Potts Panzergrenadiers

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.

Devlan Mud alternative wash

A apparently you cannot get the Devlan mud wash anymore I looked for an alternative and this little recipe was found at

I like the sound of it.

I remember some years back chatting to a guy at polytech who painted heaps of 1/72 scale soldiers and often would over coat them in PVA glue. I was skeptical but apparently it made the paint stay.

The washes we had from GW flowed well and dried well… so I suspect this recipe will work.

All I need to to get some Matt medium.

…my “devlan mud” style wash is:
3 drops elmer’s(PVA glue)
10 drops matte medium
5 drops water
10 drops brown ink
1 drop black ink…

Edit: 18th October.

I have been looking to make up some more Devlan Mud wash as it is so good I have been using it all up.
However one ingredient is horribly expensive.
Brown ink. Once the colour used by financial auditors in the ledgers it has fast gone out of vouge in the stationary market. You can’t buy big bottles of it. You can only get little 25ml bottles for a reasonably high price.

So I have decided to make an alternative. I will be trying it out soon.

Instead of 10 drops of brown ink I will try using Burnt sienna dye or dye powder in the mix.
Dye is very strong in colour and depending on how you dilute it you can change its properties.
I bought some FAS dye for about $12 and this is enough to make. A 30gm bottle of dye looks to be about enough to make 7 cups of dye for art purposes. So may make about 5 cups of ink substitute.
It’s also Kiwi made and that’s cool.
SO $12 for about 7 x 250ml Burnt sienna dye or $12 for 15ml of W&N brown ink.
I will use the last of my first batch and do a comparison on a texture soon.

WIP Greenskins

The following is what I have been working on over the last few evenings in preparation for the games weekend in Invercargill in a weeks time.  Apologies for the poor quality image and lighting.  A number of the models are unbased simply because that takes time and my focus is on getting them painted first.  Also there is a glossy look to them as in the photos they’ve just been overcoated in matt varnish which is still wet.  (I had taken the photos prior to the clear coat but hadn’t used a tripod and they’d come out a bit blurry).  Lastly included are some Skaven weapons teams which I’ve not photographed properly yet but thought I would add them here whilst I had the camera out.

 

Orc Battle Standard Bearer & Skaven Poisoned Globe Mortar

Skaven Warpfire Thrower

Two Night Goblin Shamans