The "hobby mojo" is well and truly back!

So, after being in a bit of a funk, I'm now well and truly back on my hobby track and chugging along with quite a few projects. Very happy with that indeed!

You may remember I ran a little poll recently regarding the scheme to choose for my Light Panzer Company for Flames of War. Lots of you voted (or a few of you voted lots of times) and the result was very close (less than 7% difference). The overwhelming bulk of the comments were, however, guiding me towards the simple grey color scheme. So, that's what I went for.

In the evenings of last weekend (Fri/Sat/Sun) I was able to get in a total of 12 hours painting which, surprisingly enough, was all I needed to complete over 1,500 points of FOW goodness.

You can see the results below.

I split it all into simple batches to get things rolling, and that worked out incredibly well. Following a "recipe" from my buddy Mike, and it goes a little something like this.

• Prime all models with the Flames of War German Armor War Paint spray (the dark grey one of course).

• Drybrush with GW's Adeptus Battlegrey

• Drybrush with Vallejo's London Grey

• Wash panels with a 20/40/40 mix of Vallejo's Charred Brown, water, and GW's Devlan Mud. The focus for this should be the crevices and angle where the armor plates meet.

• Paint the tracks and exhaust covers with Vallejo's Red Leather

• Wash the tracks and exhaust covers with Badab Black

• Pick out any details (like shovel handles etc)

• Paint on the German insignia and squad markings

• Lightly drybrush with GW's Khemri Brown, paying particular attention to the tracks

Quite simple really. And very quick to do in batches.

I painted all the vehicles based on the Panzer I body (8 tanks) on Friday night, just to make sure I was comfortable with the plan. All three of the Panzerbefehlswagens (left) have a crew member poking his head out, denoting that vehicle as a command tank. The Panzer Is (right) do not. One word of advice with the Panzer Is, be careful with the little machine guns on the turret. If you knock them too often they might break off.

Saturday night I painted the 11 Panzer IIs (right) using the same methods as on the first batch. I was able to get more done as I was familiar with the process and there were no crew to paint.

Then I finished it all off with the Panzer IIIs and Bunkerflaks on Sunday night (while watching the Cowboys fall apart again - warmed my heart). The Panzer IIIs (in the left of the pic with the Panzer II) were quite nice to paint as the "muddy brown" wash over the larger plates looked great. Very smooth and subtle. Same goes for the Bunkerflak. I also had to paint up some 88 artillery crew and I followed the suggestions for the colors found on the Flames of War site.

So, there you have it. My army is now ready to invade Poland (or France) and should be seeing the tabletop before the end of the year. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Cheers

Dave