Very nice camo indeed! I agree with some others that your miniatures would benefit from a wash and some dry brush. Though, make sure you test and play with this as it might mess up your nice camo job.
At this point your camo pattern looks 'hard'. A wash will soften it and a dry brush brings out the details and gives it a weathered look.
John Secker wrote:Got to agree with all this. The only person who really appreciates all the work and detail that goes into most models in the person who actually does it. And when they are on the table nobody notices.
I don't really agree, but of course it depends on quite a few things. My wargame friend doesn't really care about all the nicely detailed painted miniatures as his eyesight doesn't catch it. Though, sometimes he picks one up and gives it a closer look to appreciate the effort. My eyesight is excellent and I can see the difference between GHQ and for example H&R miniatures from at least 1 meter.
I do not play games with 100+ miniatures at a 4x4m gaming table, but usually less than 50 minis on a 1x1m battlefield. At this scale I really enjoy the GHQ details and a good paiting job, as my eyes are about 1 meter away from the miniatures.
If you play with 'new' people, usually the first thing they do when you present your miniatures: pick one up and enjoy what they see. With an H&R mini that enjoyment is certainly different.
Another thing is when you make pictures...
A lot of that comes down to your gaming situation. Typical game for me is a 6x12 table with 4 or 5 players a side. A "small" game is on a 6x8 with 6 players.
We notice great paint jobs before or after - naturally. But during the game I never notice if my troops are simple block painting or mini works of art. To me that bunch over there is "a mediocre pike unit I hope holds long enough."
I have come more and more to feel it is the terrain that matters. Works of art fighting over two trees and a scrap of felt clearly does it for some. But to me a forest should have dozens and dozens of trees. And the table should "look" like the real world. So my/our games we cover the table with fields, fences, rolling hills, dirt tracks, copses, etc. etc. Here is a small Bolt Action game, This represents moderate terrain, as it was a quick "pick up" game:
When I travel to a convention my games look like that just becasue there is not the time for set up/take down. Not our game but this is what most of our club tables look like:
So these days more and more of my effort is in buying/making terrain and less time spent painting miniatures.
Mark Severin
Owner, Scale Creep Miniatures
Author DeepFriedHappyMice.com
One of the things I like about my first experience with a war gaming group is variety. Each member has something they excel at. The group leader loves being detailed with rules and historical accuracy. Another member is really big into terrain and vehicle painting. I love detailed terrain and vehicles, but do to time constraints and lack of focus, concentrate on detail painting of vehicles. When these three things come together, I feel like it enriches the experience. If it didn’t, we would all still be playing on boards with cardboard cutouts. We all strive for some level of detail that brings us closer to climbing in a real vehicle and thunder across the country side. We all have our level of skill and needs on achieving accuracy. Take GHQ, they could easily lower their quality and still sell a lot of vehicles. However they strive for something more and achieve it. I personally feel, and maybe this is a little over the top, to fully honor the hard work that GHQ puts into its sculptures it is necessary to at least try to paint accordingly. Now that is not to say that I look down on anyone who doesn’t, it’s just my personal feeling. If you think about it, it really does come down to personal feelings. We do this hobby for ourselves first and foremost. My skill level is not as good as Allen Rockwell, Cama, Tanner and some of the other master painters on this site, but I do enjoy trying. When I posted pics of my T-80s and Gaz Tigrs, someone said that as long as you are happy with the results. I feel this is very true.
Even though some of the detail painted and modeled on the vehicles may get lost on a well detailed terain, viewing distance from the actual vehicle, or just lost in the heat of battle, it’s there and painting them up is the fun no matter what skill level you are at. I personally like painting camo patterns and corky little detail like black muzzle break, Green and camo tarps on desert colored vehicles and extra baggage painted in non uniform colors on an individual vehicle. Just to name a few. I love mixing them up in a unit to show the reality of combat that everything is not uniform, I love the variety and uniqueness of it. Truth be known, my eye sight slowly gets worse and I believe that in the not too distant future I may not even be able to visually enjoy my own work in relation to the detail I have painted on them without the help of a magnifying glass. I find myself having trouble sometimes even seeing the molded detail. With that said, it’s there and I know it and it feels good to have been able to do it. No one in my group may full appreciate my work, but I do and that is enough for me.
Maybe I am a little over the top in my thinking or a bit preachy, but I feel like all sides contribute to the richness of the experience whether it is rules, vehicle painting and or terrain. If I am lucky to get all three in one game, I am a happy gamer.
Extra Crispy,
As I stated earlier, I love the detail painting on your US vehicles.
If I was you I would be very happy with the MERDEC camo.
Like you say, once they are on the table you can barely notice the good, the bad and the ugly!. It depends it you want to paint well enough to showcase you models on the internet or game with them, or somewhere in between.
I go for in between and to avoid them looking like blobs on the table I like to use lighter colours and a good contrast through washes and drybrushing, which adds a minute or 2 to the painting time per model
Good effort, but the brown is too strong.. Narrower brown strokes, not always ending at the vehicle edges. Your pattern is more like an aircraft.
I was responsible for painting our tank battalion's fleet in Germany in 1977. We painted over the USAREUR camo with the MERDC. We chalked the pattern on, then sprayed. Given different chalkers and different painting crews, there was some variation. We didn't use the sand color at all on any of our vehicles.
For painting 1/285th and 1/35th models in European MERDC and the later NATO three-color pattern, I use Model Master medium green, medium brown, and flat black. I first spray white primer overall, then medium green overall. You can do this with the canned spray if you are careful not to linger. Medium green is the principle color. Medium brown is next in a smaller ratio. It is NOT an equal ratio, so not so much brown as green. Then the black. Watch where you put the black. Don't overdo it. Dark gray VERY THIN wash after that. It will fill in if white primer is still visible and enhance detail and weathering.
In the early 80s, as M60A3s, M113A2s, and 105-gunned M1s were issued, they arrived in overall medium green and often served several years that way. I think it depended on the unit getting around to applying the remaining colors.
Get pictures of vehicles in service from the internet. The MERDC and NATO patterns are also available from the internet. There is an Osprey publication on the M1 that has good plates for the pattern, but the colors are WAAAAAY off. Search by specific vehicle type, by units, "Cold War tanks in Germany" etc. The MERDC patterns depended also on where the tanks were stationed. In Europe, the pattern was darker. Stateside units might include a dark and light green. The Osprey book on M1s or a search for info on MERDC in the internet would help.
The sand in your pattern causes the pattern to be uniformly delineated, which makes it easy to spot the pattern and pick out your vehicles. Remember, anything that makes your vehicle stand out, such as uniform, broad strokes, is self-defeating.
A VERY thin wash will help, as will drybrushing dust and mud.
I have thought about shaving a pencil and drybrushing the dust on. That works well with the 1/35th models, but I haven't tried it on the GHQ stuff yet.
