Hanomag Base Color and Decals

I've reached the slowest point of the project, painting and weathering. So much waiting. Not so much time. I don't think this is going to get done in the next 6 days. 

During the painting process I was able to "watch" Welcome To the Jungle (the Van Damme movie, and not related to Guns & Roses) and Gettysburg on Netflix, so about three hours. I saw things, followed a story, didn't really hear any words because of the air compressor. Something tells me that Welcome To the Jungle isn't going to see any Oscar nominations.

So exciting, pre-shaded wheels on sticks.

Nearing the end of the pre-shading extravaganza, I started to get the hang of it! Pre-shading was done with flat black. I was having some trouble getting a nice clean, fine line out of the airbrush. When I was shooting a fine line it was coming out like very small round dots. Maybe it was a paint consistency issue?

I seriously had doubts as to whether or not pre-shading was a futile exercise, but I thought I would give it a try anyway.

It's like a wheel graveyard!

The base coat is Panzer Schwarzgrau (black-grey). I think my skepticism was mostly accurate. It was difficult keeping the pre-shading visible, but it's a little more noticeable in person. My original plan was to chip the base coat to reveal the oxide primer. I didn't because I wanted to accelerate some progress on this build at the moment. I'll give it a shot soon though.

Now it looks pretty close to the plastic it was molded in!

After three coats of gloss, the decals were applied.

Based on some minimal research, Hanomags did not appear to be heavily marked.

The stuff I used here was Model Master Acryl Flat Black and Panzer Schwarzgrau. The gloss coat was Alclad II Gloss Klear Kote (ALC 310) Lacquer and the decals were set with Micro Set and Micro Sol.

I used this website for some historic photos of the Hanomag, World War Photos (Hanomag) 

Now that the decals are done, I will be putting on a few more coats of gloss for some basic oil streaking before moving on. There is plenty of work left on the little parts, rubber for the wheels, the tools, the guns and finally the tracks. I still need to figure out what to do with the tracks.