Painting bocage

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Justin

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed James’ Resins range of bocage. Well, Aaron has kindly written a clear and concise tutorial to take you through the painting process step-by-step. Enjoy :)

How to paint and enhance James’ Resins Bocage

My aim in this tutorial is to give you an idea of how you can paint your own bocage to suit your individual needs. Everything you read below is just my personal opinion/choice on how I achieve a finished product suitable for my FOW battlefields. All the paints I use in this article are Vallejo.

Preparation

There is very little you need to do to prep the model as it comes ready to paint. However, you may want to model parts of it to make it unique to your battlefield, e.g. different tank tracks, breaches in the bocage etc.

I personally like to adapt my bocage to have removable trees as this removes any transportation or storage issues. To achieve this, I drill a few 3.2mm holes about two thirds of the depth into the tops of my pieces using a pillar drill on a slow speed. If you drill on a slow speed, the Jesomite resin will suffer minimal, if any, damage. Make sure you don’t break through the bottom or the glue will flood out in the next step.

I then cut up several 2cm (approximate) lengths of 1/8inch wide hollow plastic tube (made by Evergreen Scale Models).

Put some super glue into the previously drilled holes and insert a 2cm piece of the hollow plastic tubing. These will be used as trunks for the portable trees (see below).

Painting the base

I like to basecoat all of my models White instead of the more common practice of spraying them Black. I only do this because I think it makes the colours stand out better. I recommend spraying the basecoat on the model as apposed to painting it on as you get a more even surface to paint on. I basecoat the whole model with an airbrush (using ‘White Primer 74600’) instead of a spray can because:

it’s cheaper in the long run, and
it’s less ‘potent’ than the spray can propellant (I also find the wife complains less if our house doesn’t stink of spray can fumes!!)

Next I airbrush the stone walls with ‘Surface Primer Grey 74601’. There is no reason you couldn’t brush paint it on, I just find it’s quicker and leaves a better surface finish when painting in large batches.

When the grey layer is dry I like to dry brush the walled section with ‘Ivory 918’. I then paint all the mud with ‘US Field Drab 873’ (so it matches the rest of my army’s bases) & dry brush with ‘German Camo Beige 821’. The dry brushing really makes the tank tracks stand out.

I then pick out any of the wood/timber in the model (gate posts, broken gates and tree trunks) with ‘Beige Brown 875’ and a dry brush of‘German Camo Beige 821’. Make sure you don’t get too carried away with dry brushing the wood/timber or it will start to blend in too much with the bocage.

First coat of varnish

Now the model has had its coat of paint I use an old brush to give a good covering of Army Painter’s ‘Strong Tone’ varnish. Not only does this give it a protective covering, but the pigment in the varnish settles into all the nooks and crannys. This gives a really good depth of shading, especially in the hollows of the walls and the tank tracks. Just watch out for the varnish pooling from being too liberal with the paint brush. The only down sides to this step is it can take up to 24hrs to dry and leaves the model with a very shiny gloss finish.

Grassing the base

Now the varnish is dry you can flock the base. This is also a good opportunity to cover over any painting errors or dark pooling of the varnish. I paint all the areas of the model I want to cover with static grass with PVA white glue, leaving the odd area of the mud untouched.

Using a puffer bottle, I apply a thick layer of Jarvis’ Static Grass Spring mix JHG1’ over the glued area. When I’m happy, I leave it to dry over night just to be on the safe side.

After it’s dry, I use a 2inch house painting brush to brush off any excess grass and it’s ready for the hedgerow on top. From personal experience, make sure that you have a tray (or something similar) under the model for anything involving static grass as you can easily collect the excess for re-use. It also stops the wife moaning about having green patches of static grass appearing in the living room carpet!!

Hedgerow

Apply a good coating of ‘Hobby-tack/tac-e-glue/sticky bond’ to the top of the wall that you want to apply your hedgerow/foliage to making sure not to cover over the tree stumps. Wait for the glue to almost go see through as it’s at its most tacky then.

This glue is different to normal glue in that it always remains tacky. This is important as the more you play with the piece, the more of the hedgerow foliage comes off. With the tacky glue you can just re-attach it straight away and it will stick back in to place without a problem.

For the hedgerow foliage I like to use Woodland Scenics’ ‘Clump Foliage’ in Dark Green (FC684), Medium Green (FC683) & Light Green (FC682) as this gives a really good range of different colours. Break it up into irregular shapes & sizes and push it on to the glue filling up the gaps with the various colours and sizes.

Trees

I generally buy pre-made trees from various sellers on E-bay. What I do is cut off the plastic base about 1cm from the bottom & drill in a 1.2mm hole up the centre of the tree.

I then superglue in a 1.2mm thick piece of brass rod leaving about 1.5cm of brass rod hanging out of the bottom of the tree. File the end round to get rid of any jagged edges. Now you can pop it in the previously made (and painted) tree trunks on the top of the model. Remove the tree when happy.

Final varnish

For the final varnish, I like to use my airbrush and give the whole model a couple of coats of ‘Matt Varnish 520’. From bitter experience, if you ‘over spray’ with spray can varnish it can leave the model with a frosted/whitened look to it ruining the finished article.Vallejo varnish is much more forgiving if you get carried away and does not leave a nasty smell in its wake. After the varnish has dried, normally 30-60 mins, the model is finished.

Finished piece

Now your piece is fully finished and just waiting to be placed on the battlefield. Get some brass rodded trees put in to it and watch the fun unfold as some daft tanks get bogged down trying to cross them or just sit your tank there in ambush and hit the enemy at close quarters!!

Excellent, very useful stuff, thanks Aaron. Glad to hear that I’m not the only one to receive disapproving looks from Her Indoors over errant clump, flock and grass!

Keep your eyes peel for subsequent tutorials on barbed wire entanglements and minefields.

Easier Airbrushing

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Justin

As a keen painter with less than 2 years experience using my airbrush, I still consider myself an absolute noob when it comes to handling this expensive peice of kit. I’m still searching for the definitive guide to using an airbrush at this scale (15mm) and don’t want to run the risk of ruining my minis by experimenting on them. I read that practice makes perfect but, let’s be honest, that’s boring, boring, boring. Add to this the seemingly inexhaustible technical problems you can experience and it just seems easier to leave the airbrush for basecoating and hesitant attempts at tri-colour camouflage :L.

That’s why I have to give the guys over at FineScale Modeler a big thumbs up for their Easier Air-brushing feature in this March’s edition (UK, Vol. 30, issues 3):

Contained within are 2 really useful pieces on airbrushing entitled Airbrush Maintenance and Problem Solving and Solving Painting Problems. The latter illustrates 8 of the most common airbrushing mistakes and how to fix them:

As a victim of Spiders, Runs and Splattering I found this piece invaluable and it now secures a permanent place above my workbench for reference purposes.

These 2 articles are supported by a video illustrating how to clean your airbrush:

Cleaning your airbrush – FineScale Modeler Magazine.

Well worth the £3.50 cover price.

Repainting Hornby Skaledale: Derelict Stables

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Justin

It all started with a routine visit to Model Zone on a Saturday afternoon. You know the sort of thing. Take the 2 boys in for a browse whilst the wife and step-daughter look around BHS. Truth be told, I had a £10 Model Zone gift voucher that was burning a hole in my pocket from Christmas and yesterday seemed as good a day as any to spend it.

I had every intention of going in and getting some paint or modelling stuff, but then the Hornby section caught my eye. Some Skaledale stuff was half-price (a church, a whole bleedin’ painted church for less than £12! – doh!). I was after more walls, but found the Derelict Farm and Trackside ranges:

Totally forgetting issues of scale (SkaleDale is OO or 1/76 scale / 21/2mm and15mm is 1/107th), I was tempted by the allure of the pre-painted Derelict Stables:

Don’t be fooled by the clever photography on the box. Taking it up to the counter, I discovered that the finished piece wasn’t as dark or well shaded as first appearances suggested. But it was hollow and big enough to accomodate 1 small and 2 medium bases as well as the entire equine population of Ste. Justine-du-Mont (bonus!). Next thing I knew I was eagerly showing it to the wife in the middle of the High Street with a stupid grin on my face saying I could repaint it in no time. As the eldest boy said, it’s always good to have a project – as if I haven’t got enough on at the best of times!

Getting home, it was clear what needed to be done:

I really liked the way they’d simulated the growth of moss on the roof tiles, but the grass was way too green. That got a coat of Vallejo (079) Golden Olive:

Second, the whole barn needed taking down a tone or too. This was going to be a job for Citadel Washes. The wood on the stable doors needed a look-see as well. I watered down some Vallejo Panzer Aces (310) Old Wood and got to work. I’m not anticipating a big drama here. I want to quickly enhance the existing paint-job to make it blend in with my other stuff, not a redux from scratch.

The paint adhered well and I found out that 2-3 successive coats of slightly watered down Devlin Mud over the walls and roof quickly achieved the desired effect: