[2003]¶
USMC Infantry Squad with 3 Humvees¶

I used the base colours to lighten up the areas where the black ink pooled or darkened the vehicle too much otherwise.

Then I applied highlights by mixing Vallejo 70.928 light flesh into the base colours.

My last brush strokes for today where white and orange red for the lights.


[2003]¶
USMC Infantry Squad with 3 Humvees¶

I touched up all the areas that got rubbed off, painted the windows and blacklined the entire models.

Then I protected the work done so far with a coat of gloss varnish from the airbrush.


[2003]¶
USMC Infantry Squad with 3 Humvees¶

Fail.

I used my thumb to gently rub off the masking film. This worked well on flat areas, basically. On the parts with much sculpted detail, like the doors, it was more difficult to really get every last scrap of it. Additionally, on quite some parts I rubbed off the paint as well, including the base coat...

:-(

If I will do this again on other models (I have four LAVs and two LVTP7A1s for my Marines waiting to get painted), I will definitley give the model a coat of Gloss Varnish over the green base colour, to help preventing the rubbing off of the basecoat, creating a sturdy protective layer.

Concerning the small crevices, either this method is not suited for these kind of small details, or I need to apply the masking film in a thicker layer. That way, the masking film might get stronger, peeling itself away totally, instead of small pieces ripping off of it and sticking to the model...


[2003]¶
USMC Infantry Squad with 3 Humvees¶

Having painted only 28mm Fantasy and SiFi stuff for some time, it was time for a change. I took off my shelf the Marine squad and the three Humvees, which I bought, de-flashed and based two years ago, after seeing Generation Kill. But the bug bite healed and I was sidetracked by other projects before I started painting them.

Time to change that.

I basecoated with my airbrush, using two light coats of Vallejo 70.837 Pale Sand for the Marines, and Vallejo 70.894 Russian Green for the Humvees.

The undercarriage of the Humvees got hit with a quick spray blast of Vallejo 71.069 Rust.

For the camouflage on the Humvees I tried something new. In the above photo you can already see the Vallejo 70.523 Liquid mask I applied over all the areas that should remain green. I then applied a coat of Vallejo 70.846 Mahagony Sand.

After another application of Liquid mask (visible in the above photo) where the brown should remain, I sprayed the final coat of black. To get a black that was already slighty bleached by the sun, I used a mix of Vallejo 71.057 Black [1/3], 70.862 Black Grey [1/3] and Thinner [1/3].

The plan is to remove the liquid mask and to have a perfect camouflage scheme :-)

Lets see how it turns out...

I already found it difficult to see exactly where the mask film on the green coat was when painting the mask film on the brown coat... so let's see how this turns out...

It would probably have been easier to just brush the brown and black on. But we will see.


[Kickstarter]¶
Empress Miniatures¶

Well, I have not made any progress with my Dreadball Orx, but that of course does not stop me from looking for new projects - which will probably just add to the pile of unpainted lead, but I guess you know what I am talking about...

Thanks to the announcement on theminiaturespage.com, I could not resist 20 US Marines with boonie hats in contemporary equipment... Empress Miniatures 'Devil Dogs And Dragons' 28mm Figures .

As the project collected 5,000£ of the needed 7,500£ within 1.5 days, I think it will get certainly funded and I hope for a lot of stretch goals... which are automatically covered by my pledge level :-)

Kickstarter Project Page