Saving old Soldiers

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Sometimes we get a chance to have a second chance at life; I know I certainly have, and well, things would be very different had I not.  But let's keep it light, eh?  In this case I'm talking about figure painting.  

With my German WW2 forces of a more than usable size now, I took the time to look at my Americans, and found them a bit light on infantry.  Or rather, many of those I had left were in a pretty sorry state.  

Rebased but otherwise unmodified from 30+ years ago.

These were amongst the very first figures I can recall painting 'properly', probably around age 15.  We all have to start somewhere of course, but these were done with all of four colours, in Enamels, with clearly little reference to historical accuracy, and only passable efforts at staying within the lines.  What can you expect for some of your first models; few of us start out great, and painting like most skills doubtless adheres to the old adage that to get good at a skill requires around 10,000 hours of practice.

Well a quick trip to the calculator, suggests I've had around 19,500 hours of practice since then, so it felt like it would be a good idea to give these gentlemen the paint-jobs they deserved, rather than the one they'd got all those years ago.  I had at some point in their lives at least made a passing attempt at basing them properly, on irregular squares of card with scatter, but that too could be improved.  I don't want to be harsh on my former self, and it is good practice to keep at least some of your early attempts at painting - so you can see how far you've come - but these deserved better and so the first step was to strip the old bases and dig in to the supply of pennies.  Thence to add fine sand for texture.

Next up, out with the airbrush for a light coat of black primer.  Even on the soft Airfix figures the enamels had held up to over thirty years of abuse, so just a light dusting, and a little more directed at the bases, was necessary.

Dusted and ready for their next stage

On to the actual painting.  My technique for 20mm mini's has not really changed in years, only some of the materials to get the job done has changed.  Neatness is key, but it isn't a case of being perfect.  Planning as in any project really helps.  Broadly I worked from the bottom of the figure to the top and from the lowest layers to the top at roughly the same time.  What's that mean?  Well, boots first the gaiters, then trousers.  Rifles before the hands holding them, helmets and patches last of all.  

You get the idea.  

Its all in flat colours too, slightly lighter than you would think you'd need them to be.  In part this is as we are going to then do a shading glaze; but also the smaller the model, the lighter it should be, to appear as in real life.  The science of this has something to do with reflected light, and a small body can reflect less light so should begin lighter to look as its' real life equivalent would.  But I haven't done the 10,000 to count as an expert in this factoid.

Anyhoo, as said, it all helps with the shading glaze; which is where the magic happens and the models are transformed.  My preferred formula is 50/50 Army Painter Strong Tone & Matt Varnish (of any brand) applied by brush.  The varnish helps dilute and flow-improve the Strong Tone, whilst also sealing and protecting the paint job.  Neat!  Then it was just a case of finishing the bases.

Lovely!

So here we have the benefit of decades of practice!  a Mixture of Airfix soft plastic and ESCI hard plastic marines are turned into a platoon of the 4th Division, US Infantry (Armoured).  No modifications to the original build of the models were made, as they were likely to be pretty frail, and I felt I would honour the state I assembled them to, back in the day.  But with the painting and new basing they really seem transformed.

One thing I noticed was how clearly the ESCI figures were ripped off from the Airfix models, with only one of the saved figures being an original sculpt, the rest are just torso swaps.  That said, several of the poses look better for it!  Despite that the Airfix Marines were some of my favourite figures back in the day.  and doing these up the nostalgia values were high.  

All in all a quick, but highly enjoyable task.  And heartening to make these fellows stand proud once more.

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