A (small) milestone

So I'm a bit sick of painting 28mm stuff, it's just too demanding. Suddenly my FOW armies start to look appealing, as they can be painted to a reasonable standard using just drybrushing and washes.

My PanzerGrenadier (Afrika Korps) army has been promoted to the front of the painting bench, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Given that I'm in a "free and easy" state of mind at the moment, I'm trying a slight variation on my normal process. I figured that, rather than finishing unit by unit, I'd try to get them all to a "bearable" state for gaming. So I'm undercoating them all (which was done), then black washing them all, then giving all the vehicles their main coat (a heavy dry brush), all the infantry their first base colour and so on.

With the exception of a couple of models, I've now black washed all the army, including my brand spanking new Tiger. I couldn't resist, especially when you want to get a 1500 point army painted, tying up 385 points in a single tank is a good idea ;) I use a mix of water, black paint and black ink (1:1:1), which is slathered on reasonably quickly, just making sure it doesn't pool anywhere.

You can see the process in the pictures. The first picture shows the difference between the primer and the wash. The wash helps fill any cracks that the spray doesn't get to, as well as providing some definition to the models. The biggest boon for me about 15mm figures is that I can sit down for 15 minutes and achieve something, which is much harder in 28mm! Why 15 minutes? That's about as much as children will allow at any one time...

Slow progress...

OK, so it seems like nothing's happened, but that's not completely true. No photos this time, but lots of progress on different fronts. My Winterguard are now almost finished, just needing some detailing. I've also nearly finished a display base for a small WM army, using the article on GW's site. It uses rare earth magnets (very strong!) in the bases to stick to the display base, making for simple transport. Also started putting together my IFP, which is a slow and painful process.

On the terrain front, I've done a bunch of plaster casting, now that I have two new Hirst Arts molds, so a) I have more bits for my dungeon, b) I can now build the Traveller's Bridge, which just needs one set of steps and the handrails done, and c) build the gothic church, after borrowing a mold from a friend Craig.

Nothing on the FOW front, but I'm leaning that way again, thinking how I can get either my Desert Rats or Panzer Grenadier forces onto the table top. I'm leaning towards a bit of extravagence that can be summed up with one word and a piece of punctuation... Tiger!