1:300 FIGURE BASING TECHNIQUES - Last Part

Next details. Gas mask cannisters, boots, other equiment, wooden weapon parts with some brown, entrenching tools handles in a light wood (yes, you can see them!) then weapon barrels and the MGs using a mixture of black with dark grey. I don't like pure black as too harsh for me.

Finally faces and hands. I used a Vallejo dark flesh, and I was careful not to splodge it around too much. Faces are a problem, just a little quick dab to avoid spreading paint over chest and shoulders which is the commonest error. In this case better too little than too much. Hands are easier, you only need a little dab over the gun.

After these were finished time to paint the helmets, carefully not to go over the face, but of course overpainting any excess face over the helmet .

At the end I painted the individual figures base stubs they come with with the colour I intend to use as undercolour for the bases, in this case a dark umber, and finally a final coat of very diluted wash, and they're ready for basing.

Some random notes:

These H&R figures come in strips of about 10 per strip, and you have the choice of cutting them up as individual figures or you can leave them all together. I like to spread them apart to have wider brush space.

Remember you are not painting individual figures, you're painting armies and you have to use a mass technique. Of course you can come around later and give your command figures a little more detail if you want.

A thing I forgot was that Panzerschrecke, heavy MG tripods and the mortar barrel and legs were painted German Dark Yellow before the final dark wash.

Also before basing I still want to give gun barrels a light drybrush with Gun Metal, and machine gun ammo belts will have a suggestion of Brass.

Those wooden strips are in this case a 2m length of 10x5mm strips I bought in a DIY shop for €2, which I sawed into 20cm lengths so I have a nice supply now.

A good idea is always to have various strips in several stages of finish so if one group is drying or curing you can work in another group.

Now back to work. I cut another number of 25mm sq. bases for my first Pz Grenadier battalion, and one 30mm sq. for the Batt. HQ.

With the tanks what I did was coat the base with PVA glue and cover them in sand, painted and drybrushed, and glued the vehicles on the almost complete bases. With the infantry I did the opposite. As the figures themselves have their small stands, if I stuck them on the prepared bases they'd look like they were floating over the texture, so I glued them to the bases and applied the glue & sand afterwards.

What I did was to apply the glue with the bottle nozzle directly on the base surface taking care to avoid smearing the little figures, and working bald spots in with a toothpick. Then into a tub with sand the bases went, one by one as each had the glue applied. Next steps will be painting / drybrushing.

So here they are in their entire miniature glory. I used two grades of 'vegetation', the second one somewhat fluffier. With all this greenery they look like 'maquisards'

The vehicle in the HQ stand here is provisional only, it hasn't undergone the Full Monty treatment yet.

I had used two grades of sand, and within the coarser sand bag I was lucky to find this small rounded pebble with a flat face which was just perfect to be uses 'as is' for a rock outcrop

Now that I have 2 Pz battalions and 1 inf battalion it's time to turn to the Soviets. Will come back later!

By Miguel Morão

Waterloo 2010

Finalmente, os Portugueses chegaram à batalha de Waterloo! Como todos sabem, no início da guerra da Sétima Coligação contra a França (também apelidada de Campanha dos Cem Dias), Wellington pediu ao Governo Português o envio de 30.000 soldados para auxiliar o exército Britânico nos combates que se avizinhavam, na sequência do regresso do Imperador Napoleão I da ilha de Elba, onde se encontrava exilado (chegado a Paris em 20 de Março de 1815). Porém, dilações de vária ordem obstaram à presença das nossas tropas nessa memorável batalha, ocorrida no dia 18 de Junho de 1815.

Todavia, essa falha foi finalmente colmatada este ano! Este ano 22 elementos do Grupo de Recriação Histórica do Munícipio de Almeida (GRHMA) e da Associação Napoleónica Portuguesa marcaram presença neste memorável evento, que contou com a presença de cerca de 3.000 recriadores de toda a Europa, com cerca de 250 cavaleiros e 50 peças de artilharia.

Como qualquer exército que se preza, levamos literalmente a casa às costas e ficamos (des)confortavelmente instalados em um dos três acampamentos históricos existentes no local. As nossas tendas ficaram montadas no acampamento do exército aliado, situado na Quinta de Hougoumont, em pleno campo de batalha original. Havia ainda o acampamento do exército imperial Francês e o acampamento da Guarda Imperial Francesa. Ou seja, havia literalmente milhares de homens e mulheres a viver um dia-a-dia em tudo idêntico ao de soldados do século XIX.

No nosso acampamento procuramos nunca lesar o rigor histórico.  Os utensílios de cozinha eram todos de época: pratos e copos em metal ou madeira; panelas de ferro e caldeiros em metal, para cozinhar.

Todas as nossas refeições quentes foram confeccionadas à fogueira e tudo correu surpreendentemente bem. As refeições foram confeccionadas a horas e sairam, além de abundantes, muitos saborosas.

O melhor da festa foi, sem dúvida, a camaradagem e o espírito de entreajuda criado entre todos os elementos do nosso grupo.

 

O pior da festa foi viver em tendas durante alguns dias, ao sabor do maravilhoso tempo existente na Bélgica. Frio e chuva q.b. foi o que tivemos TODOS os dias. A palha espalhada no "chão" das tendas ajudava a isolar um pouco o frio que "subia" da relva, mas pouco mais do que isso.

Anoitecia por volta das 22.30 horas e amanhecia por volta das 04.00 horas da manhã - foi o horário por que me regulei todos os dias lá passados.

Para ir às casas de banho (colectivas)  tinhamos de sair das tendas e andar cerca de 500 metros. Os duches também eram engraçados, porque inexistentes. O banho era tomado ou com toalhitos ou nos caldeiros de água - ao natural.

E, perguntam vocês espantados, porque raio foram estes tipos dispor-se a passar tais incómodos ?

Foi por causa disto, meus amigos!

 

Ou seja, foi para participarmos numa reconstituição de uma das maiores batalhas de todos os tempos, juntamente com milhares de homens e mulheres, onde deu para ficar com uma ideia muito aproximada da realidade histórica.

Para qualquer pessoa que tenha um mínimo de interesse pela reconstituição histórica do período napoleónico, este evento é de passagem obrigatória.

Eu pessoalmente já tinha estado num evento semelhante, em termos de magnitude - a reconstituição (Bicentenário) da batalha de Austerlitz, ocorrida em Dezembro de 2005, na República Checa.

Todavia, este evento foi sem dúvida melhor, não só porque o terreno não estava coberto de neve (como em Austerlitz), como também porque não havia nevoeiro impeditivo de visualizar toda a extensão do campo de batalha e a fantástica progessão e disparos das linhas de infantaria, de artilharia e  as cargas de cavalaria.

Foi a primeira vez que os organizadores Belgas tiveram um contigente Português a participar no evento e fiquei com a impressão que a nossa presença e participação foi apreciada.

Tivemos um precalço no que respeita à pólvora, pois utilizamos toda a que nos tinha sido distribuída para a batalha de Sábado e ficamos sem munições para a batalha principal, que iria ocorrer no Domingo de manhã, uma vez que não tinhamos percebido que não haveria segunda distribuição de pólvora para esse efeito. Pois bem, a organização compreendeu o facto e entregou-nos mais munições. Além disso, elementos de outros grupos de artilharia também nos cederam alguma pólvora e acabamos por ter munições mais do que suficientes para a segunda batalha!

Deixo-vos aqui vários links, onde podem visualizar imagens do evento.

http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/957/Belgie/photoalbum/detail/1/1121560/839834/0/Napoleon-weer-verslagen-bij-Waterloo.dhtml

http://www.rtbf.be/info/content/la-bataille-de-waterloo-en-diaporama-photo?page=1

http://www.euronews.net/2010/06/22/re-enacting-the-battle-of-waterloo/

http://www.rtbf.be/info/economie/plus-de-70000-spectateurs-pour-les-reconstitutions-napoleoniennes-du-week-end-229258

http://www.facebook.com/waterloo1815

PC

1:300 FIGURE BASING TECHNIQUES - Part 6

For all this once again I am going to follow the directives laid by Mr. Ritterkrieg (http://www3.telus.net/Ritterkrieg/ ) and his infantry painting guide

(http://www3.telus.net/Ritterkrieg/progress3.htm ). He's using GHQ figures which are bigger and beefier than H&R, which is not to say they're not excellent, because that's what they are!

Here is one photo from his guide, and I call your attention that the figs are 6-7mm tall to eye level at most. 6-7mm I said!

He must be slightly mad, because he actually paints camouflage schemes on his figures in this scale!

He says:

LMG Gunners: with their smocks done. The MGs and ammo belts still need highlighting and the boots need gaiters but you can get an idea of the variety of clothing. Blurred edge, plane tree, tiger and autumn oak leaf. The only one missing is Pea dot but there are some others with that pattern - not shown. I have deliberately mixed the uniforms on some figures. Sculpts are modified only in that the winter hood is removed. I have used the Winter, Afrika and standard infantry poses.

Unfortunately he does not explain how he did this…

As I said above, I'm going to repaint old figures but this is an extreme measure, this is something that if I had new figures on hand I would not do. As these figures were being painted some 10 years ago using the boooooring old style, I decided to use them as they were but giving them a coat of matt white first. As usual with wargame figures I stick them to wooden strips some 20cm long using only a light dab of white glue so I can pry them off easily later. This gives me a good grip and allow for my technique of repeating the same brush stroke 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-etc times, then repeat for the next different stroke. You are not painting individual figures, you're painting say 20 torsos, thens 20 right arms, then 20 helmets, etc. In case your figures are rather varied, you can at least group them on the strip by pose.

So after this white primer is quite dry I went over then with the basic feldgrau, somewhat thinned to allow the white to shine a bit through the green layer.

After this was dry (am I repetitive or what!), I gave them a thinned out (synthetic paint thinner) coat with MiG Dark Wash (see here), I find this works very well with acrylics and the pigment is extremely fine), although I'm sure acryllic black with some brown would work as well, thinned with Windex.

Same technique as for the tanks: let dry a bit then lightly remove excess with a flat stiff brush moistened in thinner (would this work with acrylic?), and after all dry and cured next day, it took a light drybrush coat to bring relief out in this case using Luftwaffe RLM 02!

To continue...

Character Series nº 3 - Alcibiades

(Part I)

 

As you all have noticed, I missed my last self-imposed deadline for publishing these posts (every Friday), and I am already warning you I will miss the next one, scheduled for next Friday. Something happened that I could not avoid and that is giving me a hard time: that crazy little thing called WORK (how I hate it...).

I am a firm believer in the words of one of the foremost Portuguese philosophers of the XX century (Agostinho da Silva) who said that man was not made to work. The moment I figure out how I can do that (not working, that is) and still manage to eat and pay my bills I will let all of you know about it. We can even start a secret society and keep "the know" just to ourselves.

Enough writing about nice guys! If I kept my previous trend, some of you might even come to the conclusion that only the good guys like to get involved in the business of war - and that just is not true.

This is the reason why in this outstanding new post, in this no less outstanding Series, will be about Alcibiades, a guy that could also be called "Prince of Darkness", given his simple and forthcoming approach to life.

(Background)

Alcibiades (from now on referred as AL, as I am sure he was called by his many friends) was born in 450 B.C. as the son of Cleinias, of the Deme Scambonidae. As you all know (or wished to know), this was the usual way used in ancient Athens to identify a person: by his name, his father's name and the Deme he was originated. Since the VI century B.C., Attica (the geographical region around the city of Athens) was sub-divided in Demes and only a guy enrolled in a citizen-list of a Deme could be admitted as a citizen of Athens, for all legal and social purposes.

Our (anti)hero AL was (like WC) an aristocrat and was also born in a shinning golden cradle, although I think that during his years he tried his best to taint it.

Throughout history, I think there are not many guys that could say they were the main cause for the overthrow of an Empire.

Well, this guy could, regarding the downfall of the Athenian Empire!

Both Plutarch and Thucydides give us a very colorful picture of AL in his early years. Apparently, he had many things going for him: good looks, a lot of money and very powerful social and political connections.

His childhood is full of colorful episodes that tell us a lot about his personality.

They say that during his school days he refused to learn how to play the pipes, on the ground that it was not appropriate for a person of noble and free birth, due to the disfigurement and distortion of appearance it provoked.  By doing that, he led a lot of is fellow pupils to drop out of that fine musical activity.

There is another story regarding one of his lovers (one of many, so they say...), Anytus. It is said that AL went to his house with a few friends, all drunk, while Anytus (supposedly a person of some social distinction) was having a social event. Upon arriving, AL ordered his servants to take away half of the silver and gold cups extant at the dinner table, and left without a word to the owner of the house. Replying to the indignation of his guests, Anytus answered: "No, he behaved with moderation and kindness. He could have taken all the cups, but he left us half of them".

In another occasion, AL publicly punched a guy called Hipponicus, without any reason or just cause and simply left. That guy was the equivalent to a Bill Gates in Athens, at the time. Due to the public outrage that action provoked, AL presented himself at the door of Hipponicus, took off his cloak and told him to thrash him for his action. Because of reasons I cannot fathom, that guy not only forgave him, but later gave him his daughter in marriage (something he must have sourly regretted, as the future unraveled...).

Analyzing these and other episodes told about AL, I arrive at the conclusion that from his early years he exhibited all the traits associated with a rich spoiled brat, used to always have his way - and whose ass nobody took the time to thoroughly kick, a few times.

Not that it would be an easy thing to do, mind you, since AL also showed he was brave and tough in battle. He demonstrated that several times in pitched battles, such as those occurred in the campaign against Potidaea and in the battle of Delium.

The problem is that when AL entered into public life, he could not but bring all those nasty traits of his personality with him.

And the Athenians were going to regret it, as you will notice later on.

PC

Post-Scriptum: Those of you that have nothing else better to do but visit this Blog have noticed that things are constantly changing around here, in the last few days. JF is guilty of that. He thinks he has great skills as a designer, but that simply is not true (JF: black in not in). Any changes made that look great have been made by me (and now I do not know how to take them back...)

1:300 FIGURE BASING TECHNIQUES - Part 5

Apply the glue in more or less connected spots while William watches approvingly, then lay the batch on the bottom of a tub with your flock mix and let the flock flow over everyting.

Alternatively you could sprinkle your flock over the bases laid on a sheet of paper through a sieve. Don't press on the flock, and don't worry if you have everything shrouded under green dust, you can blow or brush the excess later after it's completely dry. Mind the SWMBO, though!

More later, as the beauty of this is that it is an incremental process, that is, you can add more stuff later if you feel like it. For instance, you can add more flocking on top of this one making it thicker, you can add bits of hedging, tree trunks, stones, etc. I’ve seen this referred to as a Bonsai Diorama!

As a matter of fact as my Regiment HQ base will be somewhat larger, 4x4cm, to contain one Panther, one Kubelwagen and a radio truck, I may give it a different treatment. We'll see later.

All right, so I've more or less finished the Division's Pz Regiment, time to take the plunge and tackle the Infantry.

I rummaged around and found one box of semi-painted Heroics & Ros Germans. H&R figures have been rather out of fashion lately, people are going for Adler and GHQ figures which are indeed superior, and the GHQ as usual are superlative, but as I have these ones right now that's what I'm going to do. Maybe later when I do the Volksturm I may go for GHQ ! Another fact is that GHQ are several times more expensive.

So this is the ragbag I've got.

I'm sure I have others somewhere, together with some from Main Force Miniatures, but you know how it is, when you're looking for something you'll never find it when you want it.

First of all I'm going to sort this out and give them a bath. Ideally I need 4 battalions x 9 bases worth of riflemen plus supports for the two Abteilungen which at 4-5 per base would be about 150 figures. I haven't even counted these ones.

Most of these figures were painted at least partially some 10 years ago using the basic technique of same green overall, nothing else. Of course I'll have to do better this time! Either I get new figures or use the painted ones. Removing paint from 6mm figures is something I'll never do again, I tried several methods and it never works! So over the extant coat of whatever will go a layer of Humbrol matt white, shot with an airbrush. So enough waffle, I have to start, will do one Abt. at a time.

To continue...

1:300 FIGURE BASING TECHNIQUES - Part 4

Now that I've done the Panthers I'll concentrate on the other vehicles (FlaK, Recce, the one below, etc) before basing all at the same time for consistency.

In the meantime here are a couple of snippets I found that may be of interest. They are presented here in "giant" scale but they apply to the smallie ones as well.

Dip http://15mmvsf.bagofmice.com/paint/dip.html

What happened to Johnson's Klear for Magic Dip and Wash Long Range Logistics http://www.longrangelogistics.com/2010/03/02/magic-wash-redux-johnsons-klear-renamed/

Before

After

Incredible how thick and grainy his primer coat was...

As I said before I had a few models belonging to the TOEs that needed painting, so I stuck them on a wood strip with blu-tack (which was white!), and gave them a coat of Games Workshop Skull White spray. Must be the only good thing that ever came out of GW!

After well dry overnight, I thinned some Vallejo Acrylic paint of the appropriate German Dark Yellow (I have some quibbles with Vallejo's colour selection but...) with window washing liquid which has lower surface tension than water, so it's 'wetter'. This made the thinned paint flow nicely to the darker corners leaving convex surfaces with a nice natural highlight.

After a few good hours to dry up and let the acrylics cure, I went over to the green and brown camo colours, again thining a bit as the paint was too thick as it came out of the tube. On a couple of models the paint was thinned a lot, if necessary applying second coats of the same colour. This happened for instance to the Maus which looks rather ghastly, but it ended up rather well after shading and highlighting (or one might say these helped disguise my lousy work), but anyway the actual Maus looked like it was painted by a drunk Hitlerjunge after meeting Hitler at the Bayreuth festival.

Visiting a few railway modelling stores I managed to buy a decent variety of flocking. These are only a few of those I bought to last me a lifetime or two!

The secret is in mixing several into a tub. They will come in several textures, and to make the mix a bit more homogenous I graded them through a tea strainer I bought for the purpose.

This is a batch of 6 Panthers from the previous posts, stuck to their bases. Some of these will have some bald patches, but the flocking will cover these.

These can be stuck with white glue, epoxy, CA, whatever suits you. All reference to white glue is to the the transparent after dry variety.

To continue...

1:300 FIGURE BASING TECHNIQUES - Part 3

So here they are with a good puddly wash over engine, front, track, turret areas done with a largish brush. There is a Panther sticking out 'unwashed' for comparison.

After letting the wash evaporate for a while, the subsequent procedure took a bit of work. I took a stiff, flat square brush, moisted on thinner and excess wiped on a paper towel, and on each model I wiped the excess wash away. What took work was that after each model I had to clean the brush and wipe again so I would not accumulate more grime taken from the previous model. Takes effort but it's worth it.

This is the result, again using the same clean Panther for comparison.

Next step: after well dry go over again on the engine grilles to really darken their insides up using a fine pointed brush this time, and then on to the drybrushed highlights after all is well dry, on the following day.

I'd be using my oil colours but I want to finish this series relatively soon, it would take days between each layer!

To do things properly, I'd blu-tack the hulls and turrets onto wooden strips, but I've run out of them and haven't found a supplier where I'm living now. As a consequence my fingernails look like I've been changing the oil on a Catterpillar!

Here are a few photos showing up what drybrushing does. On that Pnather row from left to right seen from behind is a base paint only, a shaded model, and a shaded and then highlighted one.

For the drybrush I used some base yellow paint with some added white and yellow, but I might have used some straight from the bottle Sand. For the Pz IVs I used Dark Flesh and it worked fine!

Drybruhing should be done after you remove most of the paint from the brush and are left with a dry trace only (it's drybrushing, right?), and should be applied in vertical flicks.

There's no secret at all about this, only that less is more and if you find you don't have enought contrast, don't add more paint, instead go over the drybrushing process again.

To continue

(Lettow-Vorbeck on parade, Berlin 1919)

Character Series nº 2 - Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck

(Part III)

After the battle of Tanga, LV still managed to pursue a more or less regular defensive strategy. This particular success revived the determination to resist throughout that German Colony and every industry and productive activity there extant, in German national's hands, contributed without reserves to the war effort.

LV even managed the odd day off work to go on safaris, what he called a "cheery day's shooting".

But trouble still loomed on the horizon. In the month of January 1915 there was another major combat action, this time in the village of Jassini, in north-east German East Africa, where the British forces were assembling for another push against the city of Tanga. After a battle and a siege of only a few days, the British surrendered, suffering about 700 casualties. LV's forces were, once again, outnumbered.

In this and sucessive encounters, the German Askaris learned that one of the major factors of success in battle is the need to "overcome one's feelings in order to obtain the superior moral force necessary for victory" - this is LV speaking, by the way.

In the following months a succession of actions took place, that resulted in the erosion of LV's combat strength. The toll on his officer corps was great since, following his example, they had the habit of leading in the front line. Therefore, they fell in desproporcionate numbers and could not be replaced.

This very able officer corps deserves their share in LV's success. Officers like Major Kraut, Captain Auman, Captain Tom von Prince, Captain Taffel, Commander Schoenfeldt, among many others officers and NCO's, where brave, highly motivated and with a keen sense of duty and spirit of self-sacrifice.

It is truly a pity that the human race periodicaly sees the need to express such high and noble feelings by the way of ending each others lives - in a cycle that seems without end.

The drain on the available supplies was also great, also with no hope of replenishment. This army had to win in order to survive, getting from the vanquished arms and ammunitions - You have read something similar to this in here, regarding the tactics of good old Genghis. One of the formulas for success in war, maybe.

There was also a hidden danger, common to every war in Africa. The use of native troops had a limit. Normally, when one side seem defeated or on the verge of defeat, the native troops not only deserted the ranks, but usually turned on their former "employers", together with every tribe in the neighborhood.

The weak did not (and do not) have a chance in Africa.

It was to LV's credit that he managed to evade this fate for himself and his forces. Even when outnumbered and forced to live on the "bush", his Askaris did not leave the ranks in considerable numbers. There was a feeling of true comradeship between them and the white officers and other ranks. On the other hand, every time one of the local tribes tried to test their mettle, they usually regreted it, suffering harsh lessons that lasted in their memory.

With the arrival of South African troops, aided by encreasing contingents of Belgian troops, things changed for the worst. From 1916 on, LV had to give ground - but always fighting has he went.

By the year 1918 LV's forces were reduced to a flying column of a little over 1.100 troops, that always seemed able to avoid being captured by the many enemy troops (about 300.000 - Portuguese, British and Belgian) that searched for them.

By the way, he was informed of his promotion to General by his opponent (General Smuts), while in the "bush" (by messenger). Smuts also sent his compliments because of that promotion.

LV surrendered only when a British officer had the good will to inform him the war was over and that Germany had lost. Maybe they thought that was the only way they could catch him.

Our hero went back home to Germany to receive a hero's welcome, and for some years his work was recognized and appreciated.

However, when he died in 1964, he was receiving a small pension organized and payed by his former enemies (courtesy of General Smuts and other British and South African officers), since his government did not recognize him the right to a full pension and he was living in destitution.

This one thing reveals a lot about LV's character, as a man and as a soldier.

This guy had served his entire life in the German army and only married in 1919. His two sons died in WWII, while also serving in the army. Taking all this in consideration, his country saw fit to reward him by organizing a nice funeral (you can look it up on youtube) in his memory.

This is the way of this World.

Well, this is the end of the story of another fantastic Character in this no less fantastic Character Series.

Once again, I am sending a world wide challange for those of you who are brave enough to try and guess the name of my next Character. By the way, given the (dis)honest mistake I made in my last challange, and that JMM complained so much about, he received a brand new book on LV for his trouble.

And now, my friend, it is time for you to show your mettle, and guess the name of the next Character. His name starts with an "A", followed by an "L" and a "C". That's "ALC" - for those of you that cannot spell right.

JMM: you have no excuse now.

If you fail, prepare yourself to paint my Crusader DBA army. You can ask JF to help you.

PC

A Batalha de Albuera - 2010

Artilheiro português em combate

Devido às pesadas baixas sofridas pelos artilheiros do Regimento de Artilharia nº 4, foi necessário destacar um soldado do Batalhão de Caçadores nº 6, para exercer as funções de servente de artilharia.

Para quem quiser ver a recriação histórica da Batalha de Albuera realizada este ano, ao vivo e a cores, pode fazê-lo em:

http://tv.canalextremadura.es/tv-a-la-carta/videos/la-batalla-de-la-albuera-2010
PC