Last haily details

The wing mirrors and the windshield wipers

These were the last pieces that were still waiting for their installation. Especially the wing mirrors were obscenely flimsy, so I left them whichever way they wanted to settle in. Either the driver had been driving like a pig (typical) or the driver was in the middle of a most peculiar twist-reverse maneuver.

Filth
After I was done with the solid pieces I washed the engine compartment with Citadel's black (Nuln oil). Then I drybrushed the leaf springs with Oily Steel (VMC 70865) and later washed that with Citadel's brown (Agrax earthshade). I used the same brown was on the axles and whatnot that I had painted grey much earlier in the project, to make them appear properly dirty.

While I was fooling around with the metallic paint I also painted the exit ends of the rocket launcher's barrels. I din't apply any sort of a wash there, I'd most likely do something else later on, if needed.

At this point I would've really loved to use the Vallejo motor oil stains -type of product that I had seen in some propaganda material at some point last year. But I had never encountered them either here or in Hobbyscapua, what could I do? In the Vallejo site it was called Engine Grime(73815), in the very end of the page.

The problematic glass pieces

I had spent a good amount of time pondering on the destinies of the clear pieces. Either I'd glue them in at the very last moment and left them perfectly clear and clean - or then allowed them to get a bit dirty and used-looking under the general layer of crap. The latter option sounded much more intriguing, so I painted the bottoms of the transparents with the appropriate colours.

First I painted the reflectors of the headlights and the extra light with steel (VMA 71065 Steel). Then I painted the GP pieces before I detached them from the sprue: break lights with red (VMA 71085 Ferrari Red), all the blinking lights with orange (VMA 70733 Orange, fluorescent) and if I didn't say it before, the rest I left clear. As soon as the paints had dried I detached them and glued them on with white glue, as always.

At this point I remembered to do the only two decals that I needed. I had applied a  bit of gloss varnish on the doors. This time the decals behaved nicely and that always manages to surprise me. A bit later I finished the decaling up with a layer of matt varnish. I wished it was always this easy...

I googled around to find out if the insignia was Soviet only (Soviet Guards) but ha! after following a few weird detours I found myself on a site that showed the same markings on the door of a bit more modern rocket launcher (BM-30 Smerch). What made this even luckier was that, according to this article, this rocket launcher was invading Ukraine, so that fit perfectly into my original theme of the little green men! Of course my vehicle was a version or two older than the one in the photo, but in my "what if" scenario the 439th Guards Rocket Artillery Brigade were using older equipment so that they could more easily claim that they were not Russian, as just about everybody had some of these trucks... which couldn't be said about the BM-30s.

The glass pieces looked good, great even. I really couldn't swear that the rear lights setup was completely authentic, this was the best I could do with the reference images I found. The same bit contained both the brake light, a blink (or turn signal) and a white reverse light. To be honest I couldn't honestly imagine why they'd have all these set all these blinking bright orange alarm lights and whatnot on a war machine, but as I always say: what do I know?

More filth

As a silly idea I cut off two windshield wiper -wide arcs off the masking tape and set them on the windshield so that the wiper's axle was in the center point of my arc. The result looked like a psychopathic Cars character knockoff from China.

I airbrushed dirt (VMA 71133 Dirt) around the truck from a good distance. As I may have said earlier, the idea behind this was to use it as a filter that'd even out the contrasts and maybe bring a bit of a natural look to the whole model. Or it could just make it look dull and boringly brown, but you can't please everyone.

But as I said, I started with the dirt colour but then thought that I could use some darker, fresher stains to the lower part, nearer the ground. I loaded my airbrush with some Camo Medium Brown (VMA 71038) and had at it. This darker shade was mostly applied on the bottom third, especially in the wheel wells or whatever they are called.

After the paint was dry I finally slipped the rubber pieces on to complete the wheels and took the photos you can see above. And no, I really am not interested in counting the times I knocked the wing mirrors off.

Pigmentage

Now I was under the assumption that the Russian truck was finished as far as the painting was concerned. So I dug out my pigment jars and the pigment binder and started making even more of a mess. I brushed some Carbon Black to the front and top end of the Field Rocket System, then applied some Fresh Rust to the moisture traps, nooks and the frame in general. Then I used at least Burnt Umber on the roof, the decks and stepping surfaces. All these were from the Vallejo pigments line, from the Tamiya Weathering Master set I used sand on anything that people'd walk on. Then I used some tiny amounts of fresh sand on a few highlight surfaces on top of the machine. And the wheels, those I messed up with hopefully liberal amounts of different browns.

Maybe a bit of all of those pigments actually stuck instead of flying around the airspace under the blow of my airbrush. I did use a much less lower pressure and airbrushed from further away, just like when I applied the Dirt paint. But this was the second time I tried this so I have plenty to learn still.

Camo madness

First of all I have to say thanks (or scream obscenities) to my coworker Iiro, a bank of Soviet stuff knowledge and the benevolent dictator of Presaleztan. As I had been pondering about my early camo pattern thoughts out loud at the office in the lines of "I should check how those Green Men invading Ukraine are camouflaged so I could make this look like their equipment". He suggested a digicamo and in all its insanity it sounded interesting enough for my brain to get locked into the idea.

Before I started anything mad I glued the doors into their places, so the cabin interior was just about sealed now. The doors fit in perfectly, like mushroom clouds in the horizon, thanks to my previous and well-planned dry-fitting method with multiple chekups.

A pixel at a time

I decided to utilize my both Tamiya masking tape rolls (10mm and 18mm) and cut off some squares with the aid of my cutting mat. Because the 18mm tape and the 10mm grid didn't always align perfectly I just cut 2mm off every other end of the squares (that is, the external ends of the bigger pixels were cut along the gridlines and the near ends so that I ended up with a ~4mm strip between them). Out of these 4mm bands I then cut some smaller pixels to provide more variety to the whole show.

It looked pretty weird at this kind of an early stage but thought that I'd try a few more pieces. And if that didn't work, it wasn't going to be a catastrophe.

Session 1

After about half an hour I had achieved this. I also noticed that the wheel centers had to be pixelated too, but I just didn't get to do more than the spare wheel yet. At this point I was a bit amused by the whole idea. This was slow, slow work.

I kept on building up my pixel mask slowly, piece by piece. While playing with the tape it occurred to me that maybe it'd been better to start masking off the parts that were not going to be green instead of saving the greenery. So keeping that in mind, you shouldn't consider the mid-results in the photos below as anything definite. It was going to take quite a few more tape pieces so there was plenty of space to maneuver still, especially the rear end was completely "open" as in I didn't have a proper plan for it. The rocket launcher, on the other hand, was clear as day to me. I blame that on the shape of the truck, they just didn't inspire me with camo ideas.

Session 2

In the early next evening I spent about an hour cutting and placing more tape pixels. At some point I decided that I was done. Of course I wished that I didn't need to fix any of the painting but I was still mentally prepared for that, being something of a pessimist with my experiments.

Checking the results

I airbrushed the truck and the launcher separately with a sandy colour (VMA 71122 desert tan 686). The shade wasn't maybe the most authentic representative of what Ivan uses but I have never been hysterically anal about those details. My only concern was the possibility of the result being too "loud".

Peeling off the tape pieces took a ridiculous amount of time. The result was pretty neat, I liked it. I had earlier envisioned a three-tone pattern but maybe that wasn't going to be needed after all. I'd have to think a bit about this.

As my first and totally random attempt at making a digicamo this felt succesful. The general look would be a bit calmer after I had airbrushed a gentle layer of "dirt" (just like in the IS-2 project) to filter and bring some more dirtiness. Just like the name suggested.

I changed my mind after all

Hah! I decided, after all, to utilize a third colour in the camo, a dark brown. To help me in choosing the approach I for reference pictures and the example in this photo felt like the smartest way to do it in this project. I wouldn't be adding a third large pixelset but some individuals and/or miniclusters here and there.

Just like before, I sliced masking tape into strips and squares to create shapes for the larger pixels and then I put them into certain key points. As usual I went with the gut feeling and tried to make the whole look more random (which is an issue with the human mind, pure randomness is so difficult). For the doors I cut off some stuff off from the center of a square cut out of a 18mm-tape. That was something I thought to be quick and an easy way to add those simple pixels into somewhat narrow places.

I was slightly concerned that I was going with a bit too few pixels, but on the other hand, it'd be easier to do more than to remove excess ones. Just like it'd be easier to undo a few instead of three dozen bad ideas. Still I trusted in the future good results and that I wouldn't have to be undoing anything later on. Just like the Americans love to say: no guts, no glory.

As my third camouflage colour I chose the darkest of the three browns I was looking at (VMA 71040 burnt umber) and then I airbrushed that carefully but with decent coverage. There wasn't much to paint so this phase was completed pleasantly quickly. After an unusually short paint-drying break I tore the masks off and took some photos, this time remembering the rear side as well. I was still pleased with how it looked like and I had even avoided any happy accidents.

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)

A multiphase priming process

for thing in things:

As I've mumbled many a time, I had decided to take care of the painting and final assembly a bit more complicatedly than usual. The hulk of the Ural was already weird enough with its structure (to someone like me who's very used to the sleek and clear lines of Panzers), so I decided that I'd save my few remaining poor hairs if I painted all the main subassemblies separately and only set them together when they weren't overshadowing each other while painting. Some guru could've painted everything perfectly on a fully assembled BM-21 but I'm just a nonsense-class amateur who does this for fun, so I chose this route.

Of course I had to do all this in many sessions to achieve the cleanest results. I started by setting the smallest bits on masking tape strips so that they wouldn't fly around under the air pressure coming from the airbrush and so that I wouldn't have to fight with my fingers being on the way, either. On the first session I painted one side completely and the next evening I flipped the bits around for the remaining sides.

The spare wheel rack I painted 90% on the first go and then just fixed what had remained obscured. This bit was a very simple thing to paint and I guess I could've glued it onto the chassis but somehow I had the idea of it ending up being on the way or something being blocked annoyingly. So out of convenience I did it separately.

The bulkies of parts 

The truck itself was just insane. Especially with the power transfer system that was blocked by the frame and, well, absolutely everything on the bottom. They were casting shadows over each other and were generally difficult to reach. I couldn't leave them untouched so I spent a huge amount of time in preparation and going over things with the airbrush multiple times just in case.

In the end the truck took two very long priming sessions, of which the first one was the more complicated one by a long shot. I started with the engine compartment, of course, and the nose area in general. When I had painted my fingers into a corner, also known as the rear axles, I left the model to dry overnight. Then I finished (and did some touching up) the rest the next evening.

The carriage

What remained was pretty simply painted. Luckily I realized at this point that I'd actually want to paint the core of the spare wheel as well, so I quickly detached and cleaned the halves and took them onto the painting station. Again I took care of the priming process in two stages, especially as the tubes ate paint like a starving wild beast. I also had to leave some parts clean to avoid those annoying "wet paint got stuck here" effects.