Devastators first lance painting

The first four

It was a solemn moment, starting something completely new and all without any kind of pre-given specifications or even plans for a paint scheme. Even if I had played with this unit on the computer, the schemes always came from the game's patterns and therefore had their own limits. Now I had to come up with something that I could both implement and repeat in the real world. Phew.

Somehow shockingly the German three-tone camo was an overall style I had paints for in my stash, and that was nicely different from all the other BT paintjobs I had attempted so far. Then, from some weird depths of my brain I thought of the digicamo that I had once tried out and decided to be fun. So why not try it on something as tiny as these bits here?

A sand yellow base

I decided to start with the lightest shade, so I airbrushed all the miniatures with a Sand Yellow (VMA 71278). This was a nice, quick basecoat.

Another and completely opposite approach would've been to do green or brown, then cover some of that with masking tape, then paint with the other colour, mask even more, and then finish with the tiniest surface area of sand yellow. My memory told me I did this in a slightly inconvenient way the last time so maybe this was a better order of busines. Or I misremembered misremembering and accidentally did the exact same thing I did the last time.

Masking

The last time I made painting masks for minis I made tiny triangles and some sort of waveshapes. Now I'd do the same but only using squares or as squarelike things I could manage with an exacto knife. First I laid down about a 10cm straight run of Tamiya's 10mm masking tape and started cutting it into squares along the cutting mat's lines. Then I cut them in two horizontally and a few times vertically. Now I had a good number of about 2,5mm pieces to get started.

During the first hours I got one Devastator and one Marauder mostly masked.

At that point I needed more tape squares so I did pretty much the same but cut a number of them into even smaller pieces which gave me 1,25mm squares for smaller surfaces. Even if I had two Assault- and Heavy -class 'Mechs, these tiniest tape bits were pretty large considering the scale. Imagine these on a truly tiny miniature like a Locust or a Flea.

After a second evening of painstaking sticker-placement I had a mummified Lance. No one else, were they an innocent bystander or a colleague who heard my description, considered this stuff calming and almost meditative behaviour. I just sat and applied pieces of masking tape to where they felt they wanted to settle on, a bit like if Bob Ross was applying them instead of painting.

 

Camouflage: Soviet green

Judging my pre-selected medium greens I also tested how they compared. Of the three options I had at hand the Soviet Protective Green 4BO (VMA 71017) looked like it worked best with my current mood. That decided I loaded up my airbrush and blasted away.

 

This process wasn't planned carefully for a three-tone scheme, because the paint covered the masking tapes really, really well. From this state adding more tape to protect the green layer didn't work too well because I'd been doing it blind.

Of course I could've just added some random pixels and leave multi-edged gaps and get an acceptable result. I just wanted to see and know better what I was doing, instead of doing a luck-based third layer. I pulled of all the tape pieces and declared being done with it at least three times, and still found some well-hidden tiny ones after that :D

Demasking

Of course I was taking photos at all sorts of stages, these photos here were after the second camo layer. The funniest thing was that the masking tape bits didn't catch my bare and bad eyes while being painfully obvious on screen, even on the phone. This set of four photos showed you immediately at least 8 mask pieces.

 

All in all they looked neat with the first attempt at a small-scale digicamo. Of course the planned brown would've given more variety, but even a two-colour effect was quite fun.

Metallic surfaces 

On the bare metal parts I was following my very familiar dark grey (VMA 71056 Black Grey) path. Devastators had lots of obvious barrels, also they had some in their heads and backs that I might've not recognized. In addition to those I painted the various grilles and vents that looked approrpiate. Of their arms I painted the elbow actuators differently on each 'Mech: one got the whole complex in raw metal, the other just got the smaller and more hingelike part metallified.

My Marauders sadly had fewer clearly unpainted parts. I did the ankles, the rear hull's vents and whatever caught my eye. On a touchup round I also did the intakes by the cockpits, they just felt like it even if I had camouflaged them earlier.

Then I drybrushed the dark greys with cold grey for a bit of metallic sheen. That gave me the idea of testing a light drybrushing over the light-catching surfaces of one of the Marauders, and that worked nicely. I proceeded to do that on the rest. Finally I took some more photos and still found more tape pieces!

At this point I still wasn't sure if I wanted to add a few Panzerbraun pixels in some random spots or not. I had been flipflopping between yes and no quite heavily depending on the viewing angles and the lighting conditions.

Marauder dorsal guns

Having ignored them for long, I had to start painting the four dorsal guns. I really should've done them along with the minis themselves but I hadn't taken them out for painting and they were, like I said, simply ignored. My fault for being dumb.

 

Instead of starting with the Sand Yellow I just painted them mostly Black Grey. The sandy parts got done in a couple of brushed-on layers, because I didn't feel like setting up the airbrushing stuff for eight puffs of paint, even if that would've guaranteed a much nicer coating.

So yeah, I was thinking that the dorsal guns would be mostly bare metal and only the breech area would be hull-like. Over a basic brushjob I'd drybrush for highlights to get them to the same state with the hulls.

Window bases

In preparation for the jeweling I painted the viewports and gun ports black.

Panzer browning after all

Like I had written earlier, I had been going back and forth about the brown pixels. Finally I decided to add a few per 'Mech. I outlined a handful of various shapes onto each of them:

Instead of airbrushing or paintbrushing I went with the sponge ( VMC 70826  German Camo Brown) to fill the outlined pixels. After a bit of flashing time I removed the tapes, and while taking these off I still found individuals I had not encountered on the previous three, four times!

This was a very good place for a break.

Project III/26

ISD's Devastators

I've used ISD or a variation of it as my nickname for a quarter of a century in different services and games, so it was going to be fine for this Mercenary outfit as well. The same company name I used already in Harebrained Schemes' BATTLETECH and the newer Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. The stupid joke's reference maybe went by many people, but it amused me.

Thoughts about the org

The military organizations, let it be real or imagined ones, was always something I had to triple check because the squads, battallions, regiments, platoons, divisions, regiments and whatnot just did not get stuck in my brain. I simply did not care. The only exception was the Clan's five-based chart, because it was simple and consistent enough even for me.

So the smallest practical BattleMech org unit was a Lance for four 'Mechs. Apparently that was close enough to be a 1:1 match to a platoon of foot soldiers, which translated to something like 20-40 people. Some very vague memories from Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis' mission editor said that this was somehow connected to the amount of personell inside a tank squad/team/platoon. That was despite the fact that almost all 'Mechs had only one pilot inside. Maybe it included the support personell in this number?

A company then consisted of three Lances, sometimes with some more folks as support. The support could be scouts, indirect fire (yay!), or tanks or special Lances. Some outfits had a Command Lance on this level already. Then you could use three companies (12 'Mechs each if without a CL) to build a battallion and three to five of those would give you a regiment. Each additional step up in names piled more and more extra stuff and support gear to the noticeable pile of requirements and practical demands. At this point all this was just thinking out loud based on what I read, my named unit was going to be a company alone, meaning ~12 BattleMechs and an HQ truck.

First Lance

As a whole the Mercenaries box didn't entice me to use that 1:1 as the body of my merc unit. I got a stupid idea with a Devastator being the heaviest of the units, and another one of those hiding in one of the Legends boxes. Two Devastators - ISD's Devastators literally and figuratively, but it wasn't going to lead to a Cochraine's Goliaths 2.0. I also really liked Marauders, so I took both of mine to join the fun.

Finished: Project II/26

Altmärkische Kettenwerk GmbH Sd.Kfz. 142/1 - StuG III Ausführung G 10.5cm

At least in my home country there's a number of these Alkett-made assault guns sprinkled as decorations. One can be seen facing west-northwest in the Parola junction (roads 3 (E12) and 3051) while a Leopard 2A4 poses on the southern side. They weren't all in museums or where the conscripts get trained. With its different variants the StuG III was also the most numerously built tracked vehicle by the Germans.

This individual had a 105mm gun, based on the sources it might not be a StuG III but a StuH 42 aka Sturmhaubitze 42 aka Sd.Kzf. 142/2, even though the Sturmhaubitze should have a muzzle brake that this one didn't get. I used the name in the box, chosen by the manufacturer. They ought to know.

Method madness or the lamentations part

When I started on this I was so excited about trying the armour texture again. Then I completely forgot it in my excitement of priming the model, and caught myself a tiny bit too late. Perhaps I would remember all this on the next armoured model.

I was following the instructions to the letter and skipped all the opportunities for PE because I had not looked at the PE sheets before and spend a few moments thinking where they'd belong. I trusted blindly in the instructions telling me the options, or marking the photoetch bits like the sprues. Now I was in a situation where I had kinda bought an aftermarket set and not use any of it. Probably the only things I would've realistically used were the engine intake grilles, I really wasn't a fanatical tool clamp person.

With the oil paints the recommendation has been to have a layer of gloss varnish to protect the acrylics. As a bonus the capillary effect works better on the supersmooth surface of the shiny coat. On a couple of projects now the matt varnish applied over the glossy one hasn't gotten stuck as expected, as there have been annoying spots of shininess in places despite multiple reapplications of matt varnish. Maybe all those would behave better through an airbrush, maybe not, but these ones I had didn't go through the tool anymore and were strictly brush-only anymore. I had new stuff in the future pipeline.

I also made some silly choices with my paints, more accurately with the red brown. This one was too red for camouflage and I ended up with a circus candy bag. That was stuck in my mind for the remainder of the project and most likely caused my general displeasure with the painting in general. At least I could tone the redness down with a brushed-on Panzer Aces camo brown, the VMC paints were not directly airbrushable and I didn't feel the need to swear with the dilutions either so... brushwork it was.

 

Photos

When taking the photos I tried a different approach with the lights. They ended a bit overexposed. Maybe I'd retake the photos and update them later, but we'd start with these today.

StuG III Ausf. G weathering and finishing touches

The final megastage

Starting this phase I thought that it would be just about finished, maybe after an evening or two before the StuG would be ready to be photographed. *beeeeeeeeeeep* said the siren, to emphasize my mistake.

Boltheads and other edges to be highlighted

I iterated through all the main colours with their own highlight colours. On the sandy yellows I used the plain sandy yellow straight from the tub, without any mixing. It stood out nicely as the oil washes had darked the light colour the most.

For the RLM82 greens I made a slightly lighter tone by mixing in some light green (VMC 70942) and applied that mostly on the edges, some central bits of plates and what felt like a good place.

The brown highlighter I made out of a mix of two Panzer Aces set's camo paints in about 90/10 ratio of 70826 and 70825 (German Camo Medium Brown and German Camo Pale Brown, respectively).

I guess I could've treated them a bit differently if I had a better clue of how StuGs lived in general.

Chipping some paint

For the lighter chips I really didn't feel like mixing three different very light shades, and to try to align them perfectly on the camo pattern. Instead I chose a slightly more dramatic approach: White Grey (VMA 71119). The edges and such were easy targets, my biggest question marks came from me not having a good idea on how the flatter surfaces got worn down and kicked in real life for plausible scuffmarkings. I did add a few scratches and other dents and tapdancing results, but tried to keep it pretty simple this time around.

 

Like before, I filled the light chips with a mix of black grey (VMA 71056) and red (VMA 71003 Red RLM23).

Weld line pondering

Inspired by uncle NightShift I thought of painting any weld lines with steel or even silver. At this point, especially after the oil washes, it would've looked a bit off in my opinion so I skipped it. But I did consider it anyway.

Nasty washes

Thanks to the nonsense with the varnishes I still had some glossy parts shining under light, so I thought I'd attack those with some really thin dirt wash. To be more exact I mixed two dirty washes and spread them over two evenings. The first one was approriately just dirt (VMA 71133 Dirt) that I used to cover most of the vehicle. This may have been closer to a filter than a wash, it was that thin, but what did I know anyway? The next evening I thinned down some brown (VMC 70872 Chocolate Brown) and concentrated in much smaller surfaces than with the dirt earlier.

In general I felt the assault gun looked nastier than a few steps earlier. That was the goal, in addition to covering up the stubborn gloss varnish traces.

Periscopes and their glasses

This unit had a selection of nicely visible periscopes of a couple of different types. The driver's periscope was of course in the worst spot to paint, then there was a very normal-looking periscope and then a binocular periscope and they were neat. Somehow I had completely ignored the commander's cupola's periscopes until now. To start the show I painted each of them black (VMA 71047) and built on that.

Of the actual colour of the prisms I had this idea that they were green-tinted. Of course I could remember wrong, but it was of no concern as I wasn't going for a realistic look. Instead I decided to paint them with a blue jeweling that'd stand out clearly. That meant that over the black I painted a layer of UK Mediterranean Blue (VMA 71111).

The next layer I painted with the Magic Blue (VGA 72721) I used a lot in the BT minis, going for smaller crescent or L-shaped shapes. In the tiny round ones it was of course a bit more difficult than on the rectangles.

 

To make them stand out even more, and to throw seriousness under the muddy tracks, I added the light reflection dots and lines into the corners. They stood out very nicely, especially from lower angles, but from normal viewpoints they didn't really stand out.

Finally I coated them with gloss varnish. They were in the end quite different from the ones I painted with greys on the Jagdpanzer IV some three years ago.

Graphite

I treated the wearable parts of the tracks with my graphite pen. As usual, I did this gently and only treated those bits of the tracks that were visible. In an attempt to reduce the amount of mess and dirtiness I left the parts that it rested on untouched.

Tamiya pigments

My storage had two boxes of Tamiya Weathering Master A that contained Light Sand, Sand, and Mud pigments. One of them had a still functional brush-sponge tool, the other one's sponge had crumbled apart years ago. On the spot I decided to use them all in order from lightest to darkest, a bit like I used the dirty washes earlier.

Light sand

Pretty much the whole Assault Gun got brushed around with the light sand pigment.

Sand

The normal sand got applied a bit more concentrated on the centers of the panels and some sandtrap-like corners. My idea here was that the lighter sand dusted more, covering more surface area, and than the wetter, heavier one spread around a bit less.

Mud

The mud pigment was applied with the sponge and I concentrated mostly on the lower hull and the wheels with it.

 

Final tweaks with oils  

While playing with the oils earlier I had successfully ignored the exhaust pipes completely, and I had to do that still to be able to rest. Now that I had the nasty oils ready, I used that stuff on the track armour pieces behind the casemate. Those had remained too clean, and it was not acceptable.

Both the dark and light rust (ABT070 Dark Rust, ABT060 Light Rust) were thinned down with my worrisomely low-running odourless thinner. In the end I used the dark rust also on just about each of my paint chips to give them a bit more life. The light rust I used quite sparingly anywhere outside the exhausts and track armour.

To be honest, I wasn't supremely happy with all of these, but I also recognized that I had been staring at the model for ages and in so many sessions (22 by the photo naming but I had worked on more evenings than that). Perhaps I was being overcritical.

StuG III Ausf. G oils

An oily life

Fooling with the oil paints required patience, as they took more time to dry than the acrylics. Then again, I really enjoyed playing with them for some reason. My idea this time was to get something from my oil sets to bring more peace to the somewhat striking camo pattern I had painted.

Dot filtering

I got inspired to try out the dot filtering again, now I used three colours in two different ways. As the colours I used a yellowish one (ABT155 Light Sand), an olive green (ABT050), and ocher (ABT092). Somehow I didn't think of taking any photos of the work in progress, my apologies.

As the name suggested, I started with dots that I then blended around the hull using a thinner-damped paintbrush. Then I remembered Bob Ross' wet on wet technique, and a few "this can be done too" videos. To try that out I painted some plain thinner on some flat panels, and then dotted my oil dots on that, and blended over the wetness. This felt like an easier method. The only bigger problem on this model was the Schürzen racks that made the side armour a bit more difficult to get to.

After curing overnight the difference between that and the earlier was not huge. Next time I'd start with the sepia wash, to get the nooks and crannies jumping out better.

Glossing over

Because the Vallejo varnish wasn't stuff that wanted to go through the airbrush out of the bottle, I applied the gloss varnish with a paintbrush instead. I'd really preferred airbrushing, but I didn't want to get it stuck or waste ages with thinning ratios. Sounded like an upcoming order of something from someplace.

The pin washing with cleanup

In my excitement I didn't stop taking photos of the washing round, or its cleanup part, nor the post-curing staet. My time was limited and I prioritized the progress instead. As if taking a couple of silly photos was going to take a long time.

Again, I iterated the boltheads, panel lines, edges and shadows with a very thing Abteilung's Sepia (ABT002). After half an hour of curing time I cleaned up the biggest messes and blended them this and that way to get some variety on my surfaces and increase the general dirtiness. When that was done, I left the model inside its box in the sauna for two days to dry up. 

Dull coating

I brushed the matt varnish (AK Ultra Matt Varnish) in two sessions. Like the top view showed, it simply didn't stick everywhere. It was the same thing I grumbled about when varnishing CFJ Quatrefoil some time ago. Perhaps it was time for me to order some airbrushable varnishes, so I could stop using excessive amounts of time on this sort of work.

I didn't feel like using a third evening on the matt varnish, so maybe the next step was going to be returning some of the highlights toned down by the oils, and maybe some thin sandy or dusty layer getting applied all over the TD. Yes, that was exactly what we were going to do. Until next time, then!