Black Panthers – panther platoon Pt 2

I used poly kote metal primer to spray paint the stripped ad new Panthers.

Poly Kote is an acrylic metal primer and is dull finish.

I was surprised at what appeared to be heavy cote dried very thin. Some interior corners didn’t receive an application but this is more a symptom of my sweep and pass spray technique than a problem with the spray pattern.

You will notice some green and grey areas wher the cote is not covering.

Platoon make up is:                         Advance Panthers

Kompanie HQ – peaked cap commander at cupola. Bare hands at rest.

Kompanie HQ 2ic – Closed cupola but has front track guards removed.

All non command tanks have a spare road wheel on the right hand side of the turret.

Plt HQ – soft cap commander at cupola with binoculars in hands.

Plt Panthers – closed cupolas with spare road wheel.

Plt Panther 2ic has a set of expelled shell casings on the rear deck.  These casings are putty rolls. As they are Milliput I will be able to file and shape them in place to tidy up the shapes a bit better. But with correct painting you won’t notice any sculpting defects in these.

The thin Shurzen panels will be painted and attached seperatly at later date as some pinning will be required. These will be blue-tacked onto the tanks after dunkelgelb application so that the airbrushed pattern in brown and green will match up with the tank hull side patterns. Pinning and fixing will follow after the tracks and road wheels are detailed properly.

Anyways… here is the picture.shells on deck of Panther

Grimgor Ironhide

For a long time my favourite and best painted figure in my collection (with the exception perhaps of my Avatar which I went and sold :cry:, anyway moving on).  This minature truly embodies the mean and green spirit of the orcs.  Obviously I’ve pretty much faithfully followed Games Workshop colour scheme as I almost always do.  There have been a couple of times when I’ve deviated thinking something would look good painted with a different scheme and then.. well.. it didn’t.  As a result I have little faith in my visualisation of colours and so tend to copy that which is proven.  The only thing thats a little different is the armour isn’t quite as blackened and the green skin isn’t quite as light.  Each time I think I should lighten the skin I decide not too.  I kinda like it dark.

Orc & Goblin Giant

I bought this model cheaply second hand.  It was partially and very poorly painted, plastic cement had been used to glue the figure and had melted and distorted some of it.  Thankfully the paint was very thin so though it looked poor it didn’t adversely affect the figure.  Anyway after much puttying and sanding and swapping out the things that I could swap out (it came with it’s sprues of additional bitz) I started painting it.  Not used to painting a lot of flesh I was a little apprehensive but I think it turned out alright.  Knowing what I know now I would have done it quite differently but alas that is not the case.  Anyway painted up and pretty happy with it, the cow I still consider to be awesome (and by this stage I hadn’t ruined it with my rubbishy freehand orc design on the cloth between his legs) I went off to varnish it before somebody chipped the paint.

I sprayed the varnish on as I normally do only for the mist to start to condense into a stream part way through and before I could react it dumped a truckload of varnish going from his head to his belly, naturally on all the light flesh coloured parts.  I stopped immediately and then watched to my horror as the acrylic paint started to split and sag from the weight of the enamel varnish.  Laying the model on it’s back to vainly attempt to stem the affects of gravity on the sagging paint I stomped back into the house and tried not to think about it for a few hours.  When I went back the model was virtually ruined, or at least that’s how I felt at the time.

I sanded back the ruined paint (quite a mission with all that varnish whilst still trying to preserve much of the other paintwork) and repainted and touched up.  Turned out ok, not as smooth as it was but probably not too noticable.  The most obvious areas are around the nipples and the belly button where it was difficult to sand.  Fortunately you expect a bit of wrinkly fleshy tissue in these areas so it actually isn’t much of a problem.  In this photo you can’t really tell.