Recon Reports

I finished a small platoon called the Airlanding Recce Platoon. In game terms it helps mark targets for other units.. Though this platoon is considered to be too expensive to use in a game I enjoyed painting the vehicles and experimenting on the bases. I also painted the Staff Team for the M1A1 Airlanding Battery and I got a little creative with the basing. On to the pictures!



Painting the crew of a vehicle is just like painting regular figures. Except mounting the crew on cardboard bases does not work so well! Here I use my thriftiness to mount the figures. A few used finishing nails and a leftover piece of insulation foam and VOILA. It is now a cinch to paint the crew.

I have standardised the colours I use to paint each figure. The light brown basecoat is Vallejo Game Colour "English Uniform". The smock is painted first Citadel Foundation Colour "Tau Sept Ochre" followed by Citadel Paint Color "Scorched Brown" and Citadel Foundation Colour "Orkhide Flesh". Gear and Helmet are also painted "Orkhide Flesh" followed by a drybrush of Citadel Paint Color "Rotting Flesh". The berets are Citadel Paint Color "Red Gore" mixed with just a touch of purple or dark blue (doesn't matter too much) highlighted with Citadel Paint Color "Scab Red".

The dismounted crew of the Recon Patrol is painted and ready for basing. At the same time I finished up the Staff Team for the Airlanding Battery, Royal Artillery unit. I picked the figures for this team with the idea that they would be consulting and staring out into the distance.


I used a few layers of drybrushing to further accent the vehicles. The part that would be metal such as the twin machine gun on the jeep or the shovel on the back of the universal carrier were painted Citadel Paint Color "Chaos Black" and picked out with the metallic Citadel Paint Color "Bolt Gun Metal". The tracks were also painted in "Chaos Black" and a heavy drybrush of the metallic Citadel Paint Color "Tin Bitz" was used I later highlighted the tracks with "Bolt Gun metal". I used the same colour to represent wear on the front mud guards of the universal carrier, as if the carrier had been nosing through some tight spots. The completed crew figures were then broken off the finishing nails and glued into place.


I took a different track in basing these figures. Instead of applying the putty around figures glued to the bases, I applied the putty first and then glued the figures through the wet putty. I don't know how these figures will hold up to use on the table, but I found this method to be less messy. Note the piece of cardboard on the base of the Staff Team, it will be made into a stone wall.

It is hard to see in the picture below but I have scored the dried drywall compound with blunt knife to create a rough grid pattern. Be careful since the compound may flake. Use a dry brush to gently remove the grit that comes up. Also remember that the rows of consecutive bricks don't line up!

The bases for all of these miniatures was done by drybrushing consecutivly lighter colours. The dirt areas got different shades of brown almost up to a yellow and the stone/rubble started with a very dark grey almost black colour all the way up to white. The progression can be seen in the following pictures. Note that there were more than three layers of drybrushing done.

Here is the completed Airlanding Recon Platoon. The vehicle bases got the same treatment as the other units, I had to be careful not to get paint on the vehicle itself.

Below is the Airlanding Battery, Royal Artillery Staff Team fully painted. I added a little extra detail after the stone wall. I figured they have to be discussing something. The question is: Have they got the maps the right way around?

Motoring Along

Not too much to show this week. I received a new set of Games Workshop's foundation paints. Eager to try them out I fell upon the Airlanding Battery's staff team and the first of my few vehicles.
The four figures in the foreground are the staff team. The figures in the background are the Recon team along with their vehicles.

I tried out the different shades of green and brown that come in the new paint on these figures. I will do a side-by-side picture with some of the other finished miniatures when I am done. In the picture above you can definitely notice the different shade of brown on the pants.
A little while ago I bought the Vallejo paint "English Uniform". I think the colour works pretty well and I can see a good number of uses for this light brown colour. I cannot say I am thrilled with the paint, it has the same consistency as the Games Workshop paints, or the "dropper" style bottle. I suppose I'll need to work with it a bit more. I still have to base the staff team, so they are not quite done yet.
Painting a vehicle follows the same process as painting a human figure. At this scale it is fairly easy to paint either. In 25mm miniatures, the flat surfaces tend to show the brushstrokes a bit more. This universal carrier has had a liberal brushing of "Orkhide Green".

Just like the figures I dry brush a lighter colour over top, in this case its "Rotting Flesh" and use a wash of the ink, "Flesh Wash" to darken the crevices. I still have trouble with the ink, but I got some good tips from one of the Games Workshop staff. In order to avoid the pooling effect simply use another brush to absorb the paint. The other brush should be fairly dry so that the bristles can soak up the paint.

Move! Move! Move!

I decided to challenge another FOW player to a game with fully painted miniatures. We are both starting from scratch and have until the end of April to get everything painted. Unpainted units take major penalties if used aside from the ribbing and jibes we'll recieve from the veteran players. This challenge will be difficult considering how long it has taken me to paint the first platoon.

Having completed the camo patterns (on most of the minis anyway) I painted the webbing and pouches. This is fairly easy to do even though the minis have been glued to the bases. I used a mix of "Goblin Green", "Dark Angels Green" and "Scorched Brown" though I forget what ratio I used.
Next to be done is the flesh. A little care is needed to make sure the detail and shading is not obscured. I used a combination of dry-brushing and wet paint to get the desired effect. Note that you should use only bad brushes for the dry brushing and very fine tipped brushes for painting fingers and faces and so on.

I ink the skin. There are two ways to do this. First is to use a general watered down wash all over the skin and then touch up or high-light the raised portions. Second is to use a fine tip brush and apply the ink directly to the creases.

With the faces and skin completed it is time to finish the base. The bases provided are always flat. Some companies provide pretextured bases, but I prefer to save my money (for more minis) and do the texture myself. In this case I am using some left over drywall compound. I am not sure how durable it is on the gaming field, but "live and learn" eh? The commander and observation team is pictured below. I used a small flathead screwdriver to apply the compound to the base. I also added water to the compound to make it easier to apply. These two teams were spaced fairly far apart making it easier to apply the compound but I had to redo some of the gun teams after I brushed against some of the figures. As a side note; in Flames of War a group of figures on a single base is called a team, a group of teams is called a platoon.

The compound by itself did not look too inspiring. In fact, it was pretty bland. To spruce things up a bit I picked up some tree bark and very fine sand. The tree bark was broken into small pieces and set into the still wet comopund. Some drybrushing with black and two tones of grey ("Codex Grey" and "Shadow Grey") will make the bark look like a large rock in this scale. The sand was sprinkled lightly atop the compound to simulate larger rocks and broken ground. After the compound has dryed I painted it with "Scorched Brown". I then dry brushed layers "Terra Cotta", Vomit Brown" and a final brush of "Bleached Bone".

You can see the stages involved in basing from left to right in the picture above. The far left is the first coat of "Scorched Brown" and the three teams to the far right are complete.

I thought the ground effects turned out pretty well, though I may add some grass to the gun teams. I am still working out how to apply the grass correctly. When I have that down I'll post how.

Buoyed by the completion of my first platoon (and also because I spilled some brown paint), I have started one of the Airlanding Platoons. You can also notice a barely started team in some of the pictures above. That is the Staff team of the Airlanding Battery. These fellows are in charge of calculating ranges and elevations to the target. It is them I will blame when my dice go against my during artillery fire.

Slogging Through It.

Phew! What a week (or two). Busy at work and never at home. I still found some time to paint up a bit more of my first platoon; the "Airlanding Battery, Royal Artillery".

I had finished painting the smocks on all the minis so I moved onto the camoflauge stripes. I did the minis in batches. First I mixed up some brown paint which was mostly "Scorched Brown" and a little "Elf Flesh" to lighten the colour. Using my thinest brush (I am in need of new ones with better tips!) I painted wiggly lines all over the smocks.

I painted more lines with a mix of 3:2:1 "Goblin Green", "Dark Angels Green" and "Scorched Brown". This gave me a more military green which blended in nicely.

With most of the painting out of the way I started to work on the plastic bases. In order to get a natural look to the bases (which are flat and untextured) plaster and "static grass" will be applied. I'll detail this process in a future article. For now I will need to prepare the bases so that the glue and plaster will have something to adhere to. To this end I have taken a blade and scored the tops of the bases.
The miniatures are then glued to the bases. Here is the command team for the platoon. The officer is directing two of his guardsmen. The arrangement on the miniatures is quite plain, but I plan to be a bit more creative with future bases. For now I am content with just getting the platoon finished.
Below is a picture of a pair of gun teams ready for basing. The howitzers are not yet glued on. If I did glue the guns in place the wheels would appear to be below ground (note the extra height provided by the miniatures base). I'll glue the guns on later as the plaster is drying.
A tutorial for basing Flames of War figures can be found at: http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=110&kb_cat_id=29

Trial and Error

I had some time over the week to paint up a few more minis. I don't have the recommended colours from the "D minus 1" book I was using as a reference so I'll have to mix the colours myself. First a picture of the full platoon before painting.


I have used the trio of figures at the furthest guns as experiments for mixing colours and camouflage. They came out a bit bright. Although those figures are far ahead of the others in the painting process I used the same steps I described below.

To get a good base for the crew's uniform I painted a darker brown. In the Vallejo paint range the colour is "English Uniform". Since I only have Citadel paints I found a mix of "Scorched Brown" and "Elf Flesh" in a 2:1 ratio worked. For the Dennison Smocks (basically the jacket) I originlly used Citadel paint's "Bubonic Brown", but that came out too bright. Again mix of "Vomit Brown" and "Dark Angels Green" gave me the colour I wanted. The ration is 4:1 or more. Always remeber to add the darker colour to the lighter (the Green to the Brown in this case) as it takes less of the darker colour to change the lighter than vice versa.

In the picture above some of the darker brown is showing through. This is ok for the recessed areas. Another thin layer of paint will make the yellow colour solid. Try not to go into all the crevices and avoid thick layers at all costs. The dark brown colour is supposed to show through in the recesses giving the impression of depth. This is a case of "Do as I say not as I do" as I have obviously failed to take my own advice. To try and correct the problem I have used a wash on the figure to the extreme left. It's a bit shiny. I am hoping the camoflauge layers will help tone it down.

The same yellow mix colour used on the smock can be used on half the strips of the helmet. The other half being painted "Scorched Brown" or the brown mix used on the pants. You may find it easier to paint all the strips brown first so that the yellow colour has a good base (yellow tends to look green on a black basecoat I don't know why.

Here are some of the experimentation figures from the big picture. They are a bit bright for my liking which is why I went with a darker yellow.

Fanning the Flames of War

In December I spent much more time then I care to admit ogling the minis from Flames of War, the semi-historical World War Two game. Finally I broke down and bought a few miniatures. Now I am waiting for the rest of my order to arrive. I often get asked about how I paint such small miniatures. It actually is not very difficult at all. I will chronicle the painting of my British Airborne army.

So what do the figures look like? Well here is a picture of a single 15mm soldier next to a dime.

Four or five of these miniatures will be placed on a stand to represent a team of soldiers. Note the strand of metal connected to the bottom. This is called flashing and is waste material, cut it off with a pair of clippers or a hobby knife.

Choosing a force and learning the game is a few pages by itself and better left to the folks on the Yahoo Group FoWOntario or the Flames of War forums or better yet your Local Game Store (LGS). Best thing to do is pick a force you will enjoy learning about and that you think looks good. In my case I choose the dead-hard British Paratroopers, bonus is the Canadians of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion took part on D-Day which means I can field a Canadian force.

Before painting the first thing to do is get some picture references of the real life figures. We are looking for the colours of uniform, equipment, gear and identification. I found a good number of pictures on the Internet for pictures of British Paratroopers. I also hit the local library to pick up books on the Canadian army during the war era. Also helpful is a reference section of one of the rule books (Flames of war: D minus 1), it even notes the differences in the Canadian uniforms (which had a slightly greener hue).

Now, that we have a reference we can collect the correct paints and some brushes. As well as a jar of water to rinse the brushes while we are working and a paper towel to absorb excess water and paint. For brushes I use Citadel brand sizes fine and standard (available from http://www.games-workshop.com/) or Winsor and Newton size 0, 00 or 000 (not sure where to get it from). Sable brushes are the best don't bother with the synthetics. For paints I use Citadel colours, but Vallejo is good and there are many brands of water based acrylic paints. Just be sure to stay away from enamels.

Now lets get back to the miniatures. The first platoon I am going to paint is my Airlanding Battery, 4 howitzers, its crew and command teams. I'll show the process for two guns, the other guns will be similarly done.

I carefully remove the flashing and other unwanted metal being sure I don't scratch details on the miniature. Then I stick the crew, using white glue, to pieces of card so I can handle the figures without touching the miniature and rubbing off paint with my fingers.

Using slightly watered down black paint I paint over the entire miniature, creating an undercoat for later layers to stick to. I try to get into all the nooks and crannies but I am careful not to put the paint on to thick. You can see a spot I missed on one of the crewman to the left of the front gun. Oops, I'll fix that on the next go. I paint in an assembly line so that (hopefully) the paint is dry on the first figure by the time I have finished the last. It is best to let the paint dry before putting on the next colour as wet paint mixes!

Time for some camouflage. The Dark Angels Green paint I had was a bit too cartoony, being meant for science fiction warriors. I mixed a small amount of some Scorched Brown paint on my pallette to get a more realistic colour. Both howitzers and all the helmets were painted with this colour.

To get a nice even colour I painted in two light coats. This is better than a single heavy coat as the paint dries evenly and does not get "chunky". As you can see the gun is pretty bland in a single colour. I am going to create the illusion of depth by highlighting raised parts on the gun with a lighter colour. I added some Goblin Green to the mix I had previously and used a technique called dry brushing to get just the raised bits. Here is a comparison: the gun in the foreground has been highlighted, the other one is just flat colour.

There are two tricks to dry brushing. First you need to wipe the brush on a paper towel until the lines of colour are very faint and second, contrary to the name, the brush has to be a little damp to avoid the paint drying out too much and leaving a "dusty" effect all over the miniature. To apply the highlights lightly drag the brush over the miniature. All the raised portions will rub against the brush and the small amount of remaining paint will stick to the miniature. The amount of pressure is directly proprtional to the amount of paint remaining. Don't push to hard though or the lower layers could be scratched off.

I spent the rest of the night just experimenting with colours since I don't have the exact colours that the Flames of War source book calls for. Here are the results of the gun crew's pants.