StuH 42 Complete

Warlord Games StuH 42

 This little gem is the StuG III - Sturmhaubitze 42 10.5cm SPG, or more commonly know as the StuH 42. I have had this model for a few years now just sitting around for my non-existent Bolt Action army.  I had originally chose this tank for BA because of the Medium Howitzer it counts as having.  Good against infantry.

I know this tank was not featured in the North African TOW. However the visual theme for my Germans will be DAK. The Deutschland Afrika Korps lead by Rommel himself.  While I love the armor from Warlord Games I am not too thrilled with their infantry models.  When the Perry Twins started to release their DAK range I knew it was a match made in heaven for me!

This tank has been somewhat of a soap opera for me.  I have stripped the paint from it 3 times now.  Having problems with colors or paint texture.  I usually dilute my acrylics with regular old rubbing alcohol.  But the paint kept coming out "stringy".  Prior to trying to mix my own color. I tried the AK Interactive DAK Airbrush Paints.  I found these to be extremely translucent and I was not happy with the extremely bright sand color. I do have the filters and washed to bring that back down but I wanted to get this guy done quickly.

So here is where it sits after a painting session tonight. I still have all of the wheels and tracks to paint and a few other details. Then on to the weathering and pigments!

Chasseur à Cheval de la Garde

Chasseur à Cheval de la Garde by Andrea Miniatures

So this guy is taking up all of my current paint time.  I was hard at work on a 1:35 scale kit that is well over 600 pieces.  That is a special project I am documenting and will do a series of posts on later.  I have decided to take on some larger scale models to try and work on some of my techniques.

So far with this guy I am torn.  The greens look much better in person and I had to really play with the picture settings in Photoshop to get it close to natural.  I need to re-adjust my camera too.  I am not sure if I like the face so far or not. I have tried to add a few more colors to my palette here. I may re-do his eyes and try to eliminate the hard shadow edge on his left cheek with his smile line.  I think a little smoothing between transitions may help here.

I have started to put down the base colors for red, white, and gold as well.  The red and gold I think are going to be my biggest challenge because of location.  There is some extremely fine details I need to go over with them.

Anyhow I hope you like it! Let me know what you think and I will keep on posting!

Just a little photo dump

 So it has been well over a year since I have posted anything here on my blog.  It's been a busy one as I have a son now who is 10 months old.  I don't have nearly as much hobby time as I would like anymore but I still work on projects.  Here is a small smattering of the things I have worked on in the past year and some current projects.