Comrade! (Part 22 - M3 Half-track Done!)

Painting progress Comrades!

The M3 Half-track is done. Think I went a little overboard with the snow effects, but otherwise I’m happy enough with it. The model is a resin by Blitzkrieg Miniatures and required only a little clean up, mainly on the underside where there were some semi-ugly mold plug things, but aside from those just some slight resin flash. My only real criticism of this model is that it didn't come with any crew minis, but I just went and made a driver out of a plastic soviet tank commander with a headswap. Painting was all done with a brush and markings were unused decals from my T34/85. 

There was a picture of the back end too, but when I got to work to do the picture editing, I then realised it was out of focus. So, meh.

Action shot with some troops for fun and to show the scale of the Half-Track.

Here's the current standing of the Winter Soviets project in my display case:

What do I have planned for the gap at the front? Well I am happy you asked, because....

I also got these 5 painted up and since taking these pics have dressed their bases. Five to go and then  the squad of 10 will be done and I’ll start working on some Winter Germans which will be a nice change of pace. 

Switched up the Winter-white painting recipe a bit by applying a thinned layer of  brown wash to the creases. Liked the result so much I grabbed my squad of Scouts from the display case and spruced up their Winter Onesies with the same method and they look SO MUCH better for it too.

Comrade! (Part 21 - M3 Half-Track WIP)

Got inspired to paint shortly prior to midnight last night. In the end decided to slap some whitewash on my Lend Lease Soviet M3 Half-Track so it’d match better with the rest of my Winter project. Also got the chipping/weathering done as well, just mud and snow to go then a quick coat of dulcote and this lovely model is done.

I hope to have this finished this weekend. After that, who knows what'll take my fancy? (Heck knows there's a crap load of stuff waiting to be gotten to!!!)

Weekend Painting Update

After being low on painting mojo for a couple weeks, this weekend saw my mojo return with aplomb!

Whilst I only managed to get a small scatter terrain piece fully painted, I did get work done on other stuff too, including a secret project for a mate that I'll preview later after he's got it in hand.

First up, my WW2 Soviet Lend Lease M3 Half-Track (By Blitzkrieg Miniatures) has all of it's base green/wash/green+details stuff done. Now just weathering and markings to go. Not sure I'll be white-washing this one up to add a little variance amongst the schemes on my WW2 Soviet vehicles, though it will get the same snow and mud treatment as my other vehicles.

Blitzkrieg are known for their fine work. It's obvious that they design and then 3D print their stuff as their were the tell-tale print lines on the chassis on this resin&metal sculpt. Not sure I appreciate the texture on the flat areas, but between paint and weathering I'm hoping it'll be less of an of an issue for me.

Some nice stowage sculpted on to this thing. Had to add the driver from my pile of spare plastic parts though. 

Next is this nifty little resin wall. It was a cool and very affordable find in the bargain area at my LGS and was simple to paint up. The sculpt had quite a few bubbles but nothing so bad that couldn't be covered up by the moss effects and dark colours painted on and I've no idea who produces the piece. Nothing fancy, just good enough for slapping on the table - one can never have too much scatter terrain afterall.

The creamy rock thing in a little left of middle is some sort of equine-looking skull.

On the left facing is a bit of chain. No idea what it would be there for pratically, but it was nice to break up the otherwise stack-o-blocks.

Lastly, after my last post on the Dragon Rampant game my son and I played, I felt the urge to work on something "fantasy" to add to our next game together - so here's a Griffon. It's made by Wizkids in their new pre-primed plastic range that is far too affordable that I'm assuming was created to compete with the Reaper Bones plastic range. (Which if they keep charging a mere $3-4 for each pack, they'll quickly out-price Reaper.) The sculpt is very crisp and dynamic, obviously a CAD effort, but has some very obvious mold lines (That I couldn't be arsed to try to remove for fear of losing detail.) that make for a good gaming piece, but not so good for those who cringe at such blemishes in a model. So far just base coat and wash, still simple highlights and detailing to go plus some basing. I have some more of these pre-primed fantasy sculpts that I'll be painting up in the future.

Watch as the deadly griffon pounces upon a doe-like rock and blunts it's talons in an effort to squeeze the blood from it!