Alkmaar, Netherlands. February 2021. It's snowing. Painting.
Since this is a plastic kit I didn't need to use a resin primer/filler as I did on Mischa's U-Boot. A simple coat of AMMO by MiG One Shot Grey Primer from the airbrush was enough to give a good surface for the subsequent coats of paint to adhere to the model. Unfortunately, it needs 24 hours to properly cure, so the U-Boot spent the rest of the day in the WIP case, next to some Zombie Orcs and a small group of Roman gladiators.
Primed and ready for painting. It looks almost the same colour as the un-primed model, however, the lighting makes the grey appear a lot lighter than it is in real life. As can be seen, the primer is fine enough not to obscure the small details on the model.
As with Mischa's U-Boot, I'm left agonising over the colour scheme. Since this is a Type VII C and not a representation of a generic U-Boot, I can pick any u-boot. There are decals in the kit for 3 boats. These are U-96 and U-552, both operating in the North Atlantic and U-81 operating in the Mediterranian Sea in early 1942.
Now U-81 has a nice camouflage scheme, but it appears it didn't have the lifebuoys on the side of the conning tower. So if I choose to use that scheme, I'll need to cut the lifebuoys off. Having just painted the model, that's not going to happen. But U-96, of Das Boot fame, tempting. Or I may come across another candidate whilst waiting for the primer to cure.
Here's a better photo that shows the grey primer used.
The next step is to mask off the required areas ready for the paint scheme to be applied. When I'll get around to doing that I've no idea at the moment.