Despite not posting anything for a few weeks, I’ve still got plenty of projects on the go. I just haven’t managed to finish anything until this week when I knocked off this Universal Carrier for a friendly painting challenge, as well as a 6 Pdr AT gun for it to tow.
This is the Bolt Action British Universal Carrier, which is a rescaled Italeri plastic kit I believe. It comes with crew, who are nicely posed in the vehicle, but all have exactly the same rather bland facial expression. Fortunately I have a lot of spare heads from my Bolt Action British Army Starter box, so the kit crew all got head swaps, and a mix of helmets.
The Warlord British heads are great, and I had to use a couple of the moustachio’d gents for a bit of character. The driver head was a lucky choice too, as the painted figure looks like he’s grumpily squinting into road dust…perhaps from the armor up the front of a convoy. He was also my first attempt at using a light grey wash to suggest five o’clock shadow, which I think worked reasonably well. The trick seems to be doing maybe three or four light washes rather than a single heavier one.
Another first with this kit was using Microsol decal solvent to try seating the decals on both the vehicle and the crew shoulder flashes a little better than normal. It worked quite nicely and has the added advantage of smelling like very strong vinegar, which left me with a craving for hot chips. I suspect it’s just fairly pure acetic acid. There was still a little silvering around the edges of various decals, but I just over painted that prior to sealing them with some brush on matt varnish.
Weathering was performed with the Warlord recommended tip of just carefully sponging on some dark grey paint around the areas that you’d normally expect to see wear and tear. Some of those areas were then touched up with a soft 4B pencil to give them a little metallic shine. You can’t really see that in the photos alas, or on the table really, unless the light catches it.
After that, I dusted around some AK Interactive weathering pigments. I used both ‘Dark Earth’ and a mix of that and the lighter ‘North African Dust’ pigments for some variety. That was seated with the enamel AK Pigment fixer and everything was varnished a few times with both Testor’s Dullcoat and Army Painter matt spray varnish to try and keep it in place during gaming.
The 6 Pdr AT gun got exactly the same treatment as the Universal Carrier with paint job and weathering, but unfortunately the spray varnish went on a little wet and killed a large amount of the AK dust weathering effect. Ah well, the gun still looks ok so I’ll live with it. I’ve also magnetised the gun’s wheels and have started working up a large base for it and the related figures. I’m hoping to have that painted up by the end of this month as well.