Tamiya Avante Black Project

Page 2: Painting

Painting the model ended up easier than I thought in some ways, but harder in others. I expected to have to paint the black and silver separately, but it turns out all the silver is done with stickers so no masking is necessary. On the other hand, the kit does not come with window masks for some reason so I had to do that manually. The instructions present the option of painting the body in either black or smoke. I didn't like the idea of seeing the electronics through the body, so I painted the body black but did the wing and undertray in smoke as shown.

Here's the painted body before the overspray film was removed, but after I'd removed my window masking. The picture on the right is the completed model with all stickers installed. The stickers took a long time, especially the long silver stripes which wrap around compound curves.

The driver took longer to paint than the body. I started with flat black spray, then brushed the seat and suit separately. The helmet is sprayed gun metal gray, then everything else is stickers. Paranoid Perry never looked so good.

From the back you can see the translucent wing which turned out better than I expected.

These photos wouldn't be complete without comparing the Black Special to the 2011 edition. You can see that the overall size and shape are exactly the same. Apart from the liveries, the obvious difference is the narrower front tires and pink wheels.

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