As a brake in between painting lots of ANZACs I painted a crew chief for my Sikorsky H34. You can read more about the chopper model here and here. The crew chief figure is, like the pilots, an Empress Miniature sculpted by Paul Hicks.
Here is the crew chief before glueing the figure into the chopper:
And here he is in the chopper:
Here are the next four finished models. That brings me up to two complete rifle teams. You see the second team above the first team can be seen here.
Above is the fourth soldier of the 2nd rifle group.
The next ANZAC digger this one looks like staging an ambush.
This one is armed with a additional M79 blooper gun. Really nice action filled sculpt.
Here is the start of my second rifle group for my ANZAC project. Again an Empress Miniatures figure sculpted by Paul Hicks. Many of you asked about the color palette I use on these. So here it is.
So above you see how I remember the paints I use. In this case you see a printout of a Flames of war painting advice published for there 15mm figures. I don’t use their color palette but it is easier to write up mine. I don’t do that always like this. So the palette I use. All colors are GW contrast colors. For the uniform it is a mixture of 1 part Skeleton Horde and 3 parts Plagbearer flesh, no contrast medium added. I paint two layers of this. For the skin use Gulliman flesh thinned 50/50 with contrast medium one layer only. For the webbing I use two different colors to get a bit variety into my figures. First is Militarium green without contrast medium added. Second is Agaros Dunes also without adding contrast medium.For the boots I use Cygor Brown. For the rope and the first aid kits I use Nazdreg Yellow. The gun, grenades hair etc I don’t use contrast colors . Instead I use the traditional layering technique with Vallejo paints. For the grenades e.g. I use German Uniform . I hope that helps a bit.
Here are some more pictures of the figure I finished yesterday:
I thought it might be interesting for you to know how I store my miniatures. As I don’t have that much storage space I needed a stackable solution. As I travel a lot I had to have storage wich is small enough to fit in a backpack or suitcase and the figures should be safe during travel. The solution I came up with is metal foil and rare earth magnets.
I got myself a few boxes from Action, a kind of 1 Euro store/supermarket in Germany. They measure 30×17,5×8 cm , so can be used for infantry and cavalry figures.
I got some self adhesive steel tape like this:
I used a few drops of superglue to strengthen the bond of the adhesive of the steel tape and glued the strips onto the bottom of the box:
Now were goes the rare earth magnet? I use steel washers as bases for my figures and as these have a hole in the middle thats the place were my magnets go. This way the figures sit very tight in the box:
You can even draw lines onto the steel tape to differentiate different units in the box. The Bond between the box and the figures is so strong that you can even turn it upside down. The figures in the picture are metal miniatures so are quite heavy.
Hope that helps a bit storing your own miniatures….
Here is the next ANZAC figure or more a figure group. A digger medic giving first aid to a wounded ANZAC soldier.
A very nice small vignette showing a medic caring for the wounded.
More to come next week.
Last week I got the new Vietnamese civilians from Empress sculpted by Paul Hicks. Very nice figures indeed . I ordered each figure twice as I wanted to change one each by swiping heads or adding some green stuff to get an even wider variety of miniatures. So above is a female civilian, the left figure is the original the middle and right pictures show what I did.
Left original right the changed figure
I will paint them up over the next coming weeks . Paul Hicks sculpted the same miniatures with weapons! So you can swop miniatures in your games and turn an innocent villager into a VC!
Pictures by Empress Miniatures
Above is a picture of the first completed fire team of the new ANZAC project I started a week ago. Below are pictures of the 4th missing soldier of the fire team.
Next will be an M60 MG team.
Here is the fire team leader of my first digger fire team. A real treat to paint. Well done both Pauls!
