[Texman]

Alrighty then. It's been awhile since I blessed ya'll with one of
my exceedingly excellent masterpiece of a work in progress
build thread. I'm sure everyone will appreciate the artful skill
and surgeon like techniques I will grace you with, both to astound
and make you realize.....

OH! Wait! Was that my outside my head voice? Oh man! An
internal monologue filter failure! AAHhhhhhh!

Ok, so now I have your attention (and hopefully got you laughing) with my
delusions of grandeour, this will be just my “still not as good a modeller as some of ya’ll”
out there build thread of the MT-LB (многоцелевой тягач легко бронированный,
Mnogotselevoy Tyagach Lekhko Bronirovannyi / multi-purpose light-armoured towing vehicle).

This kit was acquired from Clif Burton, of Papertigerarmaments. It is designed in
1/72, but I prefer working with my armor in 1/87, so I rescaled it.

There are several things I am changing, or modifying during this build. The first
item on my agenda was the paint scheme. I purchased the tri-color scheme,
and almost immediately put it through Paintshop for some changes. I personally
did not care for the pixelation of the graphics, so Clif sent me the b/w line
file to repaint. Using the aforementioned program, I matched the colors a
little closer to some photos, and to actual vehicles I had seen while overseas. I also
chose a smoother, feathered edge to the paint colors.



One thing you may notice, the colors appear on the bright side of life. There is a
reason for this and in upcoming installments, you will see why. As the vehicle is
weathered, it will tend to tone down the colors, so they needed to be brighter to
start with.

Here I have started on the road wheels. Using a technique that Pericles had reminded
me of, I used a small amount of glue to build up and give some shape to the part. Then,
reaching into the mental wayback machine, I began using some methods from my plastic
modeling days.

In this picture, from left to right is the sequence I used to work this part. 1, is the original part.
2 is the glue application. 3, I have begin applying a dark gray pastel chalk to the recessed areas
to begin depicting some depth to the part. 4, now I am applying a lightened acrylic paint
to the raised portions, to further the effect. In the last position,
you can see I have used a little more of the chalk brushed
onto the bright new paint to help tone it down and blend it in with the rest of the wheel.


More to come…..Why yes, thank you nurse, I will take my meds now.