The replacement…

The figure I was originally going to use turned out to be a poor choice. The head that came with it was rather freakish; the features were off, and it needed to be replaced. I have numerous WW2 US Army heads wearing both the M-1 helmet and the tanker helmet. The problem was that the figure was a large 1/35 scale, and the heads I had were smaller (1/35 figure sizes vary significantly). Nothing looked right, except for one from the DML US tanker set. Unpainted, it looked ok, but with primer, it was primitive. Basically, it was unpaintable. I tried several times and got the same results; it looked crappy. Okay, Plan B was instituted; replace the figure with something that resembled a human. I have a pretty good stash of WW2 US Army 1/35 figures, and I pulled a GI from New World Miniatures. I swapped out the kit head with another head wearing an M1 helmet. Much better.

Painting was straightforward. I used Vallejo and AK 3^rd Generation acrylics along with a few craft paint colors. I’m not very happy with how the figure turned out; I painted it in a week (I wanted it finished for the MMSI show in Chicago) instead of my usual month or year. The face has the look of someone who spent too much time at the beach with sunglasses on. I did finish it for the show, and it won a bronze medal.

Below are the pictures of the finished vignette; the last two are the MMSI show.

RJH

 The bunker is done!

The bunker languished for a bit, but I pushed ahead and finished the damn thing.

The top of the structure required grass/foliage to give it a more realistic look; plain mud wouldn’t suffice. My original plan was to use Woodland Scenics static grass, but after a few test shots and a serious zap from my static grass applicator, I went with Plan B — AK Dried Sea Grass. It comes in small, tightly packed balls of some seaweed/plant that needs to be cut or pulled apart. I cut it with a small pair of scissors and found it difficult to get anything longer than a few millimeters. I applied a coat of Liquitex Matte Medium and sprinkled the Sea Grass quite heavily over it. I’ve used Sea Grass before, and it always lies flat when used in this manner. This time, it looked more like static grass. Lots of it stood upright. Perhaps because I used a lot of it, along with the Matte Medium? Who knows, but I’m not complaining.  I let it dry overnight and then airbrushed it with Tamiya Flat Earth XF-52, followed by a grass green concoction mix from Tamiya Yellow Green XF-4 and Flat Green XF-5. It turned out to be too bright (almost Day-Glo), so I mixed in some Flat Earth and sprayed that to give it a Fall/Winter look. 

After this, I added some small pieces of plant root on the roof to represent dead weeds. I gave the ground in front of the bunker a coat of Liquitex Gloss Medium with a small amount of Liquitex Matte Medium mixed in, and then sprinkled small pieces of plant root to add to the general chaos of the scene. Finally, I used a Green Stuff World 1/35 Leaf Punch to make a bunch of dead leaves. Through prior experimentation, I found that the thin brown paper from Amazon packaging yielded the best leaves. I painted a few sections with burnt umber craft paint and started punching away. I glued them down on both the roof and ground with Liquitex Matte Medium and then gave each one a glaze of either raw umber craft paint or VMC #819 Iraqi Sand.  I also added a German mess kit and ammo pouch from Tamiya to add to the clutter. When I came up with the idea of using a door for the bunker, I wanted some junk hanging out. I used Tamiya two-part epoxy putty (smooth version) to sculpt something resembling a piece of clothing/uniform. I used the leftover putty to create small, wadded-up pieces of cloth, which were placed in several spots on the base. I used lead fly-tying wire to replicate cables hanging out of the hatch opening. I think I should have used real wire instead of lead; they look too thick. Now that the bunker is done, it's time to paint the figure.

RJH

 The bunker again...

After all the shenanigans with the bunker, I set it aside and focused on the hatch/door just to the left of the tanker. The steel door is an old 1/25 Tamiya Tiger I turret loader's hatch that I’ve had in my spare parts box since the 70s. I added some bolt heads (one was from the suspension from an ancient Monogram M3 Lee) and a ring door pull from sheet plastic and copper wire. I painted it with a spray can of Tamiya TS-70 JGSDF Olive Drab. I use rattle cans for little stuff like the door; I’m too lazy to use my airbrush for something this small. I have no idea what color the hatch should be, but green seemed like a viable option, and I also already had the can. As I mentioned earlier, I have several pictures of German bunkers, and no two doors or hatches are the same. To be honest, the bunker was built around the hatch. When I started planning to put this vignette together, I knew I wanted a door or hatch. The Tiger I loader's hatch just happens to be the exact size of two Lego bricks with four studs on the top. The hatch was the perfect candidate; it was big and clunky-looking with some great bolt detail. It also had the added bonus of having the hinge assembly attached.

After I sprayed it with Tamiya XF-70, which, for some reason, dried with a slight sheen, I applied a good coat of Testors Flat to prepare it for the weathering process. I used a heavy coat of my homemade wash (all of my leftover greens, browns, and grays are dumped in a squeeze bottle with some distilled water), and then I went back in and used a diluted pin wash of AK Burnt Umber Pin Wash. The wash from AK is enamel, so I thinned it with odorless mineral spirits. After the  AK wash had dried a bit, I went in with a #0 brush dipped in mineral spirits and cleaned my messy pin wash job. I then used VMC #894 Russian Uniform to highlight the edges of the hatch. I added a sludgy oil wash of ABT 502 Industrial Earth to the hinge assembly and some chipping and rust to the edges of the hatch. 

Underneath the door is a brick step made from pink insulation foam. I have a photo in my bunker reference file that shows a brick step beneath an open door. The bricks were large, almost the size of something you’d see in a backyard patio. I made three; they looked like crap. Plan B was put in place. Why not just regular bricks used in home construction? I made three, picking the one with the fewest flaws.  I sealed it with Titebond II and then painted it with a variety of dark red and orangish colors. I used dollar store spackle diluted with water for the mortar. I covered the entire step with the spackle, waited a minute or so, and then wiped it off using a damp paper towel. By doing this, it leaves the spackle in the spaces between the bricks and also tones down the brightness of the paint on the bricks. After everything dried, I applied a light application of my homemade wash. A gentle touch is needed because the spackle can be activated by water. Later on, I went back and applied a darker wash randomly to break up the color of the mortar.

My original plan for the step was a stack of old boards instead of brick; I was going to use short sections of board staked in at either end to keep the pile from slipping and sliding. I liked how the slats and stakes looked, so I used them with the bricks instead. The slats and stakes are made from sheet styrene with wood grain added using a saw blade and a hobby knife. I primed them with Tamiya White Spray Primer and then painted them with Mig acrylic Old Wood, followed by an application of my homemade wash. I thinned the wash so I could control the darkness of the boards. Some people simply slop the wash on full strength and end up covering the fine detail and altering the color of whatever they've applied the wash to. I got the desired look I was after with two thin applications of the wash.

Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment.

RH

 More fun with the bunker

When the epoxy putty patchwork was dry, the bunker received a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1000 White Primer. The next day, it was airbrushed with Tamiya Deck Tan. I let this dry for a day or so and then stippled on a variety of gray and tan acrylics to give the bunker a somewhat weathered concrete appearance. A wash of thinned burnt umber ink (with AK Ultra Flat added) was used to tone down the stippling. I then went in with thinned black ink and used that to shade certain areas.

I have several pictures that show the Germans had numbers painted on some of their bunkers. Seems like a good idea to me, plus it adds some visual interest to a plain cement wall. I used Tamiya tape to mark off a reasonably sized square in the upper right-hand corner of the bunker. I have no idea what colors should be, but I went with a black background and a white number. I used a small piece of sponge to apply the paint to make sure that it didn’t bleed under the tape. As for the number, I just wanted a large single digit. So, in my typical overthinking way, I went through my entire decal stash trying to find just the “right” looking number. After spending way too much time searching, I finally gave up and just looked for a number that would fit the black square. I settled on a white number seven from a set of ancient 1/35 Verlinden WW2 German tank dry transfers.

I cut out the seven and, holding it with a pair of locking tweezers, I lined it up so it wasn’t too crooked or off-center and taped it down with some small pieces of Tamiya tape. I used a worn-down #2 pencil to burnish the number to the bunker. When I removed the tape, it looked good. There were a few spots where the white of the number stayed on the backing film; it gave the number a slightly worn, chipped look. This was a rather nice surprise. I then went in and applied several light layers of a brown wash over the square and number to tone it down and tie it in with the rest of the bunker.   

Even with the number added to the wall, it still looked rather dull. I added a piece of evergreen angle iron with three rivets made with my ever-faithful Waldron Punch and Die set. I glued it over the door as a quasi-awning. It doesn’t look as if it would stop very much rain, but it adds a bit of interest to a bleak section of cement. Even after adding the number and angle iron, I thought it still needed something. I decided to make a bolt or anchor plate. I cut some Evergreen strip styrene into small squares and then punched out large and small discs with my punch set. I then carefully glued everything together using Testors Liquid Cement. I like Testors because it dries slower than other similar model glues; it allows me to make sure everything is aligned properly.

I wanted the awning and anchor plate very rusty; they were just chunks of unpainted iron at the mercy of the elements. They were primed with Tamiya White Spray Primer and then base coated with Golden Artist Acrylics Burnt Sienna. I then added some Jo Sonja Burnt Umber to the Burnt Sienna and created a thick wash to darken everything down. This was followed by several washes of VMC #981 Orange Brown to lighten things up. The angle iron turned out great, while the anchor plates turned out to be a real pain-in-the-ass. For the life of me, I just couldn’t get the rust look I wanted. I must have painted and stripped the plates four or five times before I was happy with how they turned out. I picked the best one and glued it in the upper left-hand corner of the bunker.

More to come…

RH

    Siegfried Line, Germany 1944

1/35 Warriors US Tanker leaning on the wall of a bunker, Siegfried Line, Germany 1944

This is a small vignette that I started a few weeks ago. It depicts a World War II US Army tank crewman leaning against the wall of a recently captured German bunker in the Siegfried Line (also referred to as the Westwall) in Germany, 1944. The Germans began construction on it in 1936, and the Line stretched nearly 400 miles from the border of Holland to the border with Switzerland. It included thousands of bunkers and tank traps along with land mines and barbed wire. Some of the worst fighting for the Siegfried Line took place from September to December of 1944 in the meat grinder known as the Hurtgen Forest. The figure is a 1/35 tank crewman in the ETO 1944/45 from Warriors, with a replacement head from the DML US Tank Crew, NW Europe 1944.

The figure’s jacket was open at the neck and had something resembling a shirt underneath. When I attached the new head, a bit of surgery was required to have everything look right. To cover my somewhat slipshod surgery, I added a scarf from two-part epoxy putty.  The upper sleeve of his left arm had a triangle representing a US Army armored division patch. It was way too thick, so I carved it away and bulked the resulting crater with two-part putty. After that, I primed it with Mr. Surfacer 1000 White Primer. I need to go back and refine the putty on the upper left arm. After that little fix, I can start painting

I like to put my figures on a base with some type of wall, fence, building section, or abandoned vehicle. I’ve wanted to build a World War II German bunker, and this seemed like a good time to do it. Over the last few years, I’ve gathered quite a few bunker pictures from the internet, especially of the Siegfried Line. The bunker is made from Legos with sheet styrene glued on it to provide a smooth, even surface for the two-part epoxy putty. Legos are the perfect foundation for walls and buildings. They come in a variety of sizes and are made of styrene. I always use glue on every joint to keep the Legos together. The hardest part of using them is cutting the studs off the top of the brick. I use a sprue cutter and then glue a section of sheet styrene over it to cover the hole left from the studs.    

 When I first put the section together, I was just going to add it to the rear of the base perfectly square. But then I remembered the Shep Paine adage, “don’t have anything square on your base, angle it.” That meant bulking up the wall with Styrofoam so the bunker would be at an angle. I used the regular crappy white packing foam you get with furniture and small appliances. This is in the form of a sheet, maybe ½ inch thick. When it comes to foam and modeling, I’m no snob; I use everything. Pink insulation foam from Home Depot/Lowe’s, foam core sheets from the dollar store, foam from meat packs (wash them well, you don’t want to get some funky stomach affliction from handling it), and the white crumbly stuff. The right side and rear of the bunker required me to glue two pieces of foam together to get the proper thickness.

After I bulked up the bunker, I left it oversized and glued it to the base. It’s easier to cut down after it’s glued in place than to measure and cut it. When the glue was dry, I used a large box cutter blade, which I had removed from the handle, to cut the bunker down to size. I kept the blade flush with the base and slowly cut through the foam with a gentle sawing motion. Even though I paid attention to what I was doing, I still managed to do a rather half-assed job. The sides weren’t too bad, but the back was way off. To fix the sides, I covered them with chipboard (fancy cardboard from a frozen pizza box) to square everything up. The back was covered with a thin (but not too thin) piece of shellacked balsa. If the balsa isn’t sealed, the moisture of the glue will warp it. Since the foam was off-kilter from my subpar trim job, I glued the balsa to the wood base and added shims of chipboard between the balsa and foam to fill the gaps. This would help square everything up. I applied a generous amount of glue to the top edge to secure the shims in place. When the glue had dried, I cut the protruding shims and coated the front and top of the bunker with Titebond II. This seals the foam and provides the two-part epoxy with a textured surface to adhere to.

Once the Titebond II had dried, I covered the top and front with two-part epoxy to simulate the cast concrete texture of the bunker. While the putty was still soft, I used sections of textured sheet styrene (scraped/hacked with a knife and saw blade to create a wood effect) to imprint the look of the wood frames used to form the wet concrete while the bunker was being built. When it dried, I didn’t like the texture that I applied; it looked like bad cave art. I debated tossing it in the trash can, but I just added another layer of putty (it was much easier than building an entirely new section of the bunker wall). This time, I was more careful/diligent about adding texture. After it had dried the second time, I was happy with the results. Now I could apply the veneer. I used walnut veneer to finish the base, which I glued to all four sides. On the front and sides that surround the ground in front of the bunker, I left the veneer a bit higher, so when I apply the groundwork, it will be level and not look like it’s oozing off the sides. The veneer was stained dark walnut and sealed with a gloss coat.  

 After the gloss coat dried, I realized that there were noticeable gaps on both sides where the veneer and the bunker met. I fixed this by filling the gaps with epoxy putty and then texturing it with a toothpick to match the rest of the bunker.

More on the figure and bunker soon.

RH

 

Small Brush Society

Welcome to the Small Brush Society. This is my site devoted to painting military miniatures and everything that goes with the hobby. I paint 1/35 and 54mm figures with the occasional fantasy mini to break things up. As a kid, I went through all the modeling phases: tanks, ships, planes, cars, and sci-fi. I eventually settled in as an armor modeler in the early 80s and banged away on that until about 2000, when extreme boredom set in, and I switched to figures.

I paint with acrylics, including Vallejo, AK Interactive 3^rd Generation, Scale 75, and Jo Sonya. I also use craft paint and oils if the need arises. I make my wood bases (veneer is my friend), buy too many books, and start more projects than I finish. My areas of interest include the American Civil War, WWI, the Russian Revolution/Civil War, the last year of WW2 in Europe (I only build/paint Allied figures), the Winter War/Continuation War, and the French in Indochina. I’m also a fan (odd word choice, but it works) of all the crappy little wars/squabbles that have occurred since WW1 ended. I sometimes stray into other genres such as ships and 1/72 aircraft, but the allure of figure painting soon calls me back to my paint and brushes.

RJH