Panzers, Ogres and Fishers - more from Steven

'Here are photos of the latest addition to my WW2 German army – a platoon of Panzer IVs. They took
ages to paint, so as an antidote, I also painted up a couple of Garrison figures quite quickly.
Now that I have my magic lightbox, I don’t need to do any post-processing beyond cropping to make
the photos useable. There isn’t anything dramatically different between these and the earlier Panzer
IIIs, but I think I am making incremental improvements in technique. This is the first time I have
applied decals to a significantly uneven surface – there is a panel sticking out from the side of the
turret which didn’t make applying the numbers easy. With generous use of microsol and microset
and pushing the decals down with a cotton bud, I got there in the end. '

The platoon commander is wearing the black panzer crew uniform rather than camos. From what I
can tell, both were used. There are some quite fiddly details on the uniform such as piping (which
was pink in panzer units, apparently) and the eagle and armband on his left arm. It can also be a
challenge to make black look like black, without it looking flat or making it grey. Hope I struck the
right balance.
The close-up also shows the weathering in more detail. It can be tricky to decided how much is
enough. I scaled it back for these tanks compared to the Panzer IIIs as I felt I was beginning to overdo
it. I’m oddly pleased with the weathering on the back of the turret storage bin.

'The two Garrison figures are a sci-fi technician and a fisher commander. I see you painted the technician yourself a little while ago. Must be a great figure because it is a pure coincidence that I chose the same one. I do quite like it. It was interesting doing a lot of wet blending on the lab coat to make it white, but not a flat colour. I added a small logo in red and white on the console (it is loosely based on a Commodore 64), and since the hands were flat, I painted the knuckle details to give a more three-dimensional look.

I chose the fisher commander because I remember you once painted a HOTT army with those guys. The paint job is fine but not my best. The non-metallic metal copper helmet worked well enough. I tried to make the cloak realistic with the shades and highlights, although not completely successfully.'