The Japanese are coming!

After um-ing and ah-ing for weeks about what sort of flock I should use to base my Japanese Infantry, today I gave up. I decided to just dry-brush their bases with a sand colour and have the bases looking like wet, muddy ground. I may add pools of water to some of them in the future. This has, however, put them on my list of projects I can consider complete, and has allowed me to show them off here, as well as my Chi Ha, that has been sitting around waiting to be blogged about for months.

The Airfix Chi Ha was a lovely build. So much so, that I went out and bought another before even completing this one. I haven't started it yet though... I enjoyed the amount of colours I got to use in the camouflage. Unfortunately some Quickshade pooled at the bottom of the flag. But otherwise, I am pleased with my command group.

Here they are in all their glory. I think I have another NCO and an officer not pictured, and some other, unpainted men, whose pose I hate. They will remain unpainted too. But I think I will get good use out of these guys once I have my US Marines painted up and ready.

Airfix Commandos repaint.

The first plastic soldiers I ever painted were a box of Airfix British Commandos. When it came to playing with our tanks and soldiers, these guys were useful for sneaking in the back, over the pile of books that represented some sort of barrier that should protect the German base.

In the containers that hold a lot of old soldiers, I found them and decided I needed to correct the work of my clumsy thirteen-year-old hands, and what looks like a pretty thick brush. Some of them were even left semi painted.

Using a nice, fine brush, and a steady hand, I think I managed to make them serviceable. The Army Painter Quickshade was very important to make them look good, although a lot of the detail on some of them had been largely filled with copious amounts of paint. I suppose I hadn't learnt the importance of a few thin coats, rather than one thick one.

The flash is still visible on many of them, but I just couldn't be bothered to try and clean them of it. Trying to remove flash from Airfix soldiers feels like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

Here they are taking up positions in the ruin of a shop. This building is the product of joining up the scenery from the Matchbox 17 pounder, and a couple of Sdkfz 250 models. It is as old as the commandos, and should probably be finished at some point.

Discoveries!

I have been volunteering in a school for the past few weeks. Combine that with my evening shifts at work, and other commitments, and I am lucky to get a coat of paint on a few men each day. As such, I have a bunch of almost finished projects waiting to be completed. They are:

Airfix Japanese Infantry. I just need to decide what sort of flock or sand to use on their bases.
Airfix British Commandos. Shaded and waiting to be sprayed with matt varnish, then based.
My remaining SHQ German Infantry & PSC British Infantry. Semi painted.
3 PSC 76mm Shermans. Various degrees of completion.
Airfix LTV 4. Semi built.
Revell Comet. Waiting to complete my camo net experiments, so I can put some on this tank.

Then, today, while waiting for my men to dry, I decided to try and sort out some of my stuff. I found these in a box:

I will be claiming them for myself. The Bofors gun will be for my ETO forces. Monty's Caravan will be glued together, but I won't paint it until I decide what to do with it...

Help Required.

No, I'm not trying to employ anyone! Unless anyone wants to be my full time, personal motivator. I am, instead, coming to you, model makers of the internet, with my conundrum.

Below, you can clearly see that the German cross is a decal. There are no two ways around it. I paint with enamel, and the decal is simply attached using old fashioned hot water, then I sprayed the whole thing with Humbrol Hobby Spray in an attempt to seal it on. But it just looks bad.

On the Puma, where I want to attach the decal, I applied a layer of Humbrol Gloss Cote, let it dry, applied the decal using hot water, then coated it again with Humbrol Matt Cote. It looks pretty decent in this photo. But I am not pleased.

Below is a photo taken with flash. It is still somewhat shiny, and is a slightly different tone to the rest of the model.

Below is a photo just under a normal light. Still shinier than the rest of the model.

I am loath to paint the whole model in Matt Cote, because then it will have a slight shine to it. Shine is something I don't like. But it looks weird having just shiny turret sides.

Does anyone have any other ways to apply decals without it being noticeable that they are decals?

From back in the Day.

At the moment, alongside painting up my soldiers, I am trying to decide how best to tackle the painting of my vehicles. I paint in enamel. I dabbled with acrylics when customizing my Star Wars Miniatures, but still feel more comfortable with enamels. This is proving a bit problematic with a couple of things. I may post about them later. But it means I am not finishing any vehicles any time soon.

As part of my clear out, the one that led to my getting back into modelling, I consolidated a lot of our soldiers into plastic containers. While I figure out what to do about my vehicles, I have decided to just paint up a whole bunch of the men. They have been lying around for over ten years, so why not!

Those commandos need a desperate repaint. They are next on the list.

That took longer than it should have!

They are finally done! Today, as it snows (for the one day per year it snows here) I decided to take the time to figure out how to properly photograph my figures. I think I did okay. 

I base them on pennies and use multipurpose poly filla to build it up. I paint them Humbrol 98, then lathered them in PVA, and dipped them in flock.

SHQ figures

SHQ figures

SHQ figures

I am fairly sure these and the next ones are Britannia figures.

German Recon Unit.

I finally finished my Airfix German Recon set. I painted it up for my early war army and am very pleased with it. The men had the dubious honour of being the first German soldiers to be successfully painted and quickshaded. While I love this era, I am struggling to find rules that give me stats for the early war. So while I have a bit of armour, about 30 infantry, and now a recon unit, they will probably sit around waiting while I figure out what to do. 

Things on the bench.

Happy new year guys, I have a few things going on, but no complete projects to speak of. The first thing to show is my Christmas haul. 

This was a present to myself. I have always wanted to get a Comet, so finally took the plunge. The Sherman Crab was something I thought would be fun to make, more so than just a boring old tank. The Chi Ha was on offer, this will go well with my other Chi Ha and five painted Japanese Infantry. 

Below is the Matchbox Puma I build when I was about 10 years old. Half of the decals have fallen off, the paint job was unfinished, and that one wheel was glued on backwards. The rest were painted black, back when I thought tires were black! I felt it needed to be finished off. I repainted it, painted the tires, changed the wheel round and changed the camo pattern.

 I am hesitant to put decals on right now. An acquaintance of mine showed me a method of application, where you paint a gloss on, apply the decal, gloss over again, then a matt varnish. This is meant to hide the fact that it is a decal. I haven't got any gloss though, so am waiting for that. I have a bunch of vehicles waiting for this treatment.

Finally finished some British Infantry

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas. My employment being what it is, the Christmas period is a very busy time, and it has been all hands on deck. I have not had much time to do any significant model making. I did, however, get confident enough to use my quickshade on some new infantry. They are the Plastic Soldier Company, Late War British Infantry. I love the hard plastic, and I am actually a fan of the poses. I read a blog recently of someone who did not like them. And to be fair, after picking up a box of their Late War German Infantry, I see that they have a bunch of set poses that they just reuse for each army. Kind of cheeky, but I am okay with it.

I only painted about 11 men, but I am very pleased with the outcome so far, although I held the can of matt spray too close to a couple of them, as is visible by the whiteness of a couple of rifles. I based them on pennies (UK 1p), painted them brown, and coated with PVA and liberal amounts of flock.They will do for now. I will look into other ways of basing men.

I also apologize for my horrific photography skills. I just haven't had the right light, and my daylight lamp seems to be a bit lacking.

British Armour Finally Finished.

So this summer I decided to get back into model making. These are the two first kits I bought to get going again. I have finally finished them to a point where I am happy with them.

I am pretty sure the tank commander is the driver from the Aifrix Quad and 25pdr kit.

This is, however, the last Airfix Sherman I will ever make. Having looked online for inspiration on ways to make it look better, I discovered just now historically inaccurate this kit is. The front of the tracks are too exposed, there was always at least a little mudguard, and the gun mantle is apparently wrong. I came close to buying some Italeri quick build Shermans, but I saw that the commander's hatch is closed. There was no way of opening it without some serious work on the turret. Such work is possibly beyond my skills. So I passed. I will have another look around for some more sherman kits. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

This tank commander is from the old Matchbox Stuart kit. So he has been sat in my old model box for twelve years or something. Funnily enough I can't find my Stuart anywhere though, and am unsure if I ever finished it.

I really like this Cromwell model. I will be getting more of them.