So That’s It?

Part of the current monthly painting challenge over at Azazel’s Bitz Box is to paint something armoured.  So, as we’re now halfway through April, time to reveal my progress on this!

Yep, that’s it, a stack of half-finished 1/72 and 20mm scale tanks!  Since I’ve actually managed to paint at least a bit on something nearly every night in April, I should have finished at least two vehicles but, so far, nowt’s finished!  To make things worse, some of them have been built and primed for years!

However, it’s got me to the point where I can start to get at least some of them finished.  With the exception of the Plastic Soldier Company A9 Cruiser lurking top left in the picture, they’re all vehicles that will be in monotone colours (either green or grey, if you exclude the brown Japanese Kurogane field car that’s got in with this lot).  That means lining in the details in a shade colour and then drybrushing on a highlight.  Suspension and trackwork are in dark brown and just get drybrushed.

The German vehicles have slowed me down a bit since I needed decals/transfers for tactical numbers and national balkankreuz markings.  My first attempt took me an hour to put markings on one vehicle (a Panzer IVD) which in the end looked crap and I painted them all out!  I’ve decided to drop some of the markings because I can’t get a decent appearance with them.  I’ve compromised and used PSC German decals for turret numbers on two Panzer 38(t)s and black/white crosses on the others where I could get them to fit.  The PSC decals are very good and I marked four tanks in half an hour!

The vehicles shown come in a right hotch potch of forms – there are plastic kits, resin models, 3-D prints and one white metal one.  Apart from the Kurogane, all of them are basecoated now and ready to be put aside and forgotten about, err, I mean finished.  Being realistic, not all of this lot will get finished this month, but they have all got closer to being done!

Last, but not least, are the ten figures at the bottom.  These are WW1 Germans who have had some new static grass added to their bases to hide some very old scatter grass/flock mix that had gone yellow.  I’m hoping to do a round up on my WW1 Germans soon, since they probably sort of qualify for the second part of the April challenge, which is to do an army feature – that’s also Plan B in case I don’t actually finish any tanks!