Boots on the ground

Boots on the ground….

A nice name for the operation currently on my painting bench.

152 figures to paint, seven Sherman tanks and 8 x 75mm pack howitzers

To date I have made some nice progress.

Stripping all the figures was a mixed bag.
Most stripped like dream.
Half the guns and some of the figures had a very thick dark green enamel oil based paint and that took not just simple green but the brass wire brush to get that off.

The guns had alot of super glue and blue tack on them and that was covering up good detail but holding it together remarkably well.

I cleaned this all off and I drilled the gun bearing and pinned the barrel to the carriage… which looks great. I used a small amount of green stuff to stick the gun barrel angle covered with a minute amount of super glue. So those are now finished and ready for priming.

Meanwhile the figures were all glued to card and primed with KearKote(TM) black metal primer and they look good.

Some parts were missing and I easily managed to get some replacement parts from Battlefront who are just totally awesome to deal with when you need some parts replaced. I really do love dealing with them for my miniatures.

I then went to base coat the airborne in their distinctive colour. I mixed Tamiya German Grey a little bit into Kahki and got a good colour. This was airbrushed on to the figures and they look great.

After setting I have then started painting colour by applying brown. This is painted onto the boots, guns, shovel handles and the helmet strap. The helmet strap is important as when you paint later in Olive drab (OD) you just brush each side of the strap and it leaves a crisp strap in brown.. which shows up alot when viewed from above.

some pics for you.

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Operation “Get Cracking!” Pt 3

Ok I dug deep and painted all the khaki in less than three hours.
Thais pretty good going for a whole platoon and a weapons platoon component too.

Sure I have made some small errors.. such as missing some wood colour on SMG butts .. you can see for yourself. It is hard to pick the Khaki here.. I hope in later parts after washing that a very light dry brush will fix it.

Bye for now.. we are getting stronger!

Operation “Get cracking!” Pt 3

After working on the trial figures I re thought the order I’m working in with colours.

What drove this was the realisation that the leather strap on the US helmet needs painted to make the figures look great.
Also the brown colours typically but up to other colours that makes painting rifles in hands difficult.

So order is :

base : spray paint Dunkelgelb
Brown: boots, rifles, SMG’s, entrenching tools, pistol holsters and the helmet strap.
Khaki: Webbings, water bottle, some pistol holsters.
Olive green/grey: Knee, elbow patches and bags.
Black: Weapons metal. Boot soles, knife handles.
Flesh tone: Flesh
Olive Drab: Helmets and some pouches
Magic wash: all except for flesh.
Magic flesh wash: rose tinted wash to flesh.

So lets see how it goes.

Oh .. I have two mortars to be custom made.. as I seem to be short both of them and scavenge 5 x 30 cal Mg’s
This is what you get for buying second hand.

    Bye for now