Painted van

 

Now the cat has wandered off, I get a precious morsel of modelling time to whack some paint on the van. As this is a traditional build, I'm painting it by hand. All my other rolling stock is hand-painted, and with a bit of weathering, it looks fine. Saves sorting out the airbrush too. 

Colour should be bauxite, but the shade on the Ratiop box looks like a pale earth tone. I don't think it has faded either. I tried that, and decided I didn't like it, so whacked some Humbol brick colour over the top. It needed a second coat anyway. 

I probably should have bought a bottle containing an "approved" shade of paint, but bauxite is one of those colours that seems to change shade depending on the photo you look at. My feeling is that it wasn't as stable a shade in real life, so always using the "correct" version isn't any more accurate than my bodge. 

The result isn't bad in real life, it looks a bit streaky in the photo. Once I've added lettering, and dirt, this should look fine. And at least I'll have managed to wrangle some modelling time for myself!

Oh, and the roof is a mix of Humbrol 66 and 67, with loads of talcum powder dabbed into it. The resulting texture is very pleasing.