by Dirty Jon
As you all know, I have a problem. A painting problem. I just cannot stop painting tanks for Flames of War. I have 11 Panthers already, a box set still to paint, yet I still managed to pick up some barely primed Panthers "for cheap". I just cannot resist a project!
When these arrived, there was a little bit of repair and some flashing work to be done. With that all squared away, I proceeded to prime, then paint these guys with the PSC German Armor spray can. I usually like to spray the tracks black before assembly and brush on the dunkelgelb, but I did not feel like prying apart the tracks just for that.
During my cleanup, I did notice that these guys have Zimmerit - I really want some Panthers with Zimmerit. I thought for a second that I would keep these bad boys. However, I DO have a whole box of Panther Gs in the queue, and those have the new plastic tracks....but no Zimmerit. Hmm. We'll see.
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| Basic painting scheme done. |
For these guys, I decided to try a pattern that I found in my German armor book -- I think this is for the 12th Panzer Division. I changed up my standard color for the "brown" on the tanks from German Medium Camo Brown and went with Cavalry Brown. In hindsight, I think the Cav Brown will look better on non-Zimmerit tanks, as it really looks like they just left the primer on. I think it still looks pretty good.
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| Drybrushing with Middlesone complete. Most of the detail work done as well. |
My standard process is to do a fairly heavy drybrush with my base color, which is now Middlestone. After that, I paint all the details. I also got a great tip from... I THINK Breakthrough Assault... and started using Green Brown for my mud. It doesn't show up great on these tanks, but overall I love that color for mud/dirt.
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| All done. |
Not only did I follow the camo scheme in the book for these tanks, but I also replicated the decal placement. I dug up some spare decals and went to wok. In this case, I used a paint-on gloss for the turrets, as this was the only spot I was going to decal. I did find that the later my two coats of Testors Dull Cote just didn't cover the paint-on gloss well enough. I followed up with some paint on matte.
I numbered these guys up like a platoon with a 2iC and a CiC. I did note that the body of one of these Panthers looks just like the one from the Barkmann box set, so I made that one a platoon commander. Below, find some pictures of the final product.
I think these guys turned out ok. Do you have a painting problem? Tell us all about it on the forums...
