The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This is a story of 3 Panzer IVHs.  One of them is pretty scary looking.  Another, isn't so bad, and the third one, while not spectacular, is probably the least horrific (read most pleasing to the eye of all 3).  They are 15mm PSC and I have painted them for a large, Eastern Front Scenario I'm planning on playing someday in the distant future...

The Good...

The Bad...

The Ugly...

This has been a long and expensive lesson I've learned in painting larger models.  Turns out the spider-web styled lines work the best for my skill level.  And here I was thinking I was a good painter!  Anyways the other lesson I learned was free-handing the numbers and the crosses.

The block numbering looks way better than the sloppy "arabic numerals" that I painted on there previously.  Also - when free-handing a cross, paint the black cross FIRST!!!!!  Then paint small white edges around all 4 corners.  You will notice a nice difference in crosses between tank 1 and tank 2.  And a huge canyon of difference between 1 and 3.

All that's needed is some weathering on these guys' tracks and they'll be battle ready for action at Kursk or even Normandy.  The tank with the TC sticking up out of the hatch is the company command vehicle, and also serves as the Forward Oberserver tank for GHQ games.

I also figured out that brown wash works much nicer than black wash on Afrika Mustard.  Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go buy another can of spray paint to redo the half-tracks... Enjoy the rest of the pictures.

Lined up for comparison.

Nice numbers and clean looking cross.  The brown wash settled nicely in the recessed areas as well.

I like the personalization of the PSC products.  I removed a panel.  This camo scheme was taken from a 12th SS vehicle in  Normandy but works nicely for any theater.  

We all remember this nightmare....the 635 tank!

I like how this one turned out.

I like less how this one turned out..

Moving out - the rear vehicle gets killed last!