The Painting Guide for Rubicon’s 250 Alte

It’s been a while in the works due to life taking me for a spin, but I’m back with this tutorial walk-through on how I painted my Alte by Rubicon.  My methods of painting tend to leave my subject a bit grittier than most would leave their vehicles. Take what you will from this walk-through!

My goal with this vehicle is to emulate the appearance and condition a vehicle would appear to be while in service to the Desert Afrika Corps.

Keep in mind that I left the interior blank as I have a crew that I’m working on separately that will be placed, along with equipment inside of the vehicle.

Without further ado, we start the model off with quick bit of primer.  I tend to use the airbrush and apply Alclad’s black primer in two light passes.  It’s enough to give the paint something to adhere to, but it also preserves the details.

Once, the primer has cured for at least 12 hours, I apply a Tamiya’s German Grey.  I keep the tone dark and I do not apply any highlights as I want the darker paint to show through a bit once the sand color is applied.  Believe me, it’ll make sense in the later steps. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the vehicle in its grey state.

After the grey has cured, I applied Ammo’s Washable Sand in light passes over the vehicle.  You’ll want to keep the coverage a bit sporadic and hardly uniform as you’ll want some of the original color to show through.  The goal here is to emulate the paint job the crew applied while gearing up for the field.

After the paint has had time to dry a bit, I took a larger chisel-tipped brush and began to wear on the sand color to create breaks in the paint and soften its coverage.  In places where I took too much off, I followed up with an additional light coat of the washable sand color.

With the washable sand color weathered as much as I felt necessary, I sealed the model with a satin coat and let the model sit for at least 12 hours.  Once the satin coat was cured, I began the process of applying decals to the vehicle.

As the decals dried, I took the opportunity to begin painting the details and gear of the vehicle.  For colors, I used Scale 75’s ScaleColor range as I love how flat the colors dry. After I finished painting the small details, I clear-coated the model with an additional coating of satin and prepared to apply filters and washes.

From here, I did a bit of back and forth with adding filters and washes and backtracking if I felt the need.  I used filters and washes by Ammo and I even broke out the oil paints and enamel thinner.  I worked in small steps and made sure to let the model dry before applying additional filters and effects.  Once I was happy with the filters and various washes, I did a once-over with pin washes to really bring out the details in the vehicle.

Satisfied with the oils, washes, and filters, I began the process of adding elements such as subtle streaks, chips, and scuffs to the vehicle.  I did the streaking effects with Ammo products and used acrylic paints for the subtle chipping and scuffs.

As I was on the homestretch, I took the opportunity to look the vehicle over for anything that I may have missed.  Satisfied, I applied pigments to the model with the use of enamel thinner and pigments by Ammo.  I did a tiny brush-full of pigments to a bit of thinner to create a nearly clear wash.  I built this wash up around the vehicle where I wanted pigments to accumulate.

With the pigments in place, the Alte is now completed!

If you enjoyed the review, feel free to leave a comment below as it really helps the site out.  Additionally, if you'd like to pick up this reduced-fat version of a Hanomag, head on over to Rubicon or follow this link to the direct listing.

Thanks for looking!