You guys are doing some excellent stuff here, congratulations to all. I’m inspired to join the convoy if my AFV Club 250/9 Ausf C Stummel passes muster? As you may be aware (Diorama or Bust) I’m assembling German & Soviet vehicles present on the northern Kursk salient around Ponyri in July ’43. References kept drawing me to the 2nd Pz Div’s Stummels, which most sources seem to agree had their original grey over-sprayed with dark yellow freestyle squiggles, as seen in these images from Restayn’s/Moller’s magnificient “Operation Citadel – North Salient” tome.

Being barely proficient with my airbrush I’d always shied away from attempting this pattern, it seemed impossible to get into all the panel angles without making a mess and, judging by how few attempts by others I could find on the net, perhaps it actually is impossible. Anyway I bought the kit last month with the intention of making it a standard yellow/green livery from some other unit and started making it. Then I caught up with what you guys are doing and thought maybe with a support group I might rise to the challenge by using an alternative strategy.

Standard practice is to give every AFV a base coat of Humbrol Enamel, they haven’t made “Steel” for years alas so I’ve settled for Metallic Aluminium. This coat provides enough grip for cheap Student quality acrylic paint overcoats, which with gentle fine-sanding can be teased off on edges etc. to reveal the “metal” beneath. I brush everything on in order to get tone variations, an airbrush (in my hands) gives a too-uniform finish. Over the Aluminium I scrubbed thin washes of black acrylic inside and out which created a decent weathered panzer-grey approximation. (Can’t believe I missed those ejector-pin marks on the inside of the gun-shield, good thing it isn’t glued down yet)
Then the tricky part – tilting each panel in turn to the horizontal to prevent runs, I dampened with plain water and then applied the dark yellow as per the pictures, in the end resorting to the mini-clamp/vice to get stability for the in-sloping panels, and a hair-dryer to fix it before it blurred too much.

So here’s the full paint-job - I’ve got way too close to it, does it look like it’s been sprayed on by 1/35th Man? I should add that there will be some thin “dirty” washes to darken the yellow & generally unify it with the grey after the decals have gone on, finishing off with a bit more caked mud on & behind the undercarriage plus an overall dust of dry powder paint or pastel like the other 250 in the pics below (PS Don’t look at the radio in the Stummel, it’s an abomination compared to Karl’s. And I’m not sure the fire extinguisher should be red, I dimly recall reading somewhere they were metallic or field-grey…?)