Working on the basics: the Russian Green

A very multistaged basecoating phase

Following the priming piece by piece approach I also painted them green, applying the same method. So far I had been following the idea of the kit's painting instructions. My pretty obvious choice for the colour was the Russian Green (VMA 71017 russian green) that I used on the Stalin 2 tank a bit earlier.

The framework and the engine

The Ural's truck with the cabin ate an eye-watering amount of paint, especially the bottom that would be mostly hidden from sight in the end. I started working on the engine compartment, the nose and worked my way through to the halfway point.

On impulse I dug out a bottle of a bit more vivid green (VMA 71093 field green) just to add a tiny bit of variety and airbrushed that into the engine compartment and the insides of the cabin. After that I airbrushed the engine grey, based on some googling (VMA 71050 light grey). At this point I realized, chiefly thanks to the photos, that the engine room was actually missing a load of stuff and was pretty empty. That didn't make me go all "well, I'll scratchbuild them while I'm at it, then!"

Based on some strange internal process I decided that the engine should be grey when viewed from below. While doing that I also sprayed the gearbox and most of the driveshaft parts with grey just to make them look distinct.

Extras

The friends of the cabin, or better known as the doors, front grille, roof, hood and the spare wheel rack (and the hub) took two painting sessions a piece as they'd be seen from both sides in the worst case scenario. This took quite a bit of time, because I didn't dare to paint the flipsides while the paint was still wet or not totally dry at least. In hindsight taking a couple of tactical sick leave days would've helped the progress quite a bit :p

(No, I don't do that for real)

The M-21 Field Rocket System

To the back of the truck I had built a platform-like thing + mudflaps, on which the launcher would be installed. Again I painted the top and bottom sides on separate sessions just in case. I also left the decoration of the rear lamps for a much later stage, of course.

The launcher itself got painted and started looking decent. Thanks to the shadowing (and my own tiredness) I had to touch up the tipside one extra time.

Before I took the photo above I had already gone and painted some details of the panoramic telescope and the controls with flat black. Yep, it really started looking like the real thing.

Cabin detailage

Thanks to the approach I had chosen I detailed and weathered the cabin's interior at this exact point in history. By the time I got to the next phase I really couldn't do much about it anymore, or at least as easily. I painted the cushions of the benches with simple brown (VMA 71041 tank brown) and their trimmings with a different, lighter, shade of brown (VMA 71038 camo medium brown).

Then I went through the faces of the dials with black (VMA 71057 black) and later poked at them with the tip of a paintbrush just barely loaded with white (VMA 71001 white) for the markings - as if any of this could be seen ever again through the roofs and doors. While I was playing with the black paint I also painted the engine's radiator so that you could maybe see a hint of it through the front grille.

After I was done with the blackness I iterated my way through the pedals, sticks and the steering wheel with grey black (VMA 71056 Grey Black, nowadays also known as Panzer Dark Grey)