John Brown's Completed Painted German Forces!

@hbg-gw-enthusiast said in What Spray Paint Colors Best Match OOB Colors?:

@captainnapalm I’m in rural Minnesota. The store is called “Fleet Farm.” Their selection is insane. So many colors. And if you need tack for your horse, or automotive supplies, or you want to buy a riding lawn mower, or lumber, or basically anything, they probably have it!

Ha ha ha Ya I always stop at Fleet Farm in Antigo when I go up North for fishing stuff. Huge selection. :blush:

@655321 decals very small decals and I bought 3 of those sets so there is that. Lol

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Part 4: Starting the ships, adding decals to the tanks, skin tones on the soldiers

Today spent some time adding paint to the sprayed ships, including painting the water jettisons on the subs black (this was very tricky and ended up looking a little sloppy). Advice for painting the jettisons: toothpicks are not small enough! If you do use toothpicks, you’ll have to dab a dot of black for each tiny jettison.

The battleships were a bit easier, and painting the decks, bridge, and smoke stacks were all done in silver. I plan on adding the final grey coat last after the deck and stacks/bridge dry. I experimented with how to add the national emblem, and will probably opt for a white background with a red dot on the bow of the ship. In the future I may do that with the rear end of the ship.

I painted the tranny smoke stacks silver and added a white background for the emblem on the destroyers. All in all, the Japanese navy is coming along nicely.

The armor is pretty much done. I added a white flag to the front side of the armor and will be adding the red dots later. For the aircraft, I’ll be adding a red band around the rear part of the plane. I was debating between sky blue and red and may alternate just for some variety.

The soldiers got some skin! And I just want to say that adding the paint alone brings out the contours of their facial features in an excellent manner on their own. I may add a touch of black to certain areas of the face but that will be a last step. The next step will be panting their uniforms, rifles, and helmets.

After all this is done, I will be spray painting the japanese bombers white, the aircraft carrier black, and then will add the details to those. The Japanese are about 55% done all in all and I’m pleased with the results so far even if they do look a bit amateurish. Stay tuned.

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Thank you for the positive feedback! I forgot to say that in the previous post, and it’s very important that I do. It’s very encouraging and motivating to get good feedback, and we certainly appreciate it. The above mentioned four Essex class carriers are complete, a long with several other ships of the US Navy, so its time to update the thread. Just ships by FOlewnik in this post. More aircraft are almost done but I haven’t put magnets in them yet (so not really done), so no aircraft pictures this post.

We’ll start with the two “odd men out” of the HBG sculpt Baltimore Class Heavy Cruisers. Why “odd men out”? Because in the below picture we have on the left, the USS Unnamed Baltimore Class Cruiser Wearing Measure 31a, Design 9C, and on the right is the USS Columbus (CA 74), which wasn’t commissioned until June 8, 1945. The cruiser with the long name is wearing a design that was never used, but was taken from a period design found at https://www.wikiwand.com/en/World_War_II_US_Navy_dazzle_camouflage_measures_31,_32_and_33:_cruisers. The USS Columbus is wearing a Measure 12 Modified designed by FOlewnik to match the pieces we’ll be using for the US Atlantic fleet. These will get aircraft added, but at the time of the photographs the decals on the wings of the aircraft were drying.
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Next up are some metal destroyers from GHQ. Below on the left, the very brave USS Johnston (DD-557) painted in MS-3_/6D as it looked when it was “Sunk by Japanese Warships off Samar October 25 1944,” and next to it is USS Van Valkenburgh (DD-656) painted in camouflage Measure 31, Design 9d. All Wartime photos taken from Navsource.org, a great resource for US Navy history buffs.
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Below, the real USS Johnston shortly before her final battle, and the official design sheet:
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A great wartime picture of the USS Van Valkenburgh, which is the same on both sides:
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Now on to these two. From GHQ, USS The Sullivans (DD-537) painted in Measure 1, and the HBG sculpt light cruiser USS Marblehead (CL-12) who always wore Measure 2 throughout the war. If I can get FOlewnik to put the Shamrock on the first stack of The Sullivans when he puts the scout aircraft on the Marblehead, as seen in the below wartime photograph, I’ll come back and edit the post.
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The post previous to this post showed four Essex Class sculpts from HBG getting prepped and started with a base coat. Those are now completed and I had too much fun playing with them and the aircraft (that are complete so far) while I was taking photographs. I’m pretty sure I didn’t make any wooshing sea or aircraft noises or FOlewnik would have laughed at me. I was tempted though, and here’s why:
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Above we have the first of the Long Hull Essex Class, USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) on the left looking as she did after her April 1945 refit from suffering a Kamikaze Attack on January 21, 1945, and USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) on the right. The Bunker Hill is wearing Measure 33, Design 6A, of which Navsource says, “Her port side camouflage pattern was the most intricate design applied to any carrier.” One glance can confirm that!
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The final two Essex Class carriers are the USS Essex (CV-9) herself, and the USS Bennington (CV-20). The Essex is wearing a unique pattern, Measure 32v6, Design 10D, adapted from a destroyer pattern specifically for the long hulled Essex. The Bennington is painted in Measure 32, Design 17A.
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Finally, some group pictures just for fun:
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Thank you for checking out the post! If you liked it, please click the little heart. I’m trying to figure out why our post is only rated with a 2 when it seems it should be a bit higher if the other likes are any indication.

I’ve always had a problem with HBG’s “orange” Japanese units not being of the same tone of orange from OOB A&A… most other colors of custom HBG units seem to match pretty good, but that orange always seemed off to me… so much so I’ve never kept a custom HBG Japanese unit in my nation bins… sad, cuz I really like some of them.

(and yes, I’m one of those anal-retentive guys where if the color is just off a tad, it “ruins” it for me… I know I’m odd that way).

P.S.
Dang, I just realized this forum won’t let you use the first three letters of Japanese units without blanking it out as a profanity.

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.

Guys,

––Well, our intelligence officers are telling us that a group of twenty(20)
Russian Rifle Infantry (Winter scheme) have just completed training(painting) and are ready for deployment in Siberia or elsewhere in NorthEast Asia. Some might get transferred to Scandinavia, at least until HBG releases their 'Winter War" expansion set for their Global Warfare 1939 game. IMHO “Allworkandnoclay” did a gret job on these soldiers. Enjoy!

“Tall Paul”

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