"COVID19 Restrictions Project#1 - WWW2 Soviets" Topic

Clearly I'm not the only person under the current circumstances to be making inroads into their lead/plastic mountain. Last week I had a bit of rake through what I've got lying about and decided I could do a 15mm Weird WW2 Soviet project. Pretty much everything I've got was bought for entirely different purposes, but ended up unused and hanging about, in some cases for several years.

Undercoated and base coated already
Zvezda KV-1 converted to weird war with over-sized energy weapon
Zvezda T-26 vanilla build
Mech courtesy of Tehnolog with some tidying up
One platoon of PSC Soviet infantry, vanilla and organised as per July 1942 (no particular reason). Slightly annoyingly when I glued the multipart figures a couple of them drifted before setting resulted in detached hands.

Great idea and great use of what are otherwise pretty useless bits!

Done already! Annoyed I put the hatch on the mech the wrong way round from what I intended, the transfers are all wrong for AFVs, but I had none of the right stars or any Russian unit marking transfers, and for colours it was best endeavours as I had to mix to get the basic uniform and webbings colours on the infantry. Otherwise very pleased.

Might still add a pintel mounted AA MG to the mech. Already got some scope creep going on… an AT rifle squad and an SMG squad are already being painted. The project could still do with something else

Okay not terribly weird war – Rifle Battalion SMG platoon to July '42 establishment, ATR squad, 2 52mm mortar sections and an HMG section added – bit of gripe is that PSC sets aren't really structured with 1:1 units in mind particularly heavy weapons.

Some more actual weird war elements to follow shortly.

The final Weird War elements of the project – another mech and a cyborg platoon mostly Alternative Armies HOF cyborg automata left over from a mechanid army that I didn't fancy incorporating at the time. Painted up better than I thought they would – a little bit Russian presidential calendar though.

Wow, you've done some nice contingents here!

Have you ever tried the Army Painter tone washes? When applied, the wash seeps down into the nooks and crannies and "self-shades" each miniature. This technique started out as "the dip", but now it's applied more sparingly by brush.

Army Painter has three shading tones – Soft, Strong, and Dark, that do shading and shadowing on their own, by migrating into sculpting lines and down into crevices.

I use the AP earth tones, and their color washes for as much figure painting as I can (Games Workshop copied the idea and market their own color washes now, which I think are too strong right out of the bottle).

If you fancy some quick shading effects, trying the Soft tone over hair, clothing and flesh areas can "pop" figures with little effort – they do also have a specific Flesh tone too.

They have been ink washed and by my own admission I'm some what heavy handed! The photography doesn't help, but I'm basically lazy and rely on the iPad camera rather than the DSLR.