Well, the painting phase arrived finally. (To be honest I always have several models stuck in this phase because it takes time to set up the paintbooth. This is the bottleneck of my model building process.)

There was also an accident involving this tank. Do you remember I talked about the necessity of gluing the turret in place in the first part? Well, it was not glued in at this point -and I successfully knocked off all the PE shields from the front of the turret on one side. My most valued and cherished wife found three of them; I replaced the fourth with a part I fashioned from aluminium foil. (I can’t tell how much I appreciate my better half, by the way. She tolerates my hobby without a complaint, and even helps me finding parts that flew off into the big empty.)

Once the disaster was averted, I sprayed dark grey Vallejo primer on the model. I gave a day for the primer to dry, and then sprayed Tamiya Buff. I looked at several photos and this color looks very close to the actual vehicle’s basecoat. The green patches were sprayed on free-hand. The green was lightened considerably with the base color. I was contemplating using masks, but the model is full of tiny protruding details -something all masks love to pull off in my experience. I used a relatively low pressure, and kept the gun close to the model; I found the process pretty easy to control, and simple to do. There was minimal overspray; the demarcation lines between the colors came out pretty good.

The last step was to paint the black lines and patches by hand. I used a dark grey color rather than pitch black to account for the scale effect.

As usual, a couple of layers of ochre filters helped to blend the colors together, and I sprayed Future on the model to provide base for the decals.

There is also a very extensive decal sheet provided; the painting guide only offers one option with minimal decals, so it’s probably a comprehensive sheet that Modelcollect uses with all their Russian armor. (Will be useful for my W-Models Pantsir build.)

Once the decals dried, I sealed them with Future, and applied a dark pin wash to the model. After about a day of drying I used a wet brush to remove the excess, forming good-looking streaks in the process. Wherever I felt there was too much wash left on the surface of the model I used a flat dry brush to remove it.

I gave a week for the wash to dry, and sprayed a flat coat over the model. I’m always a bit anxious at this step as this is where you see what the model will look like; the flat varnish makes the colors lighten a bit. I painted the tracks and the rubber rims of the roadwheels with a fine brush- again I used very dark greys instead of black. Using a 00 brush I painted discreet chips on the tank: the side-skirts got heavier black chips (since they are made of rubber). I also used the base color on the green parts for light damage, and Vallejo’s German Black Brown for deeper chips. I tried not to go overboard; in this scale no chips would be visible, but they do give some visual interest to the model. I also used sponge chipping on the barrel and larger surfaces – again, trying my best not to overdo the effect. I added some rust washes on the larger areas where chipping was more prominent; once dried I adjusted the effect with a wet brush.

I applied dust-colored pigments to the lower parts of the hull a very diluted dust mix on the top part; again I readjusted everything once dry. The exhaust got a tiny bit of black; I tried not to go overboard.

As a final step I rubbed a silver pen on the tracks and the edges of the model to simulate the shine of worn metal as usual.

Overall the model is excellent; I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone.