Finished the Hetzers for Shawn.  And I finished a Sturmovik.
man I am way out of practice painting, working on this app for Battlefront.  But its slowly coming back to me.
































I based my Sturmovik off this picture.  And like everything else magnetized to the stand.

Well, its been a very long time since I've actually posted something painting related.  I've been very busy getting the app going for Battlefront.

It seems strange but you can get out of practice painting.  I felt very rusty painting these German 88's.  Even taking pictures of them takes practice.  I couldn't remember any settings.  I had to play around with camera settings again.  It was almost like starting the hobby all over again.

But with the App nearing completion I've found time to begin painting again.  I've been into Flames of War for almost 5 years now.  And these 88's were probably one of the first models I bought.  I even took them to a tournament this past weekend.  To bad 88's stick.  The entire platoon was wiped out in every battle.

I did a little bit of research into the 88's ammo.  AA ammo had a brass casing with a yellow head.  And strangely enough anti-tank ammo has a black head with an iron casing.  I'm not sure why the different casings.  Must have something to do with the burn of the gun powder or something?  If anyone knows be sure to let me know.

I even added rare earth magnets, but after its all put together...you can't turn the damn thing anyway.  All the guys are in the way.   

Anyway, hopefully I will begin to have more painting updates soon.  I'll be getting 2 sets of hezters done for Shawn.  Probably with in the week.  I re-did one set of them.  I the ambush pattern marks were to big.  So, I'm doing those 4 in what shawn calls...chicken pox patter...

I look forward to hear from all my old friends, enjoy.

Marders tried to flank the Sextons....died.

Yes, I went to my 3rd tournament and won my 3rd one in a row.

Although I can take ZERO credit for it.

It was a 1250 doubles event.  I took Ersatz, with 2 Tigers, and 4 Marder III's.

Shawn was my partner again, and think he was ready to send me home, and play my army for me.

I played AWFUL.  I rolled like crap, my platoons couldn't do anything.  Especially my Marder III's.  Because they are one of my very favorite paint jobs, I had to use them.  Well they suck balls.   {not a kids show}

Dug in Hungarians and Ersatz.

Through 4 games my Marders failed ALL but 1 Stormtrooper move.  They died in 3 out of 4 battles.  In the 4 battle, 3 of them died, I made my motivation, and then just ran the last one off so we would get a 6-1 win.  AWFUL Marder III's.

They were the BEST looking vehicles there {even though I didn't win paint} but performed the worst out of anything there.  I don't know if I'll ever use them again.  They are just around to look good.  Kinda like my wife...right honey?  {shhhhh, I spent way to much money this tournament}

So, I'm sorry Shawn.  Thanx for carrying me through 4 games.  And besides all that I was really rusty.  I had a hard time deciding what to do.

Honestly my Ersatz did pretty well.  They did their job and held objectives.  really it was only the Marders that really sucked.

Defended onslaught of German Vets.

So, breaking it down out of 4 games I had 16 marders...15 of them were destroyed, and the last one ran home to momma.

But it worked out in the end.  Got a free JagdPanther Platoon with my winnings. 

Sorry don't have many pics.  My camera died at the start of game 3.

Finally finished the D-Day project.

And I'd have to say, these destroyed Panzer IV's are some of my favorite work.  They turned out so well that It makes me want to paint my Panzer IV army.

They will show up on one of Shawn Morris' new D-Day terrain boards.  I can't wait to see pictures.

I really don't have too much to say about them.  Just enjoy the pictures I guess.
I added black soot to the front becasue shawn wanted them destroyed form the front as they were coming over bocage. 

Oh wait...I did discover one thing.  EXPENSIVE BRUSHES WORK!

Ya, I was one of those guys that always bought the cheap brushes.  They curled so fast, and I did a lot of dry brushing in my early days.  That just destroys your brushes.  I Finally broke down and bought a $40 brush.  I probably didn't use it for months because I was scared it would just curl and it would be a waste of money.  That was over a year ago, and the tip still hasn't curled.

So, I decided to buy an expensive flat brush for dry brushing.  And I used it for the first time on these Panzer IV's.  Usually when I dry brush, I have to be realy careful because you can get "streaks".  I always thought this was just becasue I still had too much paint on my brush, or the paint was too watered down.  Well now I believe it may have been the cheap brushes I was using.  This new brush did dry brush lines perfectly.  And I wasn't even trying to be careful because they were destroyed tanks after all.

Any way...enjoy.

Before any weathering

Mud and damage added

Mud and Damage

added chipped paint

More Chipped paint

added black soot

Here is Phase 3.  Adding the green


And then the Great Reveal.  This was a bit tricky.  But no paint really pealed off with the sticky tac.  Except maybe a bit on some edges where highlights will go anyway.


Now I just have to add the triangles.  Here is a sneak peak at Phase 4  I tried using a "stamp" idea with an eraser, but it didn't work very well.  So, i'm down to using a brush.  This is going to take a while. But, this is working pretty well, so I may try this on some Panthers.

Began phase 2 of the Hetzers.

Applied 2nd color (Dunkelgrau).

And Applied 2nd layer of sticky tac.

I'll probably add the green (Olivgrün) tonight.

Then the tricky part of pealing all the sticky tac off. Little bit nervous. If this wasn't for commission I wouldn't care.

Well thought I would share one more post before the end of the month.  Show you where I'm at.

One thing I decided is once I'm done this D-Day project, which will be shortly, I'm going to finally get to my Strelkovy....no matter what anyone tried to get me to do.  They've been sitting ready for a while now and were probably dusty, so I decided to try my dremel on them.  Clean up those flash lines a little better.  Worked pretty good, so we'll see how those turn out shortly.

Here are the Hetzers I'm doing for Shawn.  I decided to try my hand at ambush camo for these.  I base coated them Hull red, and then gave them a thick Gloss Varnish.



What i'm going to do is use sticky tack to cover up parts of the vehicle and then airbrush the next colour.  Then I will use sticky tack to cover up more of it, and airbrush the 3rd colour.  I did try this with some aircraft I'm working on but the sticky tack pealed some of the paint.  This is why I applied the gloss varnish now.















I'm almost done applying the first layer of sticky tack.

I'm also working on a rusted out Somua.  I wanted it to look like it had been sitting in the field for a few years.  So, I did the paint backwards from what you would normally do when applying rust.

I base coated in a hull red.  Its pretty close to rust, but maybe a bit dark.  But that is ok.  Then I used a wet brush method to put streaks on it.  This is the first time I tried this.  I used reaper rust brown, and made it really watery...about 1:10.  then brushed it on in up down motions so it liked like it had been rained on.  This turned out really well.  Although my pictures really suck.  I have to stop using this camera.

Next I used a ripped piece of foam from the blister and applied dabs of green and yellow colours that would see on a French Tank.  normally you would do the rust this way over the base coat.  but I wanted it to look really rusty.  I made the green and yellow lighter because paint fades in the sun.  It looks kinda silly right now because the colours are so bright.

Next I did a pin wash over the whole vehicle.  Now I could barley even take a picture becasue its so shiny. 

Next I applied some caked on mud.  Tonight I will give it a coat of matte varnish and then apply some dust.  This should tame the colours down and make the mud look like its been there a while...I hope!



The Destroyed Panzer IV's I haven't got to yet.  I varnished them and painted the tracks.  But I still need to figure out how I will make them look destroyed.

Stay tuned.