I finished my Soviet Regimental Gun Company and my Anti-Tank Gun Company. I thought I would write this post comparing some of my old work to my new work. I believe in never doing anything unless you are always continually striving to get better. I've done a lot of trial and error of techniques over the last year, and I think things are getting a lot better, easier, and faster.

First, as embarrassing as it will be, I will show old pictures and compare then to similar units. This first picture was the first infantry I ever painted. The command team was a bit better because I discovered static grass instead of flock. I also found a different brown for the ground. You can clearly see in the back 2 I didn't even cover the figs bases. This was long before I discovered an airbrush. I was terrified to even try a wash, and I was having all kinds of trouble with aerosol primer and varnish. I actually stopped painting for a while because I was so fed up with shitty primer and varnish.

These are my Kommissar's. (* On a side note, I have no idea why we spell Commissar with a "C". From what I remember when I was trying to learn russian, it has no "C". A "K" is a "K" sound and an "S" is an "S" sound. So, I always spell it with a "K") Anyway these are my 1st try, 2nd try, and 3rd try. And the then 3 together. Big Difference. The last one is with an airbrush and wash.


These are 76mm anti-tank guns before and after I learned how to use an airbrush.


Same thing with Heavy Machine Gun.


As I said before I'm still not totally sold on the highlighting. It is a lot of extra work. You let me know what you think, of this batch of highlighting.
Edit* One thing I wanted to add, is that the down fall to all of this is that none of my army looks the same. Especially since I'm so slow at painting infantry. Hopefully i'll speed up and I can start painting separate armies.
Here are the rest of the pictures from this batch.

Thought I'd give a little bit of incite into my painting history.

I've probably been painting since my early 20's. Actually I'm pretty sure I painted model planes and cars with my dad but I don't remember much.

I started of with Fantasy figs. Games like Hero Quest and Battle Masters. This is where I discovered painting creases black, and dry brushing chainmail and fur looked really good. I was super happy with these paint jobs at the time I figured those techniques out. These were plastic not very detailed figures, but in hindsight very good for figuring out how to paint. I think I was still using oil paints that came in those glass jars for model cars and planes.

Then, right around the same time I met my beautiful wife, I "graduated" to a game called Chainmail. These were about 28mm scale, metal, and extremely detailed. This is where I learned to highlight raised edges to make the figs "pop" a little more.
These all turned out really well. They took a very long time to paint.

This is also when I discovered primer and Varnish to protect my work. All those plastic ones I don't think I ever used primer. I also ran into that age old miniatures question...Black primer or white. That can be an article for another day. Lets just say I used white for the Chainmail guys, but now I use black.

I took a long hiatus from painting as I was very disgruntled with what happened to Chainmail. It was the perfect game. I was a skirmish game so I didn't need to buy hundreds of guys to field an army like say WarHammer. You could use 6-12 guys.

I've always loved WWII, so I tried A&A Miniatures. Didn't have to paint and you got lots of cool plastic tanks. But then once again, I decided to "Graduate" to Flames of war. Highly detailed metal figs.

Flames of War is a 15mm scale, and they were very difficult to paint at first. especially since I hadn't painted in a long time and those were 28mm. Huge difference. Also, Fantasy figures are bright colors, easy to make things stand out and look good. War games are lots of browns, greens and earth tones.

I decided to collect Soviet and German armies. Eastern front always had the coolest tanks. Little did I know, 27 teams of soviets equaled 8 teams of Germans...Lots of painting.

Anyway, these were my first soviet teams. I had no clue what I was doing...and needless to say they didn't turn out very well. Although with the smaller pictures they don't look as bad as they do in person.

I've always been afraid of washes. So I try the dry brush method. try to leave some of the black primer showing in the creases. I wasn't sure if this was the correct thing to do, but Tom Wise seems to do it the same way. I just wasn't doing a thick enough base coat. Needless to say my next set of troops was a lot better. And I improved the materials I used for bases.

I am currently working on more russian troops, Stuka's, and Stug G's. These should be an even bigger improvement as i'm trying some new techniques. The troops I'm doing a super heavy first coat. The stuka's i'm trying the technical pen for creases. and on the Stug's I'm finally going to try a wash.

I'm really looking for better ways to speed up painting troops. It takes so long to paint all these Russians. Tanks are easy and fast, I could do 5 tanks in a few days.

But even my newer (Bottom) painted tanks are better then my older ones (Top)

With me getting heavily back into Flames of War, I've decided to join the blogging revolution. Not really to sure how this all works. But I suppose I will begin documenting what I paint, and the battles we have.

I've been painting for a very long time, but have only just become serious in the last few years of my life.

I've probably enjoyed World War II longer then I have painting. So, Flames of War is a natural hobby for me.

I actually thought I was a pretty good painter until I saw people like Tom Wise and the rest of the FoW community...yikes. These are pictures of his Tiger tanks. I have a long way to go.

I've already tried to use Tome Wises suggestion of a technical pen for shadows. #1, no one in Canada seems to even know what a technical pen is. So, I found the closest thing. Not sure if I like it yet or not.

I'm almost done my Junkers JU87D's so i'll post pictures of those. It was the first project I used the "technical pens" on.