Painting the HO ScaleHumans - Priming

The Holidays are over and I finally have some time to get back to the workbench. I'm going to start the year off working on the HO scale prints from ScaleHumans (available on Shapeways). I had prepped both the HO and O scale versions a couple of weeks ago so its time to get down to business with a little primer.

Once more to the airbrush booth with Badger Stynylrez grey primer. Nothing special here, thinned the primer a little bit set the psi to 10.

Here are the results:

They look pretty good at this stage, but I am concerned about what look like printing artifacts/rough patches and a general fuzziness to some of the prints. I'm going to go ahead and get some paint on these and see how they look after that first wash. Otherwise I may be experimenting to see how I can finish them better for painting. I had selected a tan for one set (which I shouldn't have been able to) and ultra for the other set. They are easy to tell apart, the ultra ones are visibly smaller and I don't know if that's because of the material they are printed in. The only way to know for sure would be to order the other set in ultra and see what happens.

I love this conductor. Unfortunately I won't be able to use him on the Warehouse Row layout, wrong era. Everyone else is generic enough to pass for the late 50s without a problem.

World War II Project - Jagdpanthers - Priming

More action at the airbrush booth saw all three Jagdpanthers get coats of both black and grey primer. Like the STuGs the lower hulls were done in black and the upper hulls were done in grey. I had a little speckling going on so I may have to go back with some steel wool and remove the imperfections in the primer. I was pretty pleased with how well the thread I used for the tow cables looks with just a bit of primer on it. I think that's going to look really good by the end of the painting process. I was tempted to use my Vallejo primers on these just to compare the Vallejo vs Badger's Stynylrez primer, but once I have painted loaded up in the airbrush I tend to just keep going with what's in it.

World War II Project - STuGs - Painting Begins

Finally managed to get over to the airbrush booth and applied some spot primer to the STuGs. I basically primed the debris shields and the backs of the skirts where I had bent the top edge. I also reprimed the lower hulls with black, hopefully to help keep those areas a bit darker. I used my favorite grey and black Stynylrez Primers from Badger for this work.

WWII Project - Back to Normandy - More Priming

Another day of grey priming. Much like the Stugs, these 21st Panzer Division vehicles now have grey primer on all of the upper surfaces. Again, I will be stopping here with the priming and doing the rest when I paint the camo. Found a nice source for some of the markings that the 21st used on these vehicles in Normandy so I'll try to see what I can do with that. One thing about the Mad Bob Miniatures is that the castings are pretty rough. While they don't have a lot of bubbles to be dealt with they are not smooth castings. In some cases this isn't a problem especially vehicles with sand cast turrets and the like. However, these vehicles are all made from rolled steel plates. Since they are intended for gaming I didn't make any efforts this time to smooth out the surfaces. I think the biggest challenge will be trying to match them up with the first batch of vehicles I painted for this although in the end it really doesn't matter to much so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Now with a nice shade of grey on the top and just across the top of the tracks and suspension.

WWII Project - Return to the Stugs - Priming Grey

Moving on, another day and I was able to get the grey primer on. This is the second part of trying to do modulation priming...again. I'm going to skip the next priming step though and try and do the rest of the modulation with the camo painting.

These time you get to the see the tracks and all the skirt pieces.

I tried to keep the grey off the suspension and lower hulls. Blending just a bit on the front and back ends.

Lots of little skirt pieces. I cut the skirts up into their individual sections. Priming them was a pain since I didn't fasten them to anything. I know better, put did it anyway.