Well the recon jeeps are finally finished. I painted the base colours on already in April, but then these guys have just been sitting on my desk after that for quite a while. I picked them up again this week in an effort to finish them up and just got them varnished and photographed now. Very nice minis, but there are a lot of air bubbles in the resin Jeeps. Luckily most are on the underside so there wasn't that much of fixing to do. The only problem I have with them are the machine guns which are mounted on very thin metal parts that are bound to break during gaming.
For the Jeep I went with a two dark green basecoat applied with an airbrush followed by highlighting with dark yellow again using an airbrush. I wanted the minis to look like they've taken quite a beating already so I decided to weather them quite heavily. I added quite a bit of chipping using a sponge and dark grey and brown paints to make a base layer for the wash and streaking effects.
After a gloss coat the minis Jeeps were covered with a brown enamel wash from Ammo of Mig that was allowed to dry for a few hours. After that I scrubbed most of it away using cotton buds and thinner. I tried to keep the motion of the cotton buds going downwards to leave an uneven surface and allow more of the wash to stay on the bottom portions of the cars. After this was dry I painted on some streaks with oily, brown and rust coloured enamels, which were again blended to the surface using cotton buds and thinners. Finally I added in some light dust pigments, which might have been bit of a mistake as I'm not 100 percent happy with that result. Anyway overall the weathering gave quite a nice effect and really adds some interest to otherwise monotone green colour.
For some reason when I applied the final coats of matt varnish, the beret toting soldier turned greyish. I don't know if he received too much varnish or was the paint surface a bit dusty. Quite frustrating as I need to figure out some way to fix it now.
As I already stated in your last post they look great. As for the problem with the greyish varnish, it might have something to do with too high humidity.
VastaaPoistaThanks! I thought about the humidity too, but it really only affected the one mini. Might have gotten too much varnish on him.
PoistaSuperb! Great job Sir.
VastaaPoistaThanks Michael!
PoistaVery nice work, the weathering looks great. I like how the jeeps look oily and dirty, really breaks up the green. I've had a similar problem with greyish varnish, almost like a powdery residue, most likely from too much varnish in one coat. Cheers, Paul :-)
VastaaPoistaThanks! Might be the coat thickness that is causing it. He must have caught all the overspray when I've put varnish on the sides :D
PoistaThank you Phil!
VastaaPoistaNice job on these, as for the varnish I'd echo the comment about humidity. It's something we have to constantly watch here in Minnesota or we get a grey or frosty effect. I suspect the climate there is very similar, or at least Mikko Koivu says it is. ;-)
VastaaPoistaYeah moisture might also be an issue as it's been raining and cold here for the last weeks. I can't believe that the weather is that similar there. It just can't be this bad :D +5 celcius in Mid-June is just ridiculous...
PoistaNo not that bad. Overly rainy causing some high water/flooding problems. The temperature is fine now, but we had a long and very cold winter this year and a cold start to the spring as well. I'll take that over the hot humid days of August anytime though. :-)
PoistaLuckily it's normally not like this :) We've had record cold this June with snow coming down last week in most parts of the country. Before that May was one of the hottest ever...
Poista