upcoming crash out of the EU exit transition period, but more on that once it’s done and I can safely write a postmortem), I decided what I needed was another distraction and Fenris Games announced a painting competition called Paintalloween to encourage people to paint something of theirs. I’m a big fan of their miniatures, and I’ve had one of their modern tactical trucks in my stash for some time.

I am still bad at taking photos of the build progress, but the kit is delightfully simple and went together very well.

After priming, I sprayed the body with Vallejo Metal Color Exhaust Manifold, still my favourite general purpose metallic paint, and the interior Anthracite Grey. I wasn’t going to do much to the interior as it’s all but obscured in the end. The body then got two thin coats of chipping medium and then a solid coating of flat white before a wet stippling brush was used to remove portions of the paint. Finally, three coats of gloss varnish were applied over the top to seal the chipping layer and give it that glossy car-paint finish.

Next up was painting the rust. Several thin layers of Citadel Typhus Corrosion were applied in areas where the bare metal was showing to build up the rusty appearance, followed by speckling on Word Bearer Red and a finer stippling of Troll Slayer Orange. I really like this technique for rust, as it gives a vibrancy to it and also emulates the dual nature of the rust eating away in some areas and building up in others. I could have gone back in with a metallic colour in areas where it was likely to have been worn away (like around door frames or the leading edge of the bonnet but I liked how it looked so left it at that.

The final step before gluing the two halves together was to add in the windows. These were cut from PVC sheets, tacked in with superglue and then the whole car was sprayed with a very fine uneven coating of Vallejo Model Colour Deck Tan, a lovely cream colour. The windscreen was masked with two small semicircles to emulate the windscreen wipers, but these were removed before a second, even lighter misting was applied just to take the shine off a bit. You can see in this image I’d already started to work on the lights but that mostly came in the final step. After this image was taken I used Culture Hustle’s Mirror paint on all the lights and added some yellow details where appropriate. The wheels were painted a very dark grey and it was done and ready for final photos.

From here, I’d like to do a small diorama for it but that’s a project for another day.