Sunday, February 7, 2021

Artizan Hungarian/German PaK gun team




Another project that's been sitting in my paint queue for over a year was this Artizan PaK gun and crew. I bought this years ago from Ebay and the gun came damaged and lacking the lower front shield, so it sat in my bitz box until I got bored and put it together. My Hungarian army is lacking an anti-tank gun, and I often proxy my Brigade Games Gebirgsjager was Hungarian border troops, so I just decided to throw this in too.

The gun is painted and weathered using my usual technique however, because it sat in my paint queue half-completed for so long, it was impossible to remove the hairspray for shipping and I instead opted to do the chipping by hand. While it's a nice effect, it's too time consuming to do for anything larger. Once that was done, I gave it a yellow/light umber oil filter, a white oil wash, and then dry blended more white to build up the whitewash effect.


The crew are somewhat different than the techniques I used with the Gebirgsjager. To simulate shadows on the overwhites, I primed in white and then picked out areas of shadow using Vallejo Air USAAF Light Grey and then adding more highlights by mixing in more Vallejo Cold White. The Air formulation is thinner than regular MC, which is a detriment if you need more opaque coverage, but good if your base color is lighter than the later coats. I also wanted to give their faces a more life-like, cold appearance and, thanks to the advice of a friend, did a lot of washes with purples and greys, rather than my normal light brown flesh wash. I also picked out the starkest highlights in Vallejo Basic Skintone, which is a more pinkish-white tone, and added a very subtle glaze of Vallejo Salmon Pink to noses and lips. The final effect produces a nice cool skintone nipped by cold weather and I might go back and overpaint my Gebirgsjager's faces using the same techniques....