Hello everyone and a happy new year
(it's not too late to say this, isn't it?)
Well, this isn't actually my first build this year, since I built the model early last year and then put it aside but as I wanted to refresh my painting skills, this is my first paint job for 2010...
The model is Trumpeter, with some changes done to the exterior, (PLATT mount, wire cutters, laser range finder, non slip, ammo boxes and so on...)and a partial interior I had left over from an old Revell kit.
This is also the first time that I'm trying a sort of color modulation.
Feel free to share your thoughts and comment!

so here's what I'm after:


here's how it looked till yesterday:


this is how it looks now:


BTW when I took the pictures it was the fourth time I managed to break off the gun mount...arggh...


also tried the "hairspray technique" on the muffler...


finally here's a shot of the crew compartment:


I'll continue with painting the details and cutting the masks for the markings today, yet I don't know what I'll be doing after the markings are on, maybe some filters or such.
any suggestions on the colors to use?

Cheers Max

Hello everyone,
detail painting process about 90% done,(just the vision blocks and the decals left to do) so I thought it's time for a little update:

Tac marks such as the GCE- and shipping labels were sprayed on usings custom cut masks...


Cheers Max

Max,

It looks adorable! Keep doing the great job!

Very nice LAV, Ive got one of these in the stash and youve given a little inspiration to pull it out. You have one of the best 3 color nato schemes Ive ever seen what do you use to fade the colors oil, filters ? Very well done keep it up.

great build so far but just one thing: any M240's mounted on a vehicle tend to have the bipod removed for weight issues, its only in the infantry role that the 240B and G's have the bipod attached.

Is that something you learned in ROTC? It's only when they have a M240D, the one with spade grips, mounted that you see it without the bipod. Most of the time you see the M240G mounted, with bipod and butt stock. The other LAVs, such as the LAV-C2 or LAV-M or LAV-L, you see mainly the M240D mounted on. If you do a Google search of LAV-25, there are dozens of pictures of them in Iraq and Afganistan with the M240G mounted.

Hi,
first off thanks for the kind words everyone.

@Jay: I haven't applied washes or filters so far, just plain airbrush work.
but I'll apply some brown/dark brown detail washes to bring out the details a little more and some filters to blend everything later.

@Modelman741: Tony is right, I even saw some LAV mounted M240's with the handguard in place. however if I was trying to remove the bipod the gun would most likely blow over...

anyway, just finished the detail painting process and applied the decals (used a selection of spare dragon decals since i haven't yet seen any LAV with white markings such as trumpy suggests) so I'll put on some washes and filters within the next days...
yet I'm still not sure about the filter colors. tried some blue on another model, which nicely adds some more "volume" to the nato green, but on my reference pic (the one at the very top) it looks more like some kind of red would be better...
any suggestions on a apropriate color, has anyone tried using red as a filter for green yet?
here are some pictures:





Cheers Max

Hi Folks,
well, after the M240 broke off again I glued it back on, finishsed painting the details, chipping, detail wash and applied the filters (used blue, red and several shades of brown now).
Time to start with the funny part: DUSTING!!!


I'll post more pics of the weathering process next week
please comment

Cheers Max

very nice looking! cant wait to see more!

First off, thanks Matt...

Well, turns out the funny part wasn't actually that funny since I over-over-over did the dusting which made all the nice oil-, post shading- and highliting effects vanish...
Oh and while I was trying to remove some of the dust I even damaged the base color and removed some of the paint chips and one of the GCE labels...
so for now just some pictures of how it looked bofore it got lost in the sandbox...










Cheers Max

Nice weathering sor far, really like the effects on the muffler.


cheers

Hey folks,
got some of the pigments removed and some of the stowage on this afternoon... still some details to do and I think I'm going to apply some more oils over the top to bring back some more of the initial depth of the paintjob or... whatever....

let me know what you think!





finally a detail shot, the wheels were pretty much the only pieces that looked the way they supposed to after the weathering...


Cheers Max

Oh, and for those interested:
the M240 repeatedly broke off twice during the weathering... ("repeatedly-twice", is that grammatically correct?)

cheers

Wow! Nice job

Looks nice !
All you need now is the crew to mount your model!
Must agree your muffler really looks great !

Well done !
Christopher

Nice work Max subtle detail very impressive

Max i really like the camo, how did you make it so clean? And secondly did you use mig pigments?

Thanks everyone,
nice to hear you like it...

Christopher, I'm not shure weather I'll put some figures in at all, I do only have some of those crappy tamiya tankers left over from my older builds and I'm relly too lazy to give them the proper treatment to make them look good...

Calvin, yes I used MIG pigments (light dust, gulf war sand, rubbel dust and europe dust).
As for the camo I used "FaberCastell" modelling clay to mask off the camo spots, then simply sprayed over it using different shades of the three colors (each lightened up and then toned down applied over the base colors with the masks still in place).
However I can't recommend that particular clay, since it's really sticky and I had a lot of trouble removing it from the non slip surface, this way I even had to respray some of the areas, which messed up the initial color modulation and forced me to put on a postshading and highlighting over those areas.
So if you want to give this method a try, make shure to get some clay suited for masking (I suppose there are some special brands, designed to be used as masking materials).

Still working on the stowage and some minor touch ups, more pictures to follow next week...

Cheers Max