Devastators oiling and decorating

A sepia pin wash

I thinned down some brown oil wash (Abteilung ABT002 Sepia) and spread it over the bits, concentrating on panel edges and crevices. I also remembered to wash the dorsal gun options that I parked on pegs.

 

After about half an hour of waiting I cleaned the excess darknesses away. I concentrated mostly on the sun-kissed surfaces, the stronger shadows in the lower parts were not harmful.

As always, the difference between non-washed ones was incredible. What I hadn't planned in advance was the merc company decoration. These were, attitude-wise, very different from the Clan Warriors, Successor State armies, corporate troops, or the so-called serious mercenary companies. These were the troops that could have smiley faces, dice, Ace of Spades signs, catchphrases, skulls, graffiti, rainbows, unicorns, or whatever set out however. Of course in this scale any words would be unpaintable with my limited abilities, and I wasn't going to start decaling them either.

My main point with this pondering was that they should be decorated a bit differently from my usual approach. The other thought was that maybe I should've thought of it before doing the oil part? That could always be redone, but again I noticed that I had gone with my autopilot.

Lenses and panzer glasses

Aaaaanyway. I decided to do the energy weapon lenses and cockpit viewports now, because if I fumbled with them over any possible decorations, I would be cross. So black canvas, colours over. To compensate the sand yellow and green something blue would be good, maybe with a red tint. The mixture of blue/red was pretty low in brightness and didn't stand out as nicely as I had imagined. Redoing them all in blue was a solid plan b.

Devastator 1

The armament on the Devastators was very clear: the Gauss Rifles didn't need to be touched, the PPCs in the sides got the Electric Blue treatment and the four Medium Lasers got Escorpena Green on them. Plus the usual white-mixed layers, of course.

 

In this photo you could see that the viewport didn't really stand out.

Devastator 2

I worked on the Devastators in series, so the same descriptions applied here.

Both of their searchlights were painted with Fire Orange, and I used that on the targeting lasers on top of the Gauss Rifles as well.

Marauder 1

Not many weapon effects here: the Arm pods had PPCs and Medium Lasers. In the photo below I had the three-barreled version of an AC/5 installed.

A number of viewports were modeled on the Marauder model, I decided to use the lower and upper front viewports. The side ones and the one that looked like a skylight I skipped.

Marauder 2

Like the Devastators, I painted the Marauders in a series. Or more accurately I painted the weapons in the most numerous first -order (in this case Medium Lasers (12) -> PPCs (8) -> Large Lasers (2)) to supposedly save some time.

Group shot

Unique smudges

The stompers needed some individualism still. I had thought of random markings, graffiti, obscenities, or somesuch to be painted on these reckless mercs. But then I always remembered my subpar freehanding skills, so I didn't want to ruin my stuff just because.

Caution stripes 

At least I could do some kind of hazard stripes. I started that by painting some bits with Yellow Ochre, as the sections called my attention. I managed to find a good amount of space for them on the Marauder dorsal gun options, as well as their sides and ankles. The Devastators were a bit more boring and got stripes on their shoulders and Gauss Rifle sides. One of the Devastators had to take some hazard marks on its ankles when I noticed an underpainted area.

I tried to keep them in check instead of going overboard. 

Rank markings

Something gave me the idea that maybe these lucrewarriors could have their military ranks painted on their machines. I really wasn't up to speed on any military organizations, so I didn't know what kind of ranks the MechWarriors would generally have and my best idea came from the BT novels. Relying on the tried and tested Stetson-Harrison method the chief became a captain with a || painted on the Devastator's left shoulder. The next Devastator got a single | bar for a lieutenant. My Marauder pilots then got to be lower in rank than those, and the <<< and << were more visible than the silly bars. Probably in real world the chevron-folks were way too low in rank to be piloting things, but luckily I didn't need to care about that. Another option was that they all were ultra-admirals or something.

Numbers

Without too much pondering I painted numbers on the legs in black and white, or black grey and off-white. Maybe the different Lances would be using different colours to make them distinguishable? I had time to dwell on these little questions.

Shiny lenses

Now I iterated all the glasses with Vallejo's gloss varnish, the weapon lenses twice. IIRC Camospecs' B1BFlyer did at least three varnish layers on his energy weapons to get a nice convex shape on them.

 

Situation check

Next time I'd attack the hex bases. At that point maybe I should check the edges of the energy weapon barrels, so that the metallic surfaces didn't have a silly gloss on them.

 

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.