Custom carriers from OOB's and painted pieces

Me and FJO went to see Dunkirk last night so I asked about his pens, and to my surprise he said he has replaced them with a 20/0 brush he bought at a craft store here in the states called Micheal’s. The 20/0 brush is even smaller than our Army Painter brushes.  Turns out Army Painter has a nice website, but they don’t ship to Europe.  They may have a European leg like HBG but I haven’t found one.  Good link to the brushes, if you cannot find them at your local hobby store: https://shop.thearmypainter.com/products.php?ProductGroupId=6

Wiki has some awesome pictures of the Japanese navy, which showed that their Fubuki and Akitsuki DD’s has their names on the middle of the hull, so the 20/0 brush got some action on DD hulls.  A quick note on the colors on the Fubuki- the yellow is an homage to the first ed. pieces and the orange is a nod to the current plastic color, both colors having a history with our group, so a few of them are rather “personalized” for our game.  Here’s a picture I took just before the dull coat application:

BTW, we’d like to thank all the previous painted-pieces posters for giving us inspiration to paint our sets!  And thank you thetruegriffon, for liking my planes!  Here’s just a few of the carrier based Vals (the cockpit lines aren’t added yet).

Thank you John, but you’ll find way better references using Google and checking the images your search returns.  For example, the squadron markings picture and carrier schematic mentioned earlier.

FJO’s Yamato and Musashi and the schematic I found using Google that I sent to him for reference:

When I googled the Japanese Oscars, the KI-43, I found so many cool paint schemes it made me want to buy 10 more just to paint my favorites.  I don’t recall what the history was behind the Val that was the inspiration for the black and grey camo, but it looked neat so I borrowed from it.  Its actually more dark green than black, but I needed a black tactical to go with the black KI-43.  These are the shots I used for a basis on the black pair.

FJO did 5 groups of 4 Fubuki destroyers, and I bought a few extras of the Akitsuki destroyers from HBG (we seem to have lost some Akitsuki’s from the set the came from, and took the few German ones we had and made then Japanese), so we have 5 of those as well.  Here are some Fubuki sets.

2 more sets.

And the Destroyer family photo:

A shot of most of what’s painted so far of the IJN.  The camo fleet pieces are closest to the camera, with others in the Carolines sea zone (scroll right).  Note the unfinished Kongo in the Philippine Sea.  Finished Kongo BB’s are shown later in the post.

Thank you all!  I wanted to find some pictures of the Akitsuki DD’s but I don’t think we took any pictures of them as a group.  You can see 3 of them in this shot in the Japanese home sea zone.

The UK navy that FJO knocked out in about 6 weeks back in January and February a few hours each night after work.  Not as detailed as the Japanese, but we didn’t have the cool tiny brushes, pens, or magnifying lenses back then.

Close up of the last 2 Vals that were done.  HBG sculpts. (No cockpit lines yet- those were added later, shown below.)

A few Japanese bombers. Had no idea they were that dusty!

Bombers finally got their cockpit canopies and noses and tails inked and final coat of clear 5/25/2019:

While FJO is busy on his customized Shoho made from a cut down OOB Akagi sculpt (the unpainted black one in the comparison picture shown earlier with Akagi and 2 other cut down sculpts for Zuiho & Amagi) I’ve been working on the UK air force. Three or four years ago we’d bought some decals from HBG so we could separate long range planes from regular for a house rule.  I slapped some paint and decals on 10 Spitfire sculpts (the flat wing sculpts I don’t care for) and those became the long range UK fighters. I’ve re-done them since I got Dom’s decals from Pico, and repainted the green camo (leaving the original plastic color), and added fuselage roundels and fin flashes and squadron markings to others to separate them into distinct aircraft. Some got underside wing roundels, while others were painted as part of a set of historical progression Spitfires from a reference page I found while googling paint schemes. Here’s the flat wing set from a few years ago looking like they’re flying on our glass topped board (who needs plane stands?), and most from the re-done set.  The sculpt isn’t perfect- neither of the 2 OOB versions are. Both have messed up rudders that need to be filed down to the correct shape, so I guess in a way these have been modded too. You can see the difference in rudders in the pics below.  Top picture on the glass table is the older version (all these planes will get squadron letters later).