British Airborne - Red Devil - Dragon kit

[pjgtech]

You may have to do colour matches for other companies paint, but remember this. At this time in history colour matching would be cursory, and wear and weather would lead to fast fading and colour change, so near enough is good enough.

Thanx for the link. Yeah, I agree about fading, being dirty, etc so colours will not be 100%, and TBH I'm not after perfect, in fact I am not good enough for "perfect" anyway, but you want it to look as best as it can.
I will have a tinker with altering the colours a bit.
Cheers 👍

[Tim Marlow]

Bit more, along with an SBS, here….

https://sites.create-cdn.net/sitefiles/34/1/1/341115/Matt_Hingley_BritPara.pdf

[Steven000]

I wouldn't use tamiya masking tape for the small strips, I find that paint does not adhere well on the tape, flakes off rather easy... now that I'm thinking about it, would probably work if you paint some superglue over it first, when dry it makes the tape hard and paint has a better grip on it, cheers

[pjgtech]

I wouldn't use tamiya masking tape for the small strips, I find that paint does not adhere well on the tape, flakes off rather easy... now that I'm thinking about it, would probably work if you paint some superglue over it first, when dry it makes the tape hard and paint has a better grip on it, cheers

Cheers, I'll have a little experiment maybe with tissue paper, plain paper, maybe thin strips of normal masking tape as thats a bit rough, so may hold paint ok? I'll see see what works (or what doesn't).
If I get no success, then I can always leave the helmet plain, but would be nice to get some "texture" on there....

[pjgtech]

Well might have had a little victory here, we'll see.
Wanting to put some camo strips on the helmet, as per message above, so tried couple of things....
Normal, eg: printer paper was just too thick and looked wrong.
Tissue paper was almost impossible to work with in the tiny strips I needed!
Then I noticed a receipt, which uses that very thin till roll paper, cut off a couple of strips, hmmm, could work....

So I folded the thin strip in half, then in half again, and again, and so on, until in the end I had a sort of concertina effect on the strip, with lots of fold lines, which then made cutting the big strips, into much smaller strips, a bit easier. The first tiny strips I cut were not tiny enough, still a bit chunky.
So my second attempt gave me much smaller strips, but they all looked a bit too uniform. So I found that if a nipped them up and twisted them a bit with my tweezers, they started to look a bit more like camo fabric, rather than bits of paper.

Painting them was a right pain, they are so small they would either stick to my finger, the tweezers or the brush, but I got there eventually!
I was also holding my breath most of the time, as these tiny bits of paper would have blown G*d knows where if I breathed on them!
Let them dry for a bit then tried a couple of test strips on a bit of old sprue, hmm, they seem to stick ok, (using Tamiya extra thin).

So, time to bite the bullet and see if I can get the tiny painted strips onto the (equally tiny) helmet.
Taking my time, being very careful, doing one at a time, I slowly built up a layer of camo strips, and, they don't seem to look too bad! TBH I surprised myself as I thought it would look awful.
I think once they have fully dried I'll try and rough them up a bit, maybe twist them a bit more with the tweezers, maybe try to cut a few edges so they don't look so "square" and touch up the bits of paint that came off. I initially just had the helmet dark brown, but last night mottled it a bit with a dark green and that seems to work too.

Have to say I am really liking this little figure....
Anyway, some more pics of the little helmet all camo'd up, sort of....

[Steven000]

Nice work on the helmet Peter, good thinking 👍

[Richard48]

Nicely done Peter.Thin strips of Milliput can be great.If you get some Greenstuff and mix it with Milliput and let it sit for awhile.Roll thin on say a tile with talc and then cut into strips.Can be manipulated with brush and water and attach with dobs of Cyano.
Richard

[rtfoe]

Hi Peter, beautiful work on the helmet. I remember working on the same figure years back and have the thread here if you'd like to see what I did. I beefed up the trouser legs and added a Cavalry holster which was carried by some 6th Airborne troops...the 1st Airborne were the first to acquire these holsters. You've done a pretty good job on the Hessian strips, I only wished I had discovered elastoplast earlier which has a scaled weave pattern to Hessian and can be pulled and shredded just like it.
It still needs improvement and will work on it when I get the Airborne fever again. Here's another thread if you're into Airborne dios. Did it many moons ago. Too bad the images are still small and haven't been adjusted. Just let me know if you want larger images for reference especially the scratched helmet strap and the camo pattern on the tunic and pocket patches.

Cheers,
Wabble

[pjgtech]

I have now drilled and stuck a pin (cut from a paper clip) into the figures foot using superglue.
Looking at the supplied base, its just a thin hollow sort of cube, so needs beefing up a bit.
I'm think I will add some sort of weight to it..... but what?

I have also glued up a small "block", eg: bits of flat sprue cut into squares, layered one upon the other and glued together.
This block has now been glued to the underside of the base, where the hole will be drilled to accept the pin from the figures foot.
My theory being that when I drill the base, rather than just having the thin plastic top layer, it now has a much thicker lower cube into which the pin can be inserted and glued, thus giving a much sturdier fixing.

[pjgtech]

Further update...
Some pics of the current state of my British Airbourne figure.
Underside of base "beefed" up a bit with strips of sprue, so when the figure is finally glued in place will have a more stable/solid connection.

Pin to the figures foot.

Tunic/jacket colour now darkened. Camo shades now added to the torso, still have the arms/sleeves to do.

Face painted, but not finished yet. Man, eyes are hard! Took me three attempts to get the blue bits looking sort of ok. My hands are just not steady enough for really, really small/fine work!


Water bottle added to rear, still have the two front pouches to add, but wanted to do the torso camo first.
Helmet now on head. Really pleased with the camo strips on the helmet.
Need to tidy up the helmet straps, etc.
Painting generally needs tidying up.
Once I've applied camo to the arms, we will be ready to glue arms on, with weapon, and attach the head.
Then some final tidying up before a gloss coat, then think about weathering?
We are getting there. But still lots to do....

[Jim R]

Helmet looks good. Very sensible to beef up the base ready for the foot pin. Painting coming on a treat.

[pjgtech]

Last update tonight...
My little man is now all in one piece, finally!
Still got to tidy up bits of paint, try and" blend" in some of the highlights to the trousers, rather than the big splodges they currently are!
Still don't like the eyes, but terrified to try and do them again! So I think they will have to do for this first figure attempt.
He looks a bit startled and surprised! Maybe he's just stumbled across an enemy machine gun nest?
Pics...

[pjgtech]

Had a break from the modelling today.
Will try and tidy up the paint tomorrow.

Still learning stuff, I have also now realised that handling the model a lot, whilst painting, but before glossing, will leave smudges, finger marks, etc.
I don't really notice these that much, but when I take photos, especially with flash, they really show up.
So, must learn to handle the model much less as I go along.

As this is a figure, I still assume that glossing after painting is the usual next step?
Then will need to think about weathering, maybe some sort of grime wash, as he would not have been spotlessly clean.

[Jack L]

You may have just removed it for photos, but with the pin in the foot I usually glue that into a cork or something similar. Makes it easier to handle without having to touch it.

[pjgtech]

I have been holding it, so will maybe use a cork, or some sort of small block next time, cheers

[pjgtech]

Touched up the paint a bit more, added stripes, etc, but still needs tidying up a bit....
Not varnished or weathered yet...
Place on plinth for photos, but not actually stuck onto the plinth yet either.

[PaulinKendal]

Looking good. Once varnished you can have a play with oil washes for weathering and pin washes to outline lots of detail. All correctable, especially if you use gloss varnish. You're in for real treat - the oils will completely transform your figure for the better. Once you're happy with it, stick it on a radiator for a day or two and the oil should cure nicely for you. Then maybe a coat or three of matt varnish to finish.