As a modeler the special vehicles of the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG from now) have always inspirited me. Their unusual and informal appearance makes them to a unique topic.
To recreate an accurate model need a lots of information, and historical knowledge, however it gives a modeler a great freeness to build and paint what he likes.
The main reason for this great freeness is that not so many photographs had been taken of these vehicles. Many vehicles have destroyed or lost in the desert and the crew often gave the same name for their new vehicle, so it makes hard to identify all off the trucks. Another thing, that the commanders had their free will to paint their vehicles what ever they like.
The most commonly used colors were the standard sand color of the British Army often whit light blue stripes and the so called BS Pink (British Standard Pink), which was a colour mixed on the warfront, from the standard sand and the red oxide primer. This mixture was a strange pink colour what gave an extremely good camouflage effect at dusk, and down (these forces operated mainly at this stage of the day).
When I have heard from this camouflage I decided to paint my Chevrolette truck pink. But first off all I had to build the vehicle.
I have used the Tamiya LRDG Chevrolette kit. (For those, who are not familiar in modelling this is a plastic kit from several tiny pieces which is need to be glued together and than need to be painted.) This kit is quite good and accurate, and most of all the only LRDG Chevy kit on the market.
The building of the model wasn’t hard. So it went fast.
The painting was a harder job. I had to think it over the life of the vehicle. First when it arrived to the front it got a nice sand colour. Than it was supplied to a crew, which had painted it pink. They don’t did a job like a professional painter, or like the painters in the factory, they just mixed some pink paint and painted the main surfaces of the vehicle. After this they have gone to the desert. The sand, the wind, the rocks and the crew have chipped the paint. The sun had faded the colour mainly at the horizontal surfaces. The sand had sat on all over the vehicle, and some places the paint have worn off to the bare metal.
So I followed this theory at the painting.
First I sprayed the whole truck into sand yellow. Than I tried something new. I had masked some little spots to create the chipped paint effect. Than I sprayed the main areas pink. After this I removed the masks and voila the yellow paint comes out under the pink, realistic chipped paint! Than I had to represent the fading effect of the sun. It was achieved by spraying a very light sandy colour all over the vehicle. After this was done I painted the dark chipped areas (bare metal) with a thin brush. I have used a dark grey tone. When it was done I used some pastel chalk diluted whit turpentine to create the dust effect.
The many stowage were painted separately and were glued to place after painting.
The conclusion is that it was fun to build and paint such an unusual vehicle. It is a real unique part of my collection, a Pink Island in the ocean of green camouflaged vehicles.