John Brown's Painted Axis and Allies Pieces

@siredblood:

I’m chompin’ at the bit, on my phone and pics won’t load, I’ll revisit this thread on my PC later, can’t wait!

Appreciate it! :-D

@siredblood:

My man! Gotta give props to all those variants, that takes time! They look great, I have yet to do any German, looking at your variants, I don’t know what scheme to use for mine lol.

I know what you mean about shaky hands, this is hard to do in our old age, my hands hurt from holding the micro brushes, I wrapped one in duct tape, so its WAY fatter, helps, but there is still pain there. I also know what you mean about seeing the board with the painted units, it is different. I was not even planning on painting the units, I just wanted an easier way to tell destroyers from cruisers… just the painted decks alone, was enough for me to know, it was paint time :)

Keep the pics coming!

Yes, I started with Germany, because there are so many schemes they had. There is the traditional green camo scheme and gray colors, but then they had the desert, winter, as well as the SS camo, which I may do on the ground vehicles and infantry.

They even had the blue camo on the air force, which Cyanight has used on some of his planes.

They are the most fun to paint, and that is the reason, I started with the Germans.

Yes, getting older is no fun, but I do the best I can.

I will certainly keep painting, as long as I can.

Thanks for the comments! :-D

john

Here are 3, US Early War Avenger Torpedo Tactical Bombers, I painted, this past week.

Definitely, not my best work, but it will have to do.

Even though this was just a solid color piece, it was one of my most difficult pieces to paint.

Painting the red and white stripes was a hard task, because my hands were show shaky.

These particular decals, were the worst, I 94 has produced, because they broke off so easily, but I got them done, to show you.

Enjoy! :-D

John

@siredblood:

Nice job on the stripes, I tried it on the china plane, said screw it lol

I appreciate man. LOL, I had too repaint all three planes, because I screwed the stripes, something terrible. I liked what I did, well enough, for me, to enjoy it. :-D

Thanks again!

John

@CWO:

@LHoffman:

Those stripes are one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with when painting A&A pieces. I-94 has some early war US Navy stripes. I would think HBG also sells this sheet. They are a royal pain to apply, but the result is probably still better than anyone could achieve with paint. I have a few examples if you want to see the result.Â

Painting is really outside of my territory, but I heard that there’s a technique for painting neat stripes that works well on larger scales, and which perhaps could be scaled down for a case like this if the required component (or an equivalent) can be found in a small enough size.  The technique is:

• Paint the whole surface with the light-colour component of the paint scheme.  Allow to dry thoroughly.

• Cover with a strip of adhesive tape (or paper or whatever, as long as each strip can be held in place securely) the areas that will form the light-colour component of the stripes.

• Paint the whole surface with the dark-colour component of the paint scheme.  Allow to dry thoroughly.

• Remove the tape.

For something as small as the rudder of an A&A sculpt, adhesive tape is obviously too big.  Perhaps short lengths of wire (of paper-clip thickness) might be pressed into service as an alternative.

I tried very small strips of tape, but they weren’tt sticking to good. Probably didn’t allow it to dry enough. I have never thought about wire or a straight edge of some type.

Thanks CWO Marc for the idea. :-)

@LHoffman:

@CWO:

One alternate material that might work nicely would be Post-It notes.  Peel a small stack (say, of 5 or 10) notes from the block, then use scissors to cut a long, thin strip from the sticky edge.  Chop it into small sections, then apply to the sculpt.  It would have the advantage of being adequately sticky, yet easy to peel off afterwards.  Using a stack would be necessary to prevent the paint from bleeding through the paper.  Alternately, take a single Post-It note, waterproof its upper surface by painting it, then cut away strips when it’s dry.

That could work. The real issue is getting them uniform at that small scale and then being able to adhere them without ruining the adhesion in the process. It is a difficult thing to be sure. I was doing some experimentation a while back on how best to paint straight lines on a A&A carrier deck. I tried making a stencil to lay on the top and paint the lines with, but when using brush-on paint, it simply bleeds underneath and you don’t get a good result. Granted the stencil wasn’t adhered to the surface and it would have worked better to use an airbrush, but that brings up other issues. Ultimately I had to carefully freehand it. Result was good, but it would be maddening to do that for a batch.

I know what you mean, lol. The bleeding underneath the tape, happened to me a lot.

Hey guys, it has been awhile since I’ve posted anything, but I’m back painting my units. My wife took over my painting area during the holidays, then I just finished this past week on YG’S 2017 Invitational Prizes.

So I am now happy to show what I just painted in the last few days.

Remember when my feeble hands were trying to paint those stripes, on the 3 US Avenger Torpedo Bombers, well, they were a sore eye for me, all during the holidays?

So I pmed LHoffman about the decals, and he said they were hardest decals, he has used to date. He wasn’t kidding. It could drive you to cuss, lol, but they still looked better than what I could produce, so here we go.

They aren’t perfect, but I found out you have to cut them in half twice, and try to shape them as best you can.

Enjoy!

John

p. s. Well crap didn’t see the mangled one in the middle, must have come off. Sorry about that!

US AVENGER TORPEDO BOMBERS

US B-17 BOMBERS

US Desert Camouflaged P-40 Warhawks for the African Campaign

Hope you enjoyed these. Will have some others done next week.

Cheers!

John

@LHoffman:

Nice work John! Those Avengers look much better with the decal stripes. Glad I could help a bit. Can’t quite tell if you did or not, but I also touched up any breaks in the stripes (especially where it wraps around the back of the rudder) with matching red and white paint. In such small areas, you can’t really tell the difference and it improves the overall look. Happy to see it worked out for you.

Love the Warhawks. That US roundel is bold and beautiful on that desert scheme.

Thanks LHoffman! To answer, I was just happy to get them on. I’m planning doing 3 more in the same scheme and try to round it off and match it like your talking about.

I have 8 US hell divers with this same scheme that I have to decal. I probably start with these next week to try to do as you say.

Those decals on the desert fighters are really cool, and a real eye catcher.

Glad you like them and thanks for your help!

Cheers!

John

@Spitfire38:

Those look great! I’d have to agree with LHoffman - the desert scheme is really crisp. Best of luck with your other pieces in the coming weeks.

Thanks buddy! I appreciate it. :-D