Finished LRDG Chevy's

As mentioned last week I have been working on some LRDG vehicles for my 6mm 1942 North Africa Project. I bought the models several months ago but I wasn't going to rush into painting them until I was happy I had a good colour scheme for them and a clear idea of how I was going to use them in future games. As I mentioned on Friday I found several excellent websites and a back copy of an article from Model Military International that I found very inspiring and helped me decide on a daring - even risky - hard edged camouflage pattern consisting of Desert Pink and Pale Blue. As you can see from the following pictures I have finished, and personally I really like the way these have turned out. 

Three Half Patrols with two Jeeps as the HQ Section.

A close up showing the side front and rear of these Chevy trucks. The truck on the left has a captured 20mm Breda anti-aircraft gun mounted in the back. In a moment of madness I also added small painted details such as the black strip of paint on the front nearside hood which would have had the name of the truck painted in white. 

As usual I have labeled all the bases although fitting these longer labels on was a tight squeeze.

The models come in one piece with just the machine guns separate. But the guns were far too fragile to stand up to rough handling and the lack of extra crew (other then a driver) really bothered me. In the end I raided my 'bitz-box' and found some suitable artillery crew, HMG's and officers to mount in various positions within the trucks. A lot of clipping and filing later the new crew fitted well and mean each truck is different to the next. 

Mixing the right shade of desert pink was difficult. I used some old Squid Pink (from the Vallejo Game Colour Range) and added white until I had the shade I wanted. It needed to be much lighter than the finished look to allow for the dark ink wash I would apply to the model after base coating. 

The pink base coat still looked scarily bright (this picture just doesn't show that well). After I had added the light blue camo pattern and dusted the whole model with weathering the brightness was brought under control. The final ink wash completed the process so the finished models don't look 'neon-pink' on the games table!

I have to say these trucks were great fun to paint. The models were very well detailed without a single flaw or piece of flash on any of the castings. The lack of additional crew was a little bit of a disappointment but I had great fun finding suitable models for a bit of micro conversion work. And painting these was great fun as well, albeit a little nerve wracking when I applied that first coat of pink. I'm really happy with how these turned out and I can't wait to use them in a game... now I just need to build myself an Axis airfield for these guys to attack!