AAA50th painted minis

@cavestone I also use vallejo paints. The key question here is are you brush painting, or using an airbrush, or both?

The Vallejo paints have a “Model Air” line that comes pre-thinned. You can buy a thinning product (from them) to add to the “Model Color” series paints, which are the exact same thing, just more concentrated and thicker.

If you’ve never used an airbrush, its a bit finicky–it requires regular cleaning and a without a good brush and compressor the paint will flow very inconsistently. The process will be very frustrating unless you use the pre-thinned paints because the brush can only blow paint that is within a certain set of thickness parameters that are difficult to achieve, especially if you are trying to mix the air in the brush’s reserve or in small quantities. That’s why having copies of both Model Air and Model Color is fine by me–unlike Warhammer 40K I’m using primarily earthy colors, greens, dunkelgelb and dunkelgrau… other AFV and camoflage colors and so i don’t need a collection of primary or bright colors.

But I recommend it. The airbrush creates a sublime, beautiful layer and slight mix variations can be used to create shadows, grades, etc. Then you go back over with your brush, adding highlights, lines, details. Then, back over again with a drybrushing…then back to the airbrush to blast Flory Wash all over it.

Can’t see your photos, you can’t post photos until you have a certain post count. I wouldn’t use water to thin paints, they are water soluble but the mix and viscosity is all wrong (though water is obv. cheap and easy to clean up)

As for oil-based paints, these require thinner to clean up, they are much more difficult to drybrush with and are not used for airbrushing. The days of the old testors paints is long behind us–even apple barrel paints are easier to work with and cheaper. The early painting methods were much more about glomming thick layers of paint onto lead miniatures and the modern approach with water based paint and a series of different techniques creates much better results.

i just started painting mine.  Use spray paint.  Use Krylon grey or white primer.  After it primed spray it with the color you want as the base gray, green, earth, etc.  Then add the finishing touches the cockpit, nose, tail colors, etc.  The spray paint gives you a nice even coat.  Go light and fast over the piece about 6 inches away .  if you go slow you’ll put on to much paint.  no good you lose detail.  If you really want a sharp looking piece add decals.

look at some of my pieces on combat miniatures face book site.

Jeff Cam.

Thanks everyone for your replies, I finished last night. Really happy with how these turned out.

factories.jpg

Nice work , lots of detail

The next group of infantry, will be, DESERT LIGHT INFANTYRY.

Until next time.

Cheers!

John

Redleg,

First, you have a beautiful family. Second, Your paint jobs look great. I have to really give applause to your freehand markings. It’s true decals are cleaner and sharper but I my self have used none on anything I’ve painted and I’m developing a way to layer and paint my own markings (It’s been holding up my project severely) I simply can’t afford to buy sheets of decals that I might only use a handful of.

One tip That I’ve adopted, is to use ultra-fine Sharpie permanent markers for small lines and details where a brush won’t do or may slop (canopy frames). Lastly I’ve learned from table-top gamers of much larger scale (Warhammer, Bolt Action) models that at the scale Axis & Allies models are you can “mass paint” with fewer details on many units to create large armies, fleets and air forces that will look phenomenal from eye level to table top . Anyway us A&A painters have our work cut out for ourselves. I salute you sir.

Anyway, keep on painting, Nice work.

Fantastic!  Especially love seeing the whole army together - the Ruskie horde!

@BluGerman:

today i managed to read through this year long forum thread and I have to ask what happened after November 17th 2011?.. did everybody in this forum mysteriously dissapear? or was it just discontinued? or was it moved to another forum thread or something?.. somebody please let me know because I was really excited to see Allworks whole board with his miniatures (they are awesome!)

In answer to your question- I don’t really know.  :? Allworkandnoclay is an artist who does all sorts of other work for money, not just Axis and Allies. I presume that he moved on to other work, as his Flickr account shows him doing some sculpting and what not. To be honest though, he stopped posting pics, people stopped commenting, and it sort of fell of the face of the earth. There’s some stuff on TallPaul’s page, and there are plenty of other artists with some awesome stuff if you need your daily fix of painted minis!