“Brum, Brum!”

“Hey stop! I want to buy a soda, anyone else want a soda!”

“I ain’t stopping here man!”

“Why not?”

“You see what happened to the last car that stopped here?”

I’m staying in the “Wasteland” again this week but rather than bore you with another post about painting “post-apocalyptic” figures I thought instead I bore you with a post about painting “post-apocalyptic” vehicles instead (got to keep your readers amused, as they say!). So having recently ordered from “Wargames Terrain Workshop”, and “Losing my WTW cherry!!” (Dave’s words not mine). I set about one of the three vehicles I bought, a rather sorry looking scrap vehicle and…a drinks machine?

Both vehicles I tackled in a very similar fashion so I will cover these together, after the castings were cleaned up, I added the separate prop-shaft to the “mobile” one (yes it even has detail underneath!) Sadly I managed to break the blooming thing so added both pieces separately and built a little “transfer box” out of greenstuff to hide my shame! Both models them went outside to be sprayed up with some matt black, and this was then “touched up” (along with the underside of the one) with a brush and some more black paint. Both were then dry-brushed with chainmail, then rust was stippled over areas of the models where I thought rust would form. Next the wreck was stippled with some mid blue and the “Hot rod” with royal purple, in-between the areas of rust. These areas were then lightly stippled again with pale blue and lilac to give a lighter faded look to them. Now I did think about adding custom flames to the “Hot rod”, but thought that would be a pain to do, so instead I just painted one of the front doors in coffee and cream, then added some flames to this in bright red, orange, lemon yellow and black, as if it had been salvaged off of another car to repair this one. I added the lights and details next using silver, terracotta, and orange. And a small piece of the backseat of the wreck is visible, so more terracotta was added to make the seat a faded red, and coffee and cream were added to the exposed bit of “wading and foam”. Next I repainted (and tidied up) the tires and the odd area here and there with some black, before they were both given a coat of “Quickshade”. Once this was dry I went over the rust areas again, then added some orange highlights over these for fresher rust areas, and finally I gave them a selective dry-brushing with some butternut to add dust and dirt. Now the wrecked version needed its base painting and this I did in my usual way of a base coat of chocolate brown, then successive dry-brushes of khaki and coffee, then areas being picked out in scenic green. Now before I flocked said areas with some Javis “Summer mix” hairy grass, I added a few bits of “rubberized” moss to represent weeds and vegetation growing up it, then as I said it was flocked.

My “Coke” machine I took a slightly different tack on, rather than spraying the whole thing black I started by taking a piece of fine sandpaper and “roughed up” the areas at the sides and the curved font to make a better key for what I had in mind later on, then painted the back, top and exposes edges in matt black, before dry-brushing them in chainmail. I then put in a search of Google images for “Coca Cola” logos and of the ones that came up I picked two that looked suitable. These I then resized to fit the front and sides of the machine (Sounds easy, but I printed four out before I got it right!!), the side panels were then painted with PVA wood glue and the paper logos were applied. The front was a bit more difficult as the hole for the cans to come out of had to be cut out, this I did by holding the paper in place and with a really sharp knife cutting a rough shape, that I then refined away from the resin machine (it was a little rough but I could paint in any rough edges later). Next I took some dark red and roughly painted around the lettering on the sides, then did this again as a sort of highlight with terracotta red, handily this was pretty close to the red I had printed out, I also used a bit of these two colours on the front picture and the top of the machine too to tie the whole thing together. I repainted the white on the front (to tidy up around the hole, and touched up the lettering here and on the sides. Then touched up the black on the bottle, and added the mid grey shadow on the curved “slashes” through the side logos. Next I took some terracotta, white, dark red, shamrock and orange and added the selection buttons down the side of the front before adding some details in white or mid grey. This however was now looking far to pristine (this is the wasteland after all!) so it was out with the rust and this was dry-brushed/slapped about around all the edges, I then went over this with a highlight of orange, now it looked as if it had been left out in the desert for a hundred years! This too then had a coat of strong tone “Quickshade” and once dry I went around once again with the rust and orange, to add some “fresher” areas of rust.

All three were finished off with a coat of matt varnish. I’m pretty happy with how all three items turned out, and I have to finish with a big thank you to Dave Stone, of WTW for all his help and service, he’s a great chap to deal with, and very talented to boot! I have a few more bits from Dave’s range to do, but next week I think I’ll get the last of my “Wasteland” figures finished.

Till then, cheers Roger.