The longest spraying session so far!

My friends, I dropped off the grid for several days because I was very busy with airbrushing... and I wanted to present you the finished base coat that's ready for some enamel, oil, and acrylic treatment!

The thing is... the tank looks weird, and painting it in unusual colors makes it look even weirder :D It was hard to get used to the whole thing after I finished the hairspray chipping, so I decided to power through the process and apply some post-shading and a quick layout of the weathering as well. In other words, I wasn't convinced until I threw some post-shading on it.

Now, let me say that this tank is not small, and it took ages to finish each of the painting steps. I used the brand-spanking-new AK RC lacquer paints for the initial rust tones, and they seem to be a pleasure to spray. But I wanted to play it safe with the chipping layers, and switched to Tamiya acrylics for the yellow and black. Funny thing was, I ran out of Flat Yellow on the pancake train and forgot to buy a new bottle, so I had to mix the base coat from Yellow Green, Buff, and White.

The black areas are painted with Flat Black and Buff. Here I ran into my ever lasting problem with chipping over multiple layers. It's just so hard to match the shape of the steel chips in the yellow layer! Thus, additional work with paintbrushes might come in handy later.

Also, I was worried about the decal quality, but they're superb. The carrier film completely disappears after a quick coat of setting solution.

Post-shading is what really gave some life to this model. I started with yellow ink from AK which gave the base color more vibrancy. A faint hint of white ink was sprayed over the decals. Black Brown AK ink was then applied around all those details and tight spaces, and I also used it to lay out some basic stains and streaks of grime. Finally, my rust mixture from the previous model, Flat Yellow + Hull Red, was airbrushed over the largest chips.

It was honestly one of the most exhausting spray sessions ever for me, my right hand still hurts from the tight grip on my airbrush, lol. Especially my index finger from that careful control of the trigger.  

Next up is an enamel pin wash which is always a nice, relaxing task!