Accurate Miniature Equivalents for Custom Painting your 1940 E&P

Sweet, thanks man. I’ll give it a shot!

@cavestone I also use vallejo paints. The key question here is are you brush painting, or using an airbrush, or both?

The Vallejo paints have a “Model Air” line that comes pre-thinned. You can buy a thinning product (from them) to add to the “Model Color” series paints, which are the exact same thing, just more concentrated and thicker.

If you’ve never used an airbrush, its a bit finicky–it requires regular cleaning and a without a good brush and compressor the paint will flow very inconsistently. The process will be very frustrating unless you use the pre-thinned paints because the brush can only blow paint that is within a certain set of thickness parameters that are difficult to achieve, especially if you are trying to mix the air in the brush’s reserve or in small quantities. That’s why having copies of both Model Air and Model Color is fine by me–unlike Warhammer 40K I’m using primarily earthy colors, greens, dunkelgelb and dunkelgrau… other AFV and camoflage colors and so i don’t need a collection of primary or bright colors.

But I recommend it. The airbrush creates a sublime, beautiful layer and slight mix variations can be used to create shadows, grades, etc. Then you go back over with your brush, adding highlights, lines, details. Then, back over again with a drybrushing…then back to the airbrush to blast Flory Wash all over it.

Can’t see your photos, you can’t post photos until you have a certain post count. I wouldn’t use water to thin paints, they are water soluble but the mix and viscosity is all wrong (though water is obv. cheap and easy to clean up)

As for oil-based paints, these require thinner to clean up, they are much more difficult to drybrush with and are not used for airbrushing. The days of the old testors paints is long behind us–even apple barrel paints are easier to work with and cheaper. The early painting methods were much more about glomming thick layers of paint onto lead miniatures and the modern approach with water based paint and a series of different techniques creates much better results.

The new water layer is great!

When I painted my units, I had issues with Britain, I originally made 2 schemes, then decided I only wanted the tan, not green… On my painting, I used a combo of lacquer Enamel and acrylic, it was at the enamel stage, but I soaked them in paint thinner (in all preparation to consider them toast and order new units)… but they came clean, they soaked for 10 min or so, and I used my tooth brush (yes mine lol, bristle’s turned green, and yes, I still use it, the green faded away HAHA) to scrub away the paint film.

@John:

I don’t know what everyone else likes, but I like videos. For example, you showing everyone how to put these I 94 decals on or how you do those awesome dry brush techniques, you are always talking about, or the whole process of a painted piece, from the time you prime it to the finishing coat, including how to place the decals on.

Any of those would be cool videos! :-D

Good to know! I have never tried videos, as I don’t have the camera skills (or the camera, for that matter) to film close up like that. I have friends around who have the equipment though, so I might give it a shot.

@jwo1984:

Hey spitfire… I liked the layout of yor original painting tutorial… With stages photos befores and afters with descriptions under each photo and stage.  I would like too see some face washes you use on infantry men. And some washes you use for a variety of infantry moulds. Even a gallery too showcase some of your personal playing pieces would be cool!

I will definitely do a tutorial on washes! I’m planning on doing another in depth infantry tutorial, so that will feature the face washes you’re talking about.

After building my AA50 table and a portable wargaming table, I think I’m tabled out (and let’s face it, I just don’t have any more room for tables in my already cramped household) but I did love making them.

After painting my entire AA50th set + a Spring 1942 set of pieces, I’d be more than willing to do more if the need arose.

Right now I’m more into Wargaming terrain and miniatures though.  There’s enough there to keep me pretty busy!

@robbie358:

Hello all.  I thought I would solicit your thoughts on which types of pieces in any version of A&A scream for painting the most.

IMHO, the most confusing piece on the board in the original Pacific and Pacific 1940 is the USA fighter in China.  Having to differentiate between a Chinese fighter that looks American and any USA fighters in that zone seems like a headache waiting to happen.

Otherwise, I would say the pro-Axis and pro-Allies neutrals in Europe 1940 need attention.  The fact is that upon being attacked, you’re supposed to pick any random country to donate an infantry to that territory.  If the attacker doesn’t win, the infantry stay there but cannot be moved.  Seems like confusion might set in eventually.

Your thoughts?

HBG has British infantry for sale. I bought 25 and painted them white to use for neutral armies.

Awesome!  Ready-for-the-desert scheme, sweet.