Donkey Kong is ready for dirt

My friends, after several sleepless nights and hours of painting, the model has all the rust effects and every detail is finished! I must say that this task was quite exhausting, definitely because some of the details on this model aren't the simplest, but my main suspicion is my lack of muscle memory. The last armor model I've done was the Puma from last summer and since then it was a truck, a huge water mill diorama, and two facades. Damn! I need to up my game! 

For the rust tones, I kept them subtle but also noticeable. After all, the tank landed in salty water. 

This time I kept the engineering tools in their raw color, which was completely a creative decision. US tools were painted OD + Black but it's rarely seen on restored vehicles - I guess they look prettier in natural colors even in real life :D But I've done this effect on the Chevy truck with heavily chipped paint, and this time I wanted them to "tidy up" the surface instead of adding more messy texture. 

The deep wading insulation was a bit tricky, but ultimately I decided to paint it this way. The black color of the asbestos paste created some sweet contrast with the faded OD, but to show that the whole thing is a combination of paste + cloth, I painted the inside of the insulation in tan colors. 

The headlights are simply painted with acrylics, and I made sure to paint only the top left tail light red, just as it should be :D 

I know the bottle on the turret is supposed to be wine or beer, but I wanted a bottle of Coca Cola to come with the commander's lunch, so I snatched the label from a Def Model set. 

The sandbags were masked with MRP putty, painted blackish brown and pre-shaded with an airbrush, then painted with glazes per usual. Some of the contrast will be covered up with dust, so I kept it a little stronger. The rest of the stowage was painted the usual way, a black-brown undercoat, then the base color followed by highlights. 

Also, every bit of the "hard" stowage is ready, but I'll glue it all in place once the earth effects are finished. 

Now I'll start adding dirt to the lower hull. My original intention was to create a dry, dusty finish, but one photo of King Kong shows some dark muddy tones on the tracks, so maybe I'll come up with something more interesting :)