Starting with the priming and basecoating

Dark yellow at long last!

The lower hull

These photos ended up being taken out of order, this time the first text had the newest photos. I started this part by carefully airbrushing the lower hull with Dunkelgelb (VMA 71025 Dark Yellow). The lower hull could've been basecoated weeks or months ago already, but I had left the external painting on purpose until now.

My plan was to keep the bottom and the sides of the Panzerwanne dark yellow and implement any sort of camouflage to the road-, idler wheels, drive sprockets, the front and rear glacis plates and to the upper hull and the turret.

The turret

My painting session had been started by priming the turret from the outside (VSP 70642 Pure Red) and the inside (VSP 70627 Skeleton Bone). While the primers were drying, I painted some other pieces and finally, while I still had some Dunkelgelb in my airbrush's paint cup, I painted most of the turret's outsides as well with the basecoat. After the first run the coverage wasn't perfect, and that was expected.

The upper hull

I had been patching up the upper hull's unprimed bits (the engineer tools at least needed priming) with the red primer. The upper hull I also painted flat dark yellow, even as it could've been basecoated with brown just as well, as I was going to do a three-tone camo. Somehow I had just gotten used to the dark yellow as the base, so I didn't even think much.

The cannon and the inner turret, round 1

This subset I knew I'd be priming and basecoating at least twice before I got anywhere. You could tell from the photos where I had been holding from while doing the priming. The rear end of the cannon was surprisingly fun to paint despite all the weird shapes it had. Painting the ammo racks for the turret was going to be mostly paintbrush work, the best I could do with the airbrush was the starting point.

I ended up priming the turret complex with the bone primer, because the amount of red-brown was going to be so small that worrying about the old red primer made absolutely no sense at all. There were a few of the attachment points that I was going to have to clean up later on, just like the photoetch pieces I had to remember to retouch on the next round.