"Speed-painting tanks - 2nd attempt to post - best tutorial?" Topic

I need to paint a bunch of German vehicles, standard dunkelgelb MW / LW. I have 20 StuG to paint, 10 in Winter whitewash.

I also need to bang out a standard US M4 Sherman company.

Pressed for time, I'm looking to get some advice on the best, fastest ways to paint these babies up so that they look like they drove off a propaganda film page, without killing all my spare time or stopping things that matter like…sleep.

Any links and personal experiences appreciated. I have some ideas, but want to check around before I try them out. Might either refine them a bit or try something new. Always looking to learn a litttle more.

With the Shermans, I'd advise getting the Tamiya USAAF Olive Drab spray (the FoW spray is too dark IMHO) and the camo shade from GW.

Spray the tanks white, then spray with the Tamiya spray. Drybrush with a lighter green tone. Get the GW camoshade wash and dilute 50/50 with the GW Lamian Medium, and put the wash all over the Sherman. Paint treads, add decals, job done. They will look the biz.

With the Stugs (non whitewash) it comes down to if you want to give them a camo finish. I shared my approach on this thread: TMP link

Apologies for the large file size for the images, I've yet to sort them out as they're all on my phone in the original resolution etc, hence they're about 2mb per image!

Tanks are easy to paint fast, the slow bit is fiddling around with markings and stuff.

Spray them the base colour (Army Painter or whatever is good for this). Hand paint if you prefer, but it is slower. Hand painting over a black undercoat lets you do the 'leave black lines around things' trick, but it is slow. A wash is a much faster way to achieve the same thing.

For Germans daub on red brown & green disruptive blobs. It doesn't matter if it is messy as the weathering will turn the whole thing into an indistinct muddy blob. If you wish, handpaint Ambush camo, octopus, wavy lines etc based on patterns in photos, but this takes longer, possibly a lot longer.

Paint the tracks track colour, I use mud brown over black.

You may wish to apply some decals at this point or paint on some markings.

Heavily drybrush the tracks, running gear and lower parts of the vehicle in mud.

Wash the whole vehicle in peat brown ink including the tracks. Someties you may wish to wash only parts of the vehicles or pick out particular details like engine grills, hatch edges etc with a very dark wash or possibly even a Micron pen, but this is slow.

Once dry, lightly drybrush the entire vehicle in 'dust' – some sort of very pale tan, even pure white if you have a light hand.

Highlight the exposed metal bits of the tracks with metal, pick out other details (machinegun barrels, tools etc) as appropriate.

Job done.

Very plain (ie mainly green) tanks benefit from multiple layers of drybrushed greens lightened with yellow. You may wish tot do the same with grey vehicles. Black washes can also work better on green or grey, but I prefer brown as it looks dirty.

First, I'd start painting and stop posting on TMP. Second, I'd gather the paints needed and start putting brush to vehicles working quickly and accurately to get them to look the way I want. Third, I'd have a steady stream of caffienated beverages at hand with some snacks to tide over hunger pangs. Fourth, I'd work on them for as long as I could each session and forego sleep to get them done. Fifth, I'd schedule time to catch up on my sleep AFTER the game they were required for and why I'm under such a deadline. Sixth, I'd field fewer of them if I didn't get them all done on time.

Painting wise: Prime with German Armor Mid/Late. Drybrush the entire vehicle with Khaki Grey (lightly drybrush to highlight the panel lines, bring out the detail). Paint the tracks Chocolate Brown for the mud on them. Apply decals to the sides and let dry. Wash the entire vehicle with GW Agrax Earthshade. Allow to dry thoroughly. Try not to let the shade pool in any specific spot, just sink into the recesses. Review and see if you need to lighten up spots for wear by applying Green Ochre (Dunklegelb) on the larger flat areas using care not to cover the highlights already applied. Spray with Dullcote. Done.

For the winter wash, simply apply the winter wash by applying thinned white paint right over the top of the above-vehicles using a Q-tip and pressing it in irregular shapes over the vehicle. They didn't apply this neatly in most cases.

Use care not to cover the edges (use a fingertip to wipe them off quickly or the other end of the Q-tip). The paint should be thinned to the point that it leaves a white spot but leaves some of the color from beneath showing through like a transparent color. When thinning, use a flat medium and mix it 3 or 4 to 1 medium to paint.

American tanks – Shermans – Use the British Armor color spray, drybrush with U.S. Dark Green, then a second dry brush with U.S. Dark Green mixed with white to highlight edges. Paint tracks brown for mud. Apply decals. Let dry. Wash entire vehicle with Agrax Earthshade, let dry. Wash engine decks with Nuln Oil if desired to darken them up. Re-drybrush with U.S. Dark Green lightened slightly avoiding the decals. Done.

I'm thinking of this for German vehicles:

1. Prime with Army Painter fur brown primer, which is a reddish brown like the German WWII primer.

2. Spray with Mid-Late Dark Yellow.

3. Drybrush highlights with lightened matching dark yellow from the bottle.

4. paint camo splotches with green / browns as desired, heavily thinned down for a sprayed look.

5. Spray with matt or gloss coat.

6. Treat with thin washes – hopefully the gloss coat in #5 will help prevent it from being absorbed too much and becoming too dark. I want BRIGHT highlights and DARK recesses, high contrast, basically.

7. drybrush highlights if needed.

8. Decals.

9. weathering. use very fine sandpaper to wear edges, exposing the red primer below. Use sponge technigue sparingly for deeper wear down to the metal.

Haven't tried this yet, but it's what my research is making me consider.

I'd skip the red brown primer and go with white. The FoW sprays I've found are darker than you think.

With the wash, I can't but more highly advising to dilute them to ensure that you don't get the "stain" effect. I've had some excellent results diluting the current crop of GW shades/washes with their Lamian medium.

Skip the weathering, I thought you wanted this done quickly? The sand paper will go right through to the resin/plastic, if you wanted to represent paint chipping off an exposing the oxide hull I'd look at using liquid masks.

what's a "lamian medium"? Is that some fictional quadrant of space that's neither big nor small, or some name for a type of diluting agent that reduces surface tension?

I'm hoping that "glossing" the surface and thinning will prevent staining. My miracle dip is floor wax with some soap in it to reduce surface tension.

Have a look on youtube – there are loads of decent vids about quick painting of various AFVs. The flames of war 15mm paint job stuff is particularly good for a quick model.

lamian Medium is a GW product, like I know why they call it what they do!

It's the medium used in their new range of washes, but without any pigment.

McW – forgive my ignorance…

I take it the medium serves as a diluting agent that isn't water and therefore doesn't thin the paint, but thins the color, if that makes sense.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm finishing assembling the ten stuG for my StuG batterie, and will then try various techniques. This Batterie is also going to end up as the winter one so any bad results will be white-washed. The second batterie has the best models and such, and that'll use whatever I learn doing this one.

I'm going to use some of the techniques I read in the two "Art of War" books, I found them useful. But this batterie will get:

Army Painter Red Fur primer (for the red oxide primer)
Spray dunkelgelb either Tamiya or Army Painter
thin layers of lighter dunkelgelb
drybrushing up
some rubbing to represent wear and tear (very fine sandpaper – I hope that some of the lower layers of dunkel and the red primer will be visible, and the deepest grey resin will look like weathered bare metal).

We'll see! I'll post results.