574 - Desert Rats Vehicles Finished!

Hooray: All done!

A Crusader Mk I, Humber Armoured Car Mk II, and some transport - let's call it a 30cwt lorry.

Managed to get them varnished today, and took a few pics outside:

 Scale?!

 Grumpy driver. It gets hot in that desert!

 Camo...

 ...Camo with moving turrets.

And for those of you wondering how the camo works at a 'distance'.

It goes almost without saying that I have enjoyed the challenge of these anything-other-than-olive-drab vehicles!

Cheers, all - just a few bits left now!

- Drax.

573 - Crusader Mk I Finished!

...Okay, so it's not yet varnished, and the late-night mobile pics make the red and white flash look terrible...but I have finished the Crusader!

Another unit nailed for my brave Sikh lads...

- D.

572 - Being Caunter-Productive

Sorry -

After following Dai's example in post 571, I just couldn't resist the pun!

Here's the result of the last two evenings' careful planning and painting (obviously still a messy W-i-P):

Paints are Skeleton Bone (my new go-to base), Russian Uniform, and GW's Fortress Grey (I think. If I'm wrong, I shall correct this).

Many of you know that colour really is not a strength of mine, so I was delighted that these work so well together: even to the point of the grey looking quite blue-y in the pictures!

Now I just need to tidy the wretched thing up.
And finish the Humber.
And add details to both.
And finish the last of my infantry support teams.
And mount, base, prime, basecoat, paint and finish my 25pdr.
All in a few short weeks.

Gulp.

- Drax.

571 - Travel-Painting Progress: Humber Mk II

Hullo, All.

Visiting my dad this weekend on my own, and I thought I'd take advantage of not being distracted by my children or needing to be sociable with Mrs Drax, I brought a toy along with me to paint. 

As I fancied a change from painting the PBI, I brought along my new, desert-y armoured car: the Humber Mk II (WiP):

I have decided - contrary to all my years of painting uniformity - to use the Desert Rats Sikhs project as a chance to experiment a little more with not only my painting techniques (see Post 570) but also the variety of the schemes. 

As there seems, essentially, to have been absolutely no regularity or cohesion in the markings and colours of desert vehicles, I'm just going f to be a big, brave Drax and actually embrace some variety!

Wish me luck...

- Drax.

570 - Desert Rats' Transport Lorry

Hullo, All.

More late-night mobile phone pics...but this time I'm rather proud of the result.

It's a lorry, of course, to transport some of my Sikh troops. 

Or all of them eventually, I suppose...but that'd take longer...

The things of which I am proud in this case will not appear particularly clearly in these photos are as follows:

• I actually hand-painted the Type A RAF roundel on the cab roof. This involved (a) practising and (b) thinning my paints - two processes in which I hardly ever indulge;
• the canvas tilt has no fewer than five - FIVE! - different gradations of colour on it, to give the otherwise flat material some 'depth'. This is a real first for me (in twenty-mumble years of painting); I even mixed some paint!
• the headlamps have actually been painted carefully, with outlining and even a spot of light;
• Finally, I used three different and quite liberal dry-brushing layers on this lorry: dark brown, light grey, then Bleached Bone (equivalent). In part, this was because it seemed apt; it was also, however, done in order to complement the colours of the weathering done on my Churchill I/II.

This means that - Sikh-wise - I have now completed my HQ, three sections, a sniper team and a lorry. Thirty-four figures and counting...!

"LILIUM INTER SPINAS"

My new lorry alongside its two completed 11AD lorries.

Woo-hoo!

- Drax.