Doing new stuff the old way...

Well, last week I put up a short guide on how to quickly paint the Dust figures. Thomas, the cheeky sod, answered: "Good, now do one to the best of your ability." Bastard. Well, I painted not one, but two figures to the best of my ability. At least I tried to paint them as best as I could, but there are some things I'm not happy with that I could improve, I think.

Notice the error in the English title, "sturm" has been omitted. Maybe because "Battle Assault Grenadiers" sounds daft.

I bought a box of Kampf Sturmgrenadieren Squad (sic!), as I wanted to try out some figures without gasmasks, to see how good the faces were.

Short answer is that the faces are really good. Too bad this box has six figures with the same sneering head. I think I will do some headswaps on a couple of figures later. Anyway, I decided to paint the figures in Sumpfmuster '44 pattern. It's a "tan and water" pattern that Luftwaffe used on their fallschirmjäger camoflague smocks. I have already mentioned that I think the coats on the Dust germans look a lot like FJ coats, so I wanted the paint job to reflect that. Also, in the game background all SS units have been disbanded so no SS camo on these boys.

Battle Grenadiers on the move. "Schnell, schnell!!!"

As I was going to paint these as best as I could I did not use the one coat-wash method. Instead I mixed various methods, using washes, layers and drybrushing. The smocks were painted with Vallejo German Camo beige, and I did horizontal splotches of Vallejo Luftwaffe camo green and Coat d'Arms Rust Brown. The "rain pattern" was then painted with GW Dheneb Stone on the first figure, and GW Bleached Bone on the other. I found it hard to do thin stripes with Dheneb Stone since the paint dried fast on the brush, but Bleached Bone did give a bit too faded appearance to my taste. Last the coat recieved a wash with GW Gryphonne Sepia to tone it down.

The armour and trousers were washed with GW Nuln Oil and then rehighlighted with Wargames Foundry Slate Grey, in a layered style. The faces and hands were painted with WF Flesh, boots were painted WF Dusky Flesh, gaiters and gloves with WF Drab, all areas in layers as the Foundry colours are supposed to be used. The panzerfaust was painted Vallejo Dunkelgelb, and I mixed some green-grey into the dunkelgelb for the highlight. The goggles were painted Coat d'Arms goblin green, washed with GW Thraka green and I dotted some white as reflections on them. The effect is lost on the crappy shot above, as is the fact I painted the eyes on them too! Blast. Lastly I did the guns in Vallejo Gunmetal and accentueated some of the rivets and buttons with metal as well. Unfortunately I managed to fog the lense of my camera when trying to clean off a bit of smudge my kids had managed to put on it. So I had to use the mobile camera, hence the bad photo.

On the terrain front I have assembled the first of my Dave Graffam ruins. I printed out the ready-to-print version included, which had brick walls with interior wood panelling.

Our house, in the middle of the street.

I glued the printed walls on thick card to give it some more stability. I don't really like paper models since I always seem to bungle something during the cutting or glueing stage, but this came together marginally problem free.

Our house, was our castle and our keep.

One thing that's really nice are all the little details, like the broken floor tiles, and the faded areas on the walls were paintings or furniture has been. The style is general World War 2-ish, with the options to do them as concrete, brick and a range of other materials.

Our house, that was were we used to sleep.

Sizewise they are spot on for "heroic scale" figures, which means that they fit the Dust Tactics figures as well.  The ruin is big enough to hide even a walker.

Our house, in the middle of the streeet.

So there you have it. I'm pretty happy with the way the camo pattern came out, but I will try to do it a little bit lighter next time, perhaps highlighting the base colour before applying the pattern. I'm a bit rusty with the layer painting, since I have done smaller scale figures for a while now, mostly with the wash method. I have ordered some allied figures as well for Dust Tactics since I want to try painting them as well. And someday I might even dare to paint the walker. Awesome, isn't it?

Watch this space.