Devlan Mud home made wash – alternative ingrediant

Painted some more of the airborne troops in the past week.
Made up some more Devlan Mud home made wash too.
The new wash has a different ingredient however.

Because the brown ink is so hard to source and if you can it is so very expensive I used some brown dye instead.
The dye is used in schools and because it is a powder depending on how you mix it up gives you either a dye, drawing ink or other.

So I tried it and it works very well.. in fact I think it works better than ink.

“devlan mud” style wash is:
3 drops elmer’s (1.03ml)
10 drops matte medium (3.44ml)
5 drops water (1.72ml)
10 drops brown ink (3.44ml)
1 drop black ink (0.344)

10ml / 29ml =0.344ml

Mixing up two pots of Devlan mud wash

Boots on the ground

Some progress.
Michaels painting gymnastics has spurred me on to paint some more myself.

I had been a bit lax between my boys needs, us having colds, preparing for Christmas.. those cakes don’t make themselves and I had been feeling a bit off and had terrible shaking hands latley.

Anyways…

The new 0.5mm airbrush needle and nozzel arrived from Ophiir and will use that later on the tanks.
I have made some progress with the static grass applicator… just need to finish it.

Finished painting the brown on wood and boots and helmet straps.
Alot of overpaint at this stage.. but he helmets get a paint of Olive drab and that leaves the brown helmet straps which looks real cool.
There is no leggings on these guys .. so boots are painted right up to the trousers.
The face is the only part painted in flesh tone as they wear yellow nubuck leather gloves. Thats the next stage.
Metal is being painted black so thats why alot of overpaint onthe guns occours.. which is cool because faces are usually real hard to paint when there up close to guns… no problem this way.
anyhow the pics..

Classic thompson MG troops

Staff sgt pose
Staff sgt pose
Carbine
Carbine
Another carbine
Another carbine

These look rough.. but when finished will look great… just wait and see.

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.