Miniature Ordnance Review looks at the world of historical and fantasy miniatures wargaming and model building. From 15mm Flames of War, to Warhammer 40K, to 1/35th scale tanks, with some potential surprises on the horizon - you'll find them here!

Monday, February 16, 2015

The Polish Painting Weekend

I've spent most of the long weekend painting up my Polish Black Brigade vehicles. I decided to use a mixture of AK interactive paints to get the modulation effect I like, though I had a tough time of it with the very small vehicles. As there are no modulation colors out there for Poland, I've decided to use the AK Interactive Dunkelgelb, Panzer Red Brown, Soviet Green, and a filter to get something that looks respectable for the Polish Three Tone Scheme.

I started with a dark yellow base as I was planning to go lighter than normal with the Polish yellow. In retrospect I might should have gone a bit darker for the initial coat, but the end effect I think will still be pretty good once the whole thing is done.



I then ran a modulation coat over it - you can see the modulation, but its a bit light:




From the photos above you can see that the biggest challenge with this army is the sheer volume - lots of vehicles and lots of guns. My next step was to pull out the Panzer Putty and begin masking. That process also took quite a while (unfortunately which seems to be the running theme of the army).



The shots above show the red-brown after modulation.  Again, I'm thinking I should have started a bit darker and worked up from there. Once again I was back to the Panzer Putty:


For the green, I decided to start dark, and I do mean dark! I worked it up from there with two highlight steps. I had to do the wheels separately as there were a lot of them... a whole lot of them...


However, once everything was painted, the base coats came out pretty well. I think they'll take the filter and washes well, and only need a little highlighting here and there to pick out a few key details.

First the guns and carts - even the gun shields for the 75mm and 37mm guns are modulated - along with the tracks for the TKS:


Next the vehicles - you can see the green modulation is much stronger than the other two colors. I think the filters and washes should blend things out and pick out the details nicely




The final big question is will all this be ready in time for the tournament this Saturday? I'm starting to think that it likely won't be, and now it's too late to go with an alternate. So I'm going to have to double down and try to get it done. I have Thursday and Friday off, so I may have to dig really deeply and burn that midnight oil!

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