Testing the interior colours

Correct shades

Just like I started with the red primer, I tried first the red brown (VMA 71271 German Red Brown) onto the rear hull's large fuel tanks. Using these small volumes as the first layer on top of the red primer the change wasn't that incredible.

Moving on I started painting the tank's insides and spent most of my time ensuring that the countless shadowed areas got painted. Here the red primer was helping, because it wasn't going to jump out as badly as something like, say, white primer. Damn, I had been smart.

After the red brown paint had cured the paint was browner than I had imagined. Of course it was still missing details and all possible weathering. This large amount of pretty dark interior paint was still a bit confusing to me, as I had thought that off-white was the key in the interior walls.

While I still had a few minutes to spare, I used it to start working on the drive sprockets, idler wheels, the engine's friends (tanks, pumps, whatnot) and the cooling setup. As always, these were going to need a couple of sessions from different sides.

First maskings

My next evening started with masking tape. I sealed off the red brown areas to get the thing in line with the painting instructions. The firewall's human side and the floor of the ammo shelves became white.

These creamy white (VMA 71119 White Grey (grauweiss)) insides were almost blindingly bright compared to the earlier bone-coloured primer. The contrast between these and the red brown areas was also somewhat steep. While I was on this I also painted the insides of the upper hull and the turret's main piece.

In addition to these I also took a moment to paint the equipment living between the driver and the radioman. This was mostly a simple reminder for myself to go through these objects properly instead of forgetting them brown.