Halfords is a well known (if you are in the UK) cycle/car accessories retailer, and I am a signed-up and committed user of their range of spray paints for both white and black undercoat.
Recently they have offered a 3-tone range of "cammo" paints, including a khaki which was used as a base coat for
these fellows, and also a Dark Green. The Dark Green looks pretty ideal for that difficult-to-achieve WW2 Allied AFV colour, so having some 15mm PCS Churchills, 20mm
Plastic Soldier Company Shermans
and a handful of Battlefront carriers to paint, I thought I'd give it a go.
Here are the Churchills - these are really well detailed kits, that go together very well and also give you options for a variety of vehicles, including cast and welded turrets and a couple of AVRE options. The Bren carriers are in the background. The spray provides a deep and very matt green finish, but as there is no matching paint pot, you have to be very thorough with getting good coverage.
These are the three PSC Shermans - I sprayed the tracks (which come separately ) with Army Painter Leather brown, which I also use as a base colour for the
PSC US Infantry, which are having some heavy weapon crew added to them at the moment (in the background). The heavy weapon teams share the odd/inaccurate
Y-shaped braces of the infantry..
The Sherman models are really well thought out for wargamers (as opposed to modellers) needs. They go together really easily (apart from some small gaps where the tracks join at front and back) and feel very robust - someone has thought about these as bits of kit which will get a lot of handling, and designed them accordingly.
The "shiny" patches are where I have put a patch of gloss varnish as a base coat on which to add waterslide transfers at a later stage - adding a gloss base coat under each transfer and then sealing it in with a further gloss coat before the final matt coat really does wonders for removing the outline/edge of the transfer on he finished model.
Here they are again, this time with Allied stars on them. I think I may have gone overboard with the stars, having them on turrets and hulls, but it adds a little more life to these models anyway.
Here are the Churchills, with some fairly serious drybrushing going on. They have transfers from the Battlefront Allied Armour sticker set. The unit insignia are probably not appropriate for Churchills, but beggars can't be choosers. They will fight with my PBI
PSC British Infantry
Very few of them ended up with space on the turret for one of these formation markings.
The carriers, with the little Battlefront blokes peering out.
Churchills again, showing the great detail on the rear decks. For such simple models to make they come out really well.
I then gave the whole lot a liberal washing with Army Painter Dark tone (the strongest one). I think this will tone down a lot once I get round to doing a matt coat, but right now I am wondering if I will need to do another set of drybrushing.
The carriers - again with probably inappropriate unit markings!
Front view of the Churchills.
And the Shermans. I'm quite optimistic that the mix of base colour and Army Painter will end up as that sort of bronze green that WW2 vehicles seem to have
in the real world.
About a week later I managed to Dullcote them and add the finished pictures to this site - see them
in this post.
