Genesis of an Army: Basecoating "La Nueve" By Mike Haught Week three of the hostage situation and all appears to be going according to plan. I finished assembling the vehicles and begun the process of applying Army Green to all the miniatures. This week has been a mad house and I've wasn't able to do as much as I had planned for the week. However, I got some stuff done, including a basecoat on the entire army and some light weathering on about half of the vehicles.

I have to say that I like being converted to the airbrush. I used to be a paintbrush prude, dissing on every one that used an airbrush—deeming them cheaters of epic proportions. And now I epically (and unashamedly) cheat. The amount of time the airbrush saves me is absolutely astounding. So the basecoat was a piece of cake. I can't believe the ease of this process!

About a year ago I began to shift away from gluing figures to stands and then painting them in place and opted instead to stick them to soda bottle tops with Blu-tac. These make great handles to help manipulate the model s you can get at all the detail. With vehicles, I've always had problems chipping paint with my fingers and mounting them on the tops reduces the chance that my clumsy fingers will damage the model.

My airbrush adventure is quite novice, so I don't expect to pass along anything to you more experienced users, but it might help airbrush noobs like me! I've basecoated all my vehicles with Army Green. After that I did a quick black ink wash followed by a light Military Khaki highlight. This was a tip picked up from Jeremy in order to add a little depth and colour to an overall olive vehicle. I narrowed down the spray nozzle and applied very small and translucent Military Khaki lines. I paid close attention to make sure I avoided any panel lines. I had to go over a few spots with Army Green where I messed up  and applied Military Khaki way too thickly. This is all a learning process for me! After the Army Green and Military Khaki  layers, I threw on a light black magic wash to tone down the colours a bit. My next step will be to paint up and pin wash the details, apply the decals, and then weather the vehicles.

End of Week 3! Well, I didn't get anything done and finished this week, but I'm getting close. In fact, as soon as I get home, I'll be putting on an old Jon Pertwee episode of Doctor Who and get cracking on painting US half-tracks!

Related Links: Week 2: Assembling "La Nueve" ... Week 1: Mike's "La Nueve" Company ... Dash For Paris ... Free French 2éme Division Blindée History ... Free French 2éme Division Blindée PDF ...