Whilst visiting for a gaming weekend prior to my birthday Mike bought me a birthday cake and some vouchers. When he was forced to leave early to return home he left his FOW panzergrenadier and us airborne companies. With Martin having organised to paint up the airborne I grabbed the german stuff (also took the stuarts and the m8) in order to paint as a gesture of thanks.
The stuarts and m8 were kinda caked in thick bright mid green paint so I tossed them in some greenstuff. When they came out the two remaining .50cals broke off, I looked at fixing or replacing these but gave up on the idea. The mount needed bored out again and the resin proved a bit to brittle. One hatch door was missing so, a 37mm main gun. I replaced the gun with a bit of brass rod and moved one of the hatch doors around and closed them so the commander was the only model with open doors or in this case open door. I primed them matt black enamel (spray can) and then airbrushed khaki green. Wasn’t happy with the colour so sprayed over with a dark green. Washed with brown wash and painted tracks GW scorched brown, drybrushed GW codex grey.
Stugg’s, Tiger, Halftrack and Kfz 17s. These were unpainted and just required some disassembly in order to paint them (taking tracks off essentially). Again primed matt black enamel and then airbrused tamiya dark yellow (as opposed to tamiya desert yellow). Next painted on the camo scheme, a couple of patches where the brush sputtered and made little mistakes but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. I always find painting camo nerve wracking I’m so worried that I’m ruining a decent model, it feels wrong and often a first glance it looks wrong. After I was done I washed them with Agrax Earthshade (GW brown wash). I really needed to water this down or put a bit of floor polish in it because this applied quite a strong brown filter to the yellow which looked proper tan coloured when it dried. To rectify this and any mistakes with the airbrush I drybrused dark yellow carefully around the camo scheme. Once satisfied with the finish I then drybrushed some light bleached bone picking up the edges (this seems to have mostly disappeared after varnishing). Painted tracks GW scorched brown, drybrushed GW codex grey.
The infantry I snapped off their bases and thinking them cleaned up after a cursory look I primed them. Painted some with camo smocks and some with fieldgrey. Not much else to really. I found that they weren’t cleaned and had some horrible flashing and mold lines. I painted over most and cut away the worst but I was trying to bang these out in good time some wasn’t keen to start over on them. In the end I don’t think they’re too obvious. Other thing of note is that one stand and a couple of other guys look to be some other manufacturers (ie not battlefront) russians instead of germans.
Dam fine job Mike… the Stuarts are a greener look than the photography suggests. I like all these paint jobs and the grass on the grenadiers matches the remaining ones that were painted.
Your amazing to have painted these so fast. I’m only finished cleanup and priming the foot soldiers so far. Still soaking the guns and tanks. Shermans.
Yeah true they do look a bit greener, and for that matter the dunkengelb looks more tan. Bloody cameras, I give up. Yes indeed very happy with my three week turnaround on these which is really two weeks since my first week involved stripping the stuarts. I didn’t prime or airbrush anything until the following weekend. All of which makes this probably my fastest paint job ever.
…least you’re doing cleanup, I feel a bit guilty about that actually. Hopefully this provides a little inspiration. Obviously I finished with your decals as well. Thanks. The Command Decision ones were quite nice to use although my first one was a shocker hadn’t realised how big the actual decal was, had to trim down quite a bit.
Yeah well I’m bloody jealouse of those Stugs.. I’m sure they will work all the better for lookng the part.. and they have numbers and radio aerials… very nice.
well feel free to strip yours and I’ll repaint them 😀
they do look good though and the tiger, compared to my marders and kettenkrads you can definitely see an improvement