Hotchkiss H39 – 03

Painting the interior

This post serves more as a gallery with images of the finished interior rather than a blog, because in all honesty, very little can be seen through the front hatches when finished. With the closed up turret in place, the fact that no other light is allowed in also reduces the visibility. After all the work done on this, it’s nice to have them available, as everything is glued in place and the interior will never be seen in this light again.

Temporarily setting the top hull in place and using it as a template, I was able to mark where the upper hull would eventually sit with a pencil. This meant that I could mask off the area to be painted inside this line and be able to cement the top hull in place afterwards.

The base colour of red-brown is sprayed with Tamiya acrylics. This works as a primer also, and is much easier to brush paint a painted surface that straight onto bare plastic. This was then re-sprayed with a white and buff mixture as per the reference images I had. Using the darker base colour and allowing some to show through in corners, along edges and in deeper crevices, it gives a lot of depth to the details.

All details are brush painted with Humbrol enamels. I have never had much luck when trying to brush paint with acrylics, and I have no interest to start from the start again, so I tend to stick to enamels. I also like the advantage of being able to blend these with oils when necessary.

No attempt was made to get correct colours; this is not interesting for me and when weathered, making the extra effort is more or less lost. I prefer to get it to look close, but also allow myself to play with the colours to add both interest and contrast.

Weathering is made with a brown/black mix. I made some washes first, thinned with Humbrol´s own enamel thinner, and then painted some chip marks on edges and high wear areas. Then the floor area received a brush with assorted colours of dry pastels to imitate dirt and dust. I gave the whole interior a final spray with flat coat (Model Master) to have a nice flat finish and also secure the pastels. Finally I made some oil spills with thinned black paint and satin varnish.

The final few images here show what is actually visible when the top hull is in place. Next up is to fix the top hull in place and add the exterior details.