World War II Project - Painting a German Infantry Platoon - Pt 1

These German troops are from Brigade Games Disposable Heroes Miniatures Kickstarter and have been sitting around for quite a while now. I needed to refresh my airbrush skills a bit and so I decided that these would be the victims. I wanted to try out a couple of different techniques on these, trying to reinforce some of the stuff I have learned over the years. My intent here is to achieve a good table top paint job and get some troops on the table. I have been diving into Chain of Command from Too Fat Lardies and I would really like to play one of the Pint Sized Campaigns that they have published.

Bare Metal, let the games begin!

First step was to apply the black primer. I used Badger's Black Stynylrez for this initial primer coat and applied this over the entire miniature.

Group 1 in black. I do like the Badger primers a lot. Its pretty much my go to primer even if I'm painting it on with a brush.

Here are both groups with their first layer of primer

I followed this up with a coat of Badger's White Stynylrez primer shooting it from as close to vertical as I could get with a gravity feed airbrush (I used a Badger Renegade for this work). The white primer would lighten the follow on colors on the highest points of the miniature.

With the white from as near vertical as I can get it.

My original intent was to keep moving forward one color after another and knock the whole group out as quickly as possible. This is when I discovered the advantages of a good compressor over a cheap compressor. I had an Iwata compressor that hang on through heavy usage for about 5 years and it never failed me during a painting session no matter how long it was (thank you automatic cutoff switch). The small compressor from Harbor Freight was already beginning to overheat after applying the two primer colors. At this point I had to give it a rest before moving on to the uniform colors.

For this particular painting session I decided to try the German Field Grey Uniform paint set (AK 3140) from AK Interactive. One note of caution about this set, pay absolutely no attention to the color swatches on the box, they are not even remotely close to the paint colors in the set. I started off with the Field Grey Shadow color (AK 3144) and basically shot this from underneath the miniature. This involved handling each miniature individually which is not my preferred method but it was the only way to apply the shadows. This basically soften the look of the already applied black primer.

Field Grey Shadow (AK 3144)

There are two base colors for the next step so I divided the miniatures in two groups with about 40 figures in the first group and 20 in the second. I wanted some color variation amongst the troops so I planned on using both base colors. I started with the larger group and applied Field Grey Base (AK 3141) shooting it at just about perpendicular to the miniatures, probably slightly higher to preserve and blend the shadows. The smaller group received Field Grey Base 2 (AK 3142). Of the two Field Grey Base is much greener and Field Grey Base 2 is much grayer. The next time I use these colors I'll probably go with a 50/50 mix of the two.

Field Grey Base (AK 3141)

Field Grey Base 2 (AK 3142)

The original plan was to go immediately to the highlight color; Field Grey Lights (AK 3143). After mulling it over, as the compressor cooled down, I decided to do an intermediate step and apply a 50/50 mix of the highlight with the base color for each group. I'm not sure that I actually achieved the desire effect but I spent the time to do it. There are pictures of this step for both groups but its hard to see the difference so I'll just leave those pics out.

After applying the intermediate highlight I went to full strength Field Grey Lights shooting from as near vertical as possible.

Field Grey Lights (and not I'm not miss spelling it) (AK 3143)

I think my lights are washing out a lot of the color variation that you can see in person.

Now I was done with the airbrush portion of the evening and pulled out a nice wide brush for the next step. Since some of the color transitions were a little harsh I already decided to use a glaze to pull things together a bit. I turned to another AK Interactive product for this; Uniform Definition Filter Green Glaze (AK 3017). I was a bit concerned with this step as I was not looking for a traditional wash as I have done in the past. No disappointment, the green glaze went on darker than anticipated but dried nice and light and helped blend the various colors together. I'm quite pleased with this product.

Uniform Definition Filter Green Glaze (AK3017)

While it took nearly the whole evening to get the work done the actually painting time probably equated to about 2 hours during which I applied 2 primer coats, 4 paint colors and 1 glaze. Actually elapsed time was close to 5 hours because of the need to cool down the compressor between coats of paint. I will be on the hunt for a new compressor in the coming weeks.

Here is a quick side by side comparison of the two groups, prior to the glaze being applied. On the left are troops painted with Field Grey Base 2 and in the center and right Field Grey Base. Those on the right are definitely greener than those on the left. Its pretty close to what I was hoping would happen and should look pretty nice on the table. I saw a picture once of some German uniform coats that were all ostensibly field grey, they varied from almost brown to olive green, so variation in color is a good thing!

Now you are thinking that I have allowed myself to get distracted from the Sledgehammer diorama but this exercise allowed me to refresh my airbrush skills and test out a paint scheme for the troops on that diorama. I probably won't start the detail painting on these troops until after the Sledgehammer is done, that would be distracting.