Painting Tray

A variety of toys on table (see below):

• Fairey Battle (mostly made and with it's base coat of paint)
• Renaissance Crossbowmen (Painted and Based)
• Mounted Renaissance Harquebusiers (slight bit of basing work to be done)
• Chaos Space Marines (Primes, Washed and in the throes of an experimental Gold and Red colour scheme)
• Five Mini Plaster Cast Lego Star Wars Figures (say no more)

They are cluttering up the bathroom shelf at the moment so I need to get a move on ;)

Tiny Little Tau (Gun Drones)

Tiny companions to the Tau leader's Crisis battle-suit (see below):

In the background some tactical reading, Mark Urban's "Tank War" following the Dirty/Filthy 5th RTR. Starts off "Phoney War" (France 1940) where the 5th could claim only "one enemy tank kill" versus score of lost cruisers to mechanical breakdown, really good for The Desert War (1941-43), a bit of Italy (1944) [reece in particular] and excellent for Normandy to Hamburg (1944-45). 

Got me thinking WWII again ;)

The way of the Tau (XV8 Crisis Battlesuit Commander

I have had this in my Sci-Fi collection since I think about 2006. It's time to be painted came while I was on holiday with the family (alongside Spiderman and Wonder Woman, see previous post). Although I have a packet of normal Tau (so technically I now qualify for the minimum force requirement for a Warhammer 40K Tau formation) it was purchased for its own aesthetic merits. In this was I shamelessly over equipped and "bombed up" the beast with five weapon and support systems instead of the prescribed three. I plan to use it in Space Crusade instead of a "high spec" Dreadnought (see below)

All-in-all I am quite pleased with the result, although my painting style would now be considered old-style traditional (three colour: shade, base, highlight) and heavy on the paint, as opposed to the more modern (base, wash, base, fine edge highlight) subtle mass painting techniques

Oh well, anything goes in my books .. ;)

Er, Lego Spiderman and Wonder Woman?

I know, I know, it has to be seen to be believed, "How Far From Austerlitz?" as Alistair Horne would or could have said! (see below):

I picked these up at a Lego exhibition while on holiday and they were by far the cheapest items in the museum shop! Originally they came as white (blank) plaster-casts about 9cm by 4cm and my kids chose the characters which I had to paint free hand. Thank goodness for Google image search!

Ahem, I also have five tiny Star Wars ones to paint yet (Darth Vader, Luke, Princess Leia, Storm Trooper, Chewbacca .. watch this space), for the kids of course ;)

Note: No moving parts, so only a matter of time before they are chipped or smashed, despite the Satin Gloss varnish protection!

Fairey Battle Progress

Canopy and radio aerial added to the Fairey Battle  (bar the rear gunner's bit) and the brown earth (Airfix 29 and Tamiya 52) given a Satain Gloss Varnish coat to make it look the same as the satin green (Airfix 163). The Humbrol Clearfix worked well getting the see through canopy in place without the annoying smudges associated with plastic cement disasters of the past. Next, I took a deep breath and with a steady hand painted the canopy lines with a strong dark black (Vallejo Game Colour Black). I also stained the exhausts with a Vallejo Burnt Umber Wash (see below):

Quite pleased with how she is coming along. I usually try and shade, base and highlight the colour scheme but I will probably just leave this one basic, get the decals on, then think about weathering ;)

Fairey Battle's Topside

Time to try out the new Airfix Satin Dark Green paint (163) out. It looks much thicker than the normal acrylic mixtures, more paste than paint, even after what I considered a good stir. It was hard work even getting it slightly wetter by mixing in additional water. With some trepidation I tried my first application. The Earth Brown Airfix (29) was more standard paint, in fact I used Tamiya 52 Earth Brown as per the equivalent charts (see below for results):

Mixed feelings as to how good it looks. The Matte Brown means that I will either have to varnish it up to Satin or the green down to Matte (which seems pointless).

To be continued ...