37 Chevy Gasser - Hand Painted Artwork

[Bob S]

Hey Ryan thank you dude! ...this is one of those builds that looks better up close (or maybe it's because of my photo work). BTW, since I took these pictures, I realized I went a little heavy on the rust for the door handles and headlight bezels, so I wiped them down a bit with a swab and alcohol. That portion of the weathering wasn't locked in with Dullcote. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if Dullcote works over Tamiya Weathermaster pigments...

[Bob S]

Hey Spanky - thanks man...show Bob -- I told him about my plan for this car, but he hasn't seen it yet.

[Ryan K]

Looks great Bob, can't wait to see it up close.

[Spanky]

Bob,that is just way to cool.I love the weathering,looks just like it was hauled out of the junk yard.
spanky

[Bob S]

This was my first time to try hand-painting letters and artwork directly on the body of a model car, which turns out, is a whole lot harder than drawing on a piece of paper laying flat on the table, but it was a fun experiment! I'm gonna be trying more of this on more projects soon!
This is my tribute to those crazy fellas from the 50's and 60's who lived to drag race with whatever they could get their hands on....probably built in their Dad's garage...the big blown souped-up motor was the most important thing. Winning on Saturday night was all they could think about all week long. And maybe safety wasn't exactly first on their mind--just winning with the craziest fastest car out there! 
This is the excellent 1/25 AMT '37 Chevy kit that comes with the option to build one of three ways, and I chose to build a mad gasser in honor of those drag racing pioneers.
The body was primed with Krylon Gray Ultra-Flat primer and allowed to dry outside for about an hour while I took my oil pastel sticks and scraped 5 colors into powder with an Xacto on a piece of wax paper...Orange Rust, Yellow, Light Blue and Brown. I used cotton swabs to mix those powder colors together a bit, and then rubbed the body down to appear severely weathered, like it was finally rescued from the junkyard.
I sprayed Testor's Dullcote over the body to protect all that weathering work, and to prep for the task of hand-painting the lettering and ball-and-chain artwork -- the lettering was done with acrylic paint markers, and the ball & chain was done with the edge corners of the pastel sticks that I made the powders from earlier. Then a second coat of the dulcote to protect the artwork.
The chassis was painted Krylon Red Oxide and set aside. I added a few of my own touches to the beastly 427 powerplant -- like the MOROSO valve covers, some CRAZY PIPES from a Miss Deal funny car kit, velocity stacks made from Evergreen Styrene tube, a parts-box blower, and I made the fuel pump tubing from some clear plastic bead string stuff I found at Michael's that I painted with Tamiya Clear Yellow acrylic to appear full of gasoline - then hooked up to the kit-supplied fuel pump.
The rear tires are the most excellent pad-printed M&H dragmaster piecrust slicks from AMT parts pack--the Cragars are lightly coated with Tamiya Light Gunmetal to bring the kit chrome shine down a bit.
Seatbelts were made from masking tape painted the same Light Gunmetal, and P/E buckle hardware was added.
Finally, I used Tamiya Weathermaster Orange rust to give the door handles and headlight bezels that neglected look like it was just dug out from years in the junkyard.
This was a BLAST to build!  Thank you AMT.