Panzers, trucks, some T34s and musings on airbrushing

I've taken a short break from my Crete project to work on some Rubicon kits that I bought. My regular gaming partner, Stu from Great Escape Games, and I were discussing early war recently (not least because of the expanding range of miniatures that GEG are producing for that period). So, on the basis that I have very little willpower and was unable to stop myself from buying some of the new Panzer III kits from Rubicon, I committed to creating a platoon of Panzer IIIs.

Panzer III Platoon

I have previously posted up some reviews of the Rubicon kits (command tank and regular PIII), but have now got to the point where I have just about finished a platoon of five tanks, plus a regimental command tank. The only thing left to do is apply some mud to the tracks and then get them onto the battlefield.

Here are some shots of a couple of the individual vehicles.

Lessons from using an airbrush

I have always painted vehicles using brushes, so this was my first endeavour in using an airbrush, so what did I learn? Picking up an airbrush for the first time is a bit daunting, but after working on these 6 tanks, I have an increased level of confidence and realise that it is not too difficult to achieve pretty good results. I have some way to go to be as accomplished as some of the model diorama builders out there, but I think my first attempt was pretty good, especially because the models are only ever going to see the gaming table.

A debate that I have been having in my head over the last couple of months is "is it worth the effort trying to create a really good paint job for miniatures that will only ever be used for gaming?" (This one-man debate is perhaps a consequence of being locked down at home for far too long!). I started gaming as a kid, then found other past-times at about the age of 18, so was away from the hobby for a couple of decades. Returning as an adult, I have probably been painting and gaming for about the last 10 years and think that I have developed to an acceptable "table top standard"; I know that I am never going to win any awards, but I'm happy with what I can turn out.

The debate is around whether it is worth the effort. I paint on base colours, tidy up any big mistakes, then use a wash to create some shadow, then apply highlights. I blogged about my painting method back in May. However, once they are on the gaming table, as long as they are the right colour e.g. Feldgrau for my Germans in Normandy, then does it matter if they have had their eyes painted, whether I have the correct number of pea-dots on the SS camouflage etc?  My 48 year old eyes struggle to see the detail when I am painting them (using a magnifying glass now!), so when they are a couple of feet away on the table, can anyone tell how good the highlights are?

Anyway, back to the lessons learned from airbrushing. There are tons of instructional videos on Youtube, so I spent a fair amount of time procrastinating by watching videos and not picking up the airbrush. I found one chap (Panzermeister36) who has a really simple-to-copy style, he spends plenty of time explaining how he achieves his results, but what is best about his videos is that the end results look great. I am more inclined to spend the extra effort making vehicles look good, as opposed to continuing with painting endless highlights on infantry figures, because the vehicles do stand out more on the tabletop. 

Another subject I have agonised over for several weeks was the colour to paint my Panzer III platoon. There are only really two options: it was either dunkelgrau or dunkelgelb (with camouflage markings). I decided that because Stuart and I were going to have a tank-heavy game of Iron Cross set on the Eastern Front, then I would go with the grey, plus I had never tried that paint scheme before, so thought it would be worth the challenge.

Panzermeister36's video on how to paint dunkelgrau is well worth a watch...this is what I have tried to emulate for my platoon. A few lessons I learnt when using the airbrush:

1. Don't waste time trying to mix paints yourself, buy pre-mixed airbrush paint. After several frustrating attempts at getting the mix right (too thin, then too thick, then the wrong colour!), I purchased some bottles of Vallejo Model Air. 
2. Get the pressure of the compressor right; about 18 psi worked for me.
3. Clean your airbrush regularly. I have found that I spend more time cleaning the airbrush than I use it for painting. Am I doing something wrong? I now keep a container of clean water next to me, so that when I have finished a colour I run a good amount of clean water through the brush, which helps but still doesn't do away with the need to strip the airbrush down and clean it inside.
4. Spray light coats rather than trying to cover the model on the first go. It helps that I have been painting several vehicles at once, so that once I get round to finishing the last one, the first model is ready to have another coat of paint sprayed on. A thick coat takes ages to dry and starts to pool if you over-do it, which spoils the look.
5. Depending on how you intend to weather the surface of the tank, don't waste any time on colour modulation; either that, or make the colour contrast much greater than I did.
6. If you are spraying Vallejo varnish through the airbrush, thin it with some water first. My first varnishing attempt badly clogged the inside of the brush, but at least I learnt how to dismantle, clean and reassemble my airbrush!

49 Shades of Grey

One of the things that I experimented with quite a bit was the best colour to recreate a battlefield-worn version of panzer grey. Panzermeister36's panzer grey colour looked pretty cool, but I didn't have the Tamiya paints that he used and I also didn't fancy having to mix my own colours particularly when I would be painting 6 vehicles at different times.

After much experimentation, using every variation of grey from the Model Air range, I settled on Dark Blue Grey (71.054) for the base coat, then got a bit fancy and did a little bit of colour modulation using Medium Gunship Grey (71.097) to pick out some of the higher surfaces. Unfortunately, my superb airbrushing skills were covered up by the weathering effects using oil paints. Next time, I think that I will make the colour differences less subtle, so that they remain visible through the weathering effects.

I purchased some cheap oil paints (£5 from Amazon) to apply the subtle weathering effects; the technique is pretty easy to learn and apply and the results look OK (for a first attempt). To weather the panzer grey, I used the Burnt Umber, Sienna Brown, Cerulean Blue, Turquoise and White. Again, I recommend following Panzermeister36's tutorial on Youtube to learn this technique.

Trucks

Now that I am in the swing of things with the airbrush, I have gone back to the three Opel Blitz trucks I started a few weeks ago and have done some more work on them. I used the airbrush and some masking tape to "modulate" some of the dunkelgelb base coat to create a forced shadow effect. After that I used the airbrush to apply some stripes of green and brown for the camouflage. 

I started work on these trucks prior to buying the Panzer IIIs, so had already painted the dunkelgelb base coat (Vallejo Model Color Middlestone 70.882) and painted the inside of the driver's cab and the two figures. I wish that I had waited to start painting because I think they would look cool in the dark grey too, but I have enough to paint without starting over. Using a camouflage effect will suffice for Operation Barbarossa anyway, but will also mean that I can use these trucks across the whole European theatre.

I have also sprayed a (thinned) coat of matt varnish onto the three trucks, so the next job will be to start using the oil paint weathering technique, which will have the effect of making them look battlefield ready and will also darken the dunkelgelb down a bit and blend the camouflage stripes with the base coat.

T34/76s

Because I have really been enjoying building the Rubicon kits, and getting into the airbrushing, I offered to build Stuart's Russian tank platoon. He has so far decided to field six T34s with the 76mm main gun.

When I started putting together this older kit from Rubicon, the level of detail between this and the new Panzer III kits is really noticeable. I think it probably took me about 4 hours to assemble the first Panzer III, partly because there are so many variants available from one kit, but also because the number of parts was much greater in the newer kit than the older. Another reason is perhaps the fact that the T34 is a more straightforward vehicle. 

The comparison between kits is perhaps also a very good observation about the differences in the state of manufacturing in Germany and Russia. The Russians apparently churned out ~84,000 T34s during the war with not a huge emphasis on quality: "quantity has a quality all of its own"! In comparison, the output from the German factories was far lower (~90,000 of all vehicle types during the war), but the complexity of the manufacturing process ensured that it took longer to produce each tank. Maybe this is what Rubicon were aiming for when producing their kits? They clearly wanted the modeller to think about the lessons to be learned from the differing industrial production rates of the various nations. I might purchase a Sherman and a Cromwell to test out this theory. ;-)

Here is one of the T34s assembled and base-coated using Halfords white car primer. A lesson learnt from the assembly and painting of several kits is that it is better to leave the tracks off and then attach them later in the painting process. I don't know about you, but I find it incredibly difficult to get spray paint into all the nooks of the tracks when they are assembled: this is waaaay easier when they are separate pieces.

Following some experimentation with colours, I settled on Vallejo Model Air Cam Dark Green 71.019 for the base coat, which was sprayed on. The tracks are brush painted with a thin mix of German Cam Black Brown 70.822 and German Grey 70.995.

I am planning on using Russian Green 71.017 and Medium Olive 71.092 for the highlight colours. I wanted quite a dark green for the base coat, so that the lighter colours "pop" and create more depth prior to the weathering effects being applied.

I'll post up progress on the T34s over the next week or two.

Edit: first progress shots are here.