The Art of Coarse Airbrushing

Say 'ello to my leetle tank

I picked up an airbrush last year and to be frank, I've found it quite difficult to get to grips with.  I had trouble with keeping it clean, it seemed to be constantly clogging and I was spending quite a lot of time on it to little result. 

But after several attempts and over the course of a year, I've gotten to a stage where I'm happy with it. 

The trick appears to be; 

1. Always put your thinner and flow improver in first

2. Clear after every colour change

3. Use Isopropyl alcohol in a solution for cleaning

4. Use special airbrush paints until you are *very* comfortable with thinning your own  

The plus side is that when the airbrush runs well, it's an absolute dream.  

Thin, even coats of colour, applied very quickly.  There's a good bit of work in setting the airbrush up to work, but once you get it going, you can get a lot done very wuickly

I've a very basic Spamax model which I picked up with a compressor and some other equipment and very good it is too.  My pal, Savage, has a compressor which can handle multiple airbrushes at a time, so I went over to his place to do a bit of airbrushing together.  It was a very pleasant evening and we're hoping to do it again.  

The plan is to do a Courland scenario later in the year and that's going to require some suitably snow camouflaged big cats (and which will eventually be deployed to the Bulge), so I tried an old modellers trick with cheap hairspray.  

I had first painted this panther in the early 2000s and didn't make a particularly good job of it.  I gave it a coat of Hairspray and let that dry.  I then gave it a coat of Vallejo White German Camo (there's a funny German name for it which escapes me) and then let that dry. Once that was completely dry, I went back with a wet baby bud and reactivated the hairspray around the high traffic areas. 

This is called "chipping" and gives the impression that the paint has been chipped and worn and adds visual interest to a fairly monochrome vehicle. I'm told chipping fluid from a proper model shop is better, but I was quite pleased with this.  I've a few more tanks to do, but this should make it a lot faster and easier.  Just add some weathering and a few decals and we'll be done. 

The fruit of two hours work and very pleased I am too.  A certain amount of that was setting up the airbrush and cleaning it afterward, but once I got into the swing of things, I got paint on tanks very quickly. I think one of the ways to get the best out an airbrush would be to plan to do as much airbrushing as you can in one sitting.  This would mean that you'd get the most amount of painting for the least amount of set up time. 

Location, Location, Location Endor Edition

Of course Savage, turps drinking artistic type that he is, got rather more out of his painting session - it must be the smock, the floppy hat and the red haired ladies in a state of dishabille. It's a testament to just how much work you can do with an airbrush that he covered some very large spaces in jig time with a relatively small amount of masking. 

And very impressive it is too.    

British Shermans & Progress in the War Room

Group shot

I've been working on some armour for my '44 British army.  These are three Plastic Soldier Company Shermans (thanks Ben!) with a few extra bells and whistles added. They were painted as set out in the instructions from the Flames of War website. 

Sherman the first

This was made up with just a few little pieces of stowage and a HAT tank commander added. The stowage was a mixture of Hobbyden, Italeri and Valiant small packs. 

Sherman the third

Again made up straight from the box with some green stuff camouflage and some S&S stowage and a few bits and pieces added from the Plastic Soldier Company sprue. 

Sherman the third

And finally, the last Plastic Soldier Company Sherman with some Hobbyden boxes at the back, green stuff nets up front and some Plastic Soldier Company bits here and there. I had actually thought I had gone a little overboard with stowage on some of these, but when I saw some of the pictures out there of both tanks in action and the kits available to 1/35 scale chaps, I realised that I had been rather restrained. 

Everything but the kitchen sink. 

Though no doubt there is someone there who makes 1/35 scale kitchen sinks. These boys aren't finished yet and they need some decals and a spot of weathering, but on the whole I'm very happy with them. They have a suitably late war gypsy look about them without having gone completely overboard and they are good robust kits so I hope they will stand up to plenty of wargaming use. 

And lastly because I had it lying around and it seemed to be silly not to give it a go while it was lying around, an Armourfast Cromwell. I have another one of these with some scrim and other bits attached, but I ran out of black spray. I'll also want to attached some pennants and decals to this, but I'll have to look at what is available in the decal box and work from there.

In other news, the ceiling rose and lamp for the War Room is up.  This is a lamp that my inlaws got me in Berlin a couple of years ago. It's rather nice and it made from vellum.  

It also comes with this fantastic counterweight arrangement which allows the lamp to be raised and lowered over the game table. 

Next step, shelves and floor staining!

Spot of modelling

Grenadier Guards Fifer

Mrs Kinch & Cousin Basil were off treading the boards last night so I settled down to some small jobs. 

There was some work to be done around the house, a chair to fix and I had a very pleasant walk while popping out to pick up the supplies needed to affect the repairs. Then I settled down for an evening watching Colditz and doing a spot I painting. 

This is a display figure for Mrs Kinch's great uncle. He took a fall recently and could do with some cheering up. The gift of Padre Paul* of FLW - he's a Grenadier Guards fifer. Painting instructions came from Ross and damned if I'm not painting another white jacket.

Achilles Crew

My work on my British armour continues apace. This is a HAT tank commander with a Ceasar commando, both of whom will be crewing an Achilles shortly. 

I leaned on the this article from the flames of war website for painting advice and for sheer clarity I doubt you'll do better.

Armourfast Cromwell

The question of stowage, which seems to transform tanks, is making itself known. I've been carefully adding pieces for the last few days and the more I add the more I seem to like it. I finally undercoated my first Achilles yesterday, though I will have to do some more crew for the second one. I've been raiding old sprues and things long considered useless for bits. It's great fun.

This is a HAT Cromwell which I've added some green stuff to. There's a ladder from another kit and some small packs from a box of Valiant Tommies.

Some hessian camouflage was added by cutting up tissues paper and then adding it to the hull with some watered down PVA. Obviously I shall have to see how it looks when it dries, but it does look too bad actually. 

The question is of course is whether I'm building a generic unit or something specific. There's plenty of information available, but I'm not sure I would be better off fielding an armoured troop of the Loamshires as it does rather short circuit the whole tread spotting nonsense. 

Also were there pennants added to tank aerials ever? I'd think I'd rather like some pennants.  

*"Padre Paul, Padre Paul, Padre Paul and his black and white curate. Early in the morning, he goes to matins yawning - Padre Paul's a very happy man."

I'm not sure it will catch on. 

Sent from my iPhone

Soviet Shermans III: Disaster!

I varnished my Soviet Shermans this morning and saw most of my hard work disappear. This is the result. There is still some sign of the pigment, but it has darkened rather spectacularly and has almost become invisible. 

I was sent a link to this tutorial done by Piers on the Guild. He recommends using a pigment fixer rather than just mixing them with water. So the trick appears to be, varnish, add fixer, then add pigment. I shall know for next time. 

Sadly, none of the local hobby shops appear to have fixer in stock, so I think it may be a while before I get a chance to rectify my mistakes. However, it's been a learning experience and I'm glad that I at least gave it a try. However, this being sick nonsense is really beginning to get on my nerves. 

Soviet Shermans II: Weathering

After posting some pictures to the Guild - I got some advice on how to approach weathering.  The lads thought that I had put things on a bit heavy handedly and that the best thing to do was wipe away most of the pigment with a cotton bud.  

This I think you'll agree has improved things immeasurably and the tank looks more like a weathered and beaten war horse and less like something that's been through the second and third days of Glastonbury. 

I was particularly pleased to see how the detail that I painted on the tracks and road wheel remerged from under the deluge of mud. Things are looking a bit better.  A quick spray of matt varnish and I think they should be ready for the tabletop!

Soviet Shermans

It's all gone a bit Scutari really

I'm at home at present, sick in bed and thoroughly browned off with the whole experience.  The local sawbones says I should be back in action shortly, but it's very irritating.  In the meantime, I've done some work on two Armourfast Shermans that I dug out for the Kursk game, before Donogh came to the rescue with his T-34's and I realised that there weren't any Shermans at Kursk. 

These are common or garden Sherman M4s with a 75mm gun. They were sprayed with a Tamiya spray for Russian armour and then given a slight highlight. Tracks were painted a dark grey, mixed by hand, as I couldn't find anything suitable from my paintbox. 

Decals were by the redoubtable Plastic Soldier Company from their Russian decal range. I am new to decals and I find applying them a nerve wracking business, but these seem to work alright. I only tumbled to the dodge of adding gloss varnish first after watching this video tutorial.

I have tried adding it to the blog entry, but Youtube doesn't seem to be co-operating. 

I must thank reader Mr E for his kindness and patience while teaching me the rudiments of applying decals. 

The other new departure was trying out some pigments for weathering. I added MIG Black Smoke to the muzzles of the guns, which seems to have worked somewhat. The MIG European earth, which I mixed with a few drops of water and then dabbed on doesn't seem to have come out as well. I haven't varnished the tank yet, so perhaps that will darken it somewhat. I know some painters use gloss varnish as a medium, so I might give that a try. 

Lastly, I also tried some chipping though I think I may have been a little too cautious about it as I don't see it in any of the photographs. This essentially was trying to represent areas of chipped or worn paint by dabbing grey onto the tank with a sponge and then highlighting with a pencil. 

I'm still not sure I'm happy with the weathering, but we shall see if it is improved by a coat of varnish. I fear that once I've added this much detail to some of my tanks, I'll have to do the lot. 

He's been!

Signs of His coming all over the house...

...and he's not the only one! My Secret Santa keep the mystery going for those vital extra seconds. Mrs Kinch and Cousin Basil got great entertainment from my reaction to this at the breakfast table. 

British armour - thank you Secret Santa!

Teenage Kicks

I was not nearly so stylish

I hated being a teenager - it was awful. In fact, when I think about it seriously, I'm probably more contented today than I ever have been. It's not that I wasn't happy when I was younger, but I'm certainly more consistently happy now.

Old friends have a tendency to humble us, particularly if they've known you from childhood. They've seen past the facade that we present to the world, because they remember us before we were who are today. They remember the time you accidentally called your gym teacher Daddy infront of the whole class or the time you got drunk as a lord on plum brandy with your grandmother and got sick behind the sofa at Christmas. 

They remember haircuts. Desperate, terrible, unfortunate haircuts. 

And some very questionable wardrobe decisions. 

But the reason old friends, like old wine, are best is that despite knowing all of this they still fancy the pleasure of your company. They see past the mullet, the low alchol tolerance, the teenage obsession with grunge, the dull evangelical atheism and the truly awful poetry.  Or at least they pretend not to remember, probably I suppose because they were wearing the Nirvana t-shirt with you or because you helped hide the evidence when they almost set their parents house on fire. 

Sadly, there are also old acquaintances, who are not so kind and they remember who were before you realised who you were, really.  And they remember all those times you were petulant and the time you pretended to be a tiger in class and fell off your desk or the time you were cordially invited to consider Art rather Woodwork because one broken blackboard was quite enough thank you very much and Mr. Blank was worried that you do someone an injury if you dropped another chisel.   Every so often, you meet those people and they remember and suddenly you are fourteen, confused and terribly lonely again. 

A noble creature from an earlier age?

I've started unpacking the box room and it's been an experience. I found boxes that were packed in 2007/8 and four, maybe five house moves ago, but I also found a lot of my Second World War kit, including an Airfix Bren Gun carrier with attendant six pounder. I'm in the process of building a British army for Memoir '44 and I needed some guns, so it seemed like the perfect option.

A gaped, fiddly monstrosity - like meeting the school bully twenty years on

What a ghastly mistake that was. I've put some Airfix kits together in the last few years, but they were all made of a grey plastic that was a lot easier to deal with. This was made from a thin, unpredictable green plastic made from a mixture of spite and broken dreams. Christ it was awful.  I shan't dwell on the experience, but suddenly it was 1993 again and none of the parts fit and glue had shot with the speed of lightning off the model, onto my hand and down my sleeve.

The remains of the Airfix six pounder, shortly after they were removed from my shirt cuff

I may be a grown man these days, with a house and a career and a wide circle of friends who actively enjoy  wargames, but that Airfix kit saw right through me. It bared every inadequacy.

After much cutting myself, accidentally shaving important bits off while seperating pieces from the sprue, unpredictable glue and getting things to almost, but not quite fit I managed to get the carrier together. The gun was an entirely differant matter. I'll try again tomorrow.

I might  ask Dad to help me.

A much more pleasant experience was the Plastic Soldier Company Sherman which I got in a trade with Rostbif. These are made in a solid light green plastic and a pleasently robust. I'd show you a work in progress picture, but I put them together in a single night, in fact in less than two hours I had all three tanks assembled.

Look how fancy it is.

If the Airfix kit was a cringe making teenage love letter full of angst and bad spelling, the Plastic Soldier Company was a smooth seduction by a seasoned operator. They're beautiful kits, complex enough to allow the wargamer some options, but not so much that they take an age to put together.

The offending tricky track thingie

I did have one problem though. The tracks were fiddly, not nearly as fiddly as any part of the Airfix kit, but still taxing. The tracks came in four parts, two sections of track, a set of solid wheels and bogeys that attached to the body of the tank and sprocket type arrangement that pluged into the wheel. I found that the main issue was that once the sprocket was in place, the tracks didn't really fit. I scratched my head and moved the tracks around quite a bit, but to no avail. I finished by shaving the sprockets down, at which point the tracks fitted pretty well, though they weren't exactly right.

I began to consider stowage, of which there is quite a bit on the PSC frame, and not wanting to make a mess of things, I googled some pictures of Royal Tank Regiment Shermans. I picked up some good ideas and I also made a startling discovery.

And all is right with the world, the fit was sweet as a nut

I'd put the sprocket wheel on the wrong way around. Fortunately, this was not sufficient to cause a recurrence of the grinding physic torture that had been the Airfix Bren carrier. The second tank went together like a dream, no problems with the tracks, smooth sailing from beginning to end.

A Plastic Soldier Sherman (now with sprocket wheel the right way around) and with HAT tank commander added, rolls over the Airfix Bren carrier

Thoughts on the Airfix Bren Carrier

I may try and finish this model, but never, ever again. I'm beginning to experience serious doubts about the Airfix Bofors 40mm kits that I found with the Bren carrier. They may find themselves looking for another home.

Thoughts on the Plastic Soldier Company Shermans

Pros

The model is beautiful. It goes together easily and is no bother.

While it's not abundant, there is sufficient stowage to vary the appearance of the tanks somewhat.

The turret MG is solidly cast and probably overscale, but those are advantages for a wargaming model frankly.

Cons

There are no decals, though these will be available separately shortly. I suppose in one way this makes sense as it allows you to field the tanks as either British, French, Soviet or American without having to change the contents of the box.

There is only one tank commander. I'm varying this with the contents of the British Tank Riders box from HAT.

The turret MG is solidly cast and probably overscale, but those are advantages for a wargaming model frankly.

In short, I'm very, very happy with the Plastic Soldier Company Shermans and I'll be fielding them fairly shortly. I may never put another Airfix kit together.

Being a teenager once was quite enough thank you very much.

What are you exactly?

Churchill Mark I's?

As my voyage of discovery continues, I opened another box today to find these. So far as I am aware these are Mark I Churchill tanks, which only saw service at Dieppe - but I'm not enough of a tank fancier to be certain of that identification. I bought them in a discount shop in or around 2001 or 2002. They were made by an Oriental company of some description* and I presume that they are a copy of another more finely finished kit. The fit on these was aweful, but I bought the lot because they were ridiculously cheap, at about £2 per kit. These may predate the Euro, I'm not sure about that.

As I said, the fit was awful and I did actually think them together with UHU rather than superglue, simply because it fulfilled the joint function of gluing and filling gaps.

The tracks held on by a staple through each one

Unless I want to play a Dieppe scenario, which I'm not entirely sure I do - I'm not convinced that there is anything I can do with these fellows. My modelling skills wouldn't be up to the task of adding mudguards and so forth.

We shall see.

Another wonderful Kinch paint job

This is a Cromwell  tank so far as I can tell or maybe a Comet. I absolutely caked this kit in paint - though in my early wargaming period scheme of "Allied tanks were green, right?" I just slathered it in Goblin Green and then covered it in Ork Flesh wash. This kit despite the abuse heaped upon it, isn't looking too bad and is probably salvageable.

In other news, Mrs Kinch is improving by leaps and bounds. The wargames room still looks like a bomb hit it, but is I think turning a corner, particularly with regard to the storage of terrain.

*A very kind chap on The Miniatures Page suggested Lee models as a possible source.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

BRDM-1 from Hobbyden

BRDM-1 from Hobbyden

In between ordering skips and waiting for bloody plaster to dry, I ordered some reconaissance vehicles for a pal of mine that I'll be seeing at the weekend. Donogh, Steve and I will be invading his ancestral manse to get a spot of gaming done. He and Donogh have been building forces to use with the new effort from Osprey, Force on Force. Donogh has been playing Ambush Alley quite happily for some time now and has assembled an impressive array of Soviets, British and Americans for Afghanistan.

Steve has assembled a force of Cold War Soviets to fight Donogh's Afghans but naturally, being Steve, has taken the heavy metal option - T-80s and Hinds and BMPs oh my! As our birthdays are all quite close together, I decided to get Steve a little something for his forces and therefore picked the lightest, smallest, least impressive reconnaissance vehicle I could find in a no doubt doomed attempt to introduce a little balance into his super-human Soviets.

The model above is a BRDM-1, an amphibious scout car developed by those rascally Communists in 1954, in order to provide protection to reconnaissance troops of the advancing Red Hordes.

Cast in resin by Hobbyden, this is a neat little kit with only five pieces, clean mould lines and certainly as good as any resin kit that I've come across. A little filling and filing will be necessary to get it up to scratch, but nothing too ardous. What really surprised me was the quality of customer service shown by Mark of the Hobbyden. Emails were answered promptly, any questions I had were dealt with and the product arrived quickly and well packed. I don't have any moderns at present, but if I do decide to start a force, I'll be giving Hobbyden a call.

The Rolls

A Rolls Royce Armoured Car by Frontline Wargaming

Grauniad moment: Above amended to read Frontline Wargaming,

rather than Newline Designs.

As I've said before, I have have a terrible tendency to flit between projects and I have been half heartedly chipping away at a small Very British Civil War Project. The conceit for those of you not familiar with it, is that Edward VIII does not abdicate and manages to get his chum Oswald Mosley into government. This radicalises the populace and before you know it, fascist jackboots are kicking in doors and there are militias sprouting up all over the country. The Reds are turning on the government, Liverpool has declared independence, the Scots are looking distinctly shifty and Mosley is attempting to restore order by shooting anyone who disagrees with him.

The whole thing is inspired by Sir Ian McKellen's magnificent version of Richard III which depicts Richard as a black shirted fascist. It's visually very attractive and I tell myself that I'll be able to use the figures for Operation Sealion games, which I've run rather successfully before.
There is a description in the main book of a Mosley-ite armoured column whose mission is to decapitate the Anglican League, the armed wing of the Anglican church who have taken a dim view of the King a)marrying a divorcee and b)foisting a tyrant on the country. In a thoroughly bizarre way this made perfect sense to me and I found the idea of an Anglican League force very attractive and reminiscent of "Went the Day Well".

My objective is complete a small Mosley-ite force who will be opposed to the death by my Anglican militia in defence of God, country, jam and Jerusalem. The Mosley-ites will be Regular Army types with some party members, though I'm not sure what to use for them. I'll have to have a look at Richard's army in Richard III. The Anglican militia will be partisans and Home Guard of various sorts, probably with some Regular Army support.

I was putting in an order with Frontline Wargaming , a Christmas present for Donogh as it happens and I decided to add in a little something for myself while I was at it. I've always liked the look of the Rolls Royce Armoured Car myself and thought that nothing could be more appropriate to a British Civil War scenario. The model arrived well packed and I put it together in a few minutes. The finish is a bit rough, but I managed to clean most of the flash and rough patches away with my penknife after fixing Mrs. Kinch a predinner martini. I had finished the work by the time she had finished the martini, so it wasn't a long job.

I then of course dropped the model (the Garibaldi may not helped) and snapped the barrel of the Vickers from the turret, which is why the turret is looking a little underdressed. That said, a nice little model and very, very cheap.

http://www.wearehench.com/rr/101wo.html