Monday 18 July 2011

Painting Guide for the APC's


Finished and ready to transport my two ranger platoons here are a couple APC's that I just painted.
As usual I leave you a painting guide and color formulas so that you can try out a similar paint job if you want to.

Initial ideas

The selection of a color scheme for the APC's was balanced between realistic weathering and also eye candy color contrast... Looking at real life APC's camo's and colors everything is very darkish most of the times and probably a bit boring to paint on 15mm.
Someone once said to me that painting 15mm is very different from other scales because in this smallish scale the contrast is everything and should be exaggerated in order to make a interesting miniature on the table... With that in mind I chosen a strong contrast by creating a colorful camo and then toned down the color saturations with heavy weathering... The idea was to create a balance between cool looking and realism.



Assembling

Old Crow Miniatures APC's models are quite easy to assemble, a bit of glue here and there or filling a micro bubble beneath the chassis was quite fast to do.
I had to choose between basing or not basing my vehicles at this point and even if I prefer non based vehicles I opted to base them because I'm going to travel with these a lot so the base gives the model extra strength and makes it easier to carry around.
For extra detail I added some antennas on the back of both APC's.




Painting Guide

  • Games workshop Skull white primer on full based and assembled model



Armor

  • Vallejo Model Color 70833 German cam. bright green ( several thin layers to built color)
  • Citadel Wash Gryphone Sepia ( on recesses)
  • Liquid Mask
  • Tamiya Color spray TS-3 Dark yellow
  • Remove Mask
  • Vallejo Model Color 70939 Smoke ( thinned down washes )
  • Vallejo Game Color 51 Coal black ( speckle painting )
  • Mig Concrete P026
  • Mig Black smoke P023
  • Mig Rubble dust P234
  • Mig Old rust P230


Tires:
  • Vallejo game color 51 Coal black
  • Mig Concrete P026
Lights:
  • Vallejo Model color 70890 Reflective green
  • Vallejo Model color 70833 German cam. bright green
  • Vallejo Model color 737 Green fluo
  • Vallejo Model color 938 Ivory
  • Vallejo Gloss varnish
Base:
  • Vallejo Model color 881 Yellow green
  • Vallejo Model color 873 US Field drab
  • Citadel Wash Gryphone sepia
  • Citadel Wash Devlan mud
  • Mig Concrete P026
  • Mig Rubble dust P234
  • Army Painter battlefields Swamp tuft 6mm

Final Thoughts

It was a fun little project and happy with the result, I think its interesting to look at  and with lots of tiny details... I think I managed to find a good balance between 15mm contrasting colors and a a bit of the unsaturated weathering common on real life vehicles.
Above all was enjoyable and easy to paint... Loving 15mm!





Now I need to paint up the two ranger Platoons that will go on these APC's... going to be fun.





1 comment:

  1. Lovely looking APCs! The one with the twin guns is particularly good looking.

    ReplyDelete

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