First attempts at painting 15mm!

Hi Folks,

Andy here with an update on painting my first Flames of War and also first 15mm scale models.

I had originally bought the Open Fire box on the strength of the US Airbourne plastic models and I particularly love the prone MG teams. However my dilema was that I had never tried painting any models of this size before and I was worried I'd make a hash of my favourite models in the set if I attempted them first. So after buying Easy Company to accompany the Open Fire box I then decided to completely abandon the allies for the time being and start on the Germans.

I figured the best place to start would be the Grenadiers seeing as you get two platoons in the box so at least I would get another attempt if I ended up making a bad job of the first platoon. I then stumbled upon my next decision, whether to paint first and then base or whether to base first then paint. I've never liked painting partly assembled models so I thought I'd just stick all the men to their bases and see how I get on. My theory has always been if you can't get to it to paint then you probably can't see it on the finished model anyway, although until now my painting has never involved painting multiple models on a single base!

There was certainly a bit of trial and error in my painting method for these Grenadiers and I eventually settled on painting all the basic colours on the model and then applying an all over wash to help me find all the recesses. I then went back over the raised areas with the standard colours. I doubt I'll be doing any highlighting on flames of war infantry with the exception of perhaps the faces which need a bit of help at times.

Finally there comes the basing. From looking at Ben and DrCox's models I realised that the bases would look best with partially broken up patterns so the models had some sand and stones applied before basecoating although this can't really be seen in the photo!. I also splashed out on some tufts and I'm glad I did. I'm also glad I bought Autumn tufts as well as summer, though I only used Autumn for these guys but they really add to the realism of the models and I can see myself using tuft for a lot more models of all scales in future.

I'm going to try to set myself deadlines for FoW to hopefully keep some momentum and actually see some results so I've set myself the schedule below.

April – Grenadier Platoon 1

May – Pak40 AT Guns and Grenadier command teams

June – Grenadier Platoon 2

July – StuGs

With 2 bases down from the first platoon I still have 5 to go so I'm already dangerously close to falling behind but I figured if I put it in writing I'll have no excuses!

Anyway thats all for now so thanks for reading and wish me luck!

Andy