Bolt Action - Africa Corps

So I have been busy today experimenting with the WWII realistic camo for my Africa Corps that I decided to start.  Now I know I said I was only going to use USMC but the other week Warlord games done an offer that was to good to refuse and that was a 1000pt force for £60.00.  The army I went for can be found here http://www.warlordgames.com/store/bolt-action/german-army/1000pts-german-army.html.  It is still availbable for sale but is the normal price of £75.00 which I think is a steal when you compare it to other game systems that I do and are out there.  There is also a suprise that you actually ger 50 models and not the 40 listed (not including HQ), this isn't a one of either as a friend also brought the British army deal and got 50 troops as well.

So with the models arriving I decided to do the Africa Corps paint scheme as I really like the scheme and the idea of tank battles in the desert (thanks to Alessio's armoured platoon this is now possible).  I also wanted to try a few new tricks and here they are:

Firstly I sprayed the vechicles Chaos Black and painted the masking fluid onto the tracks, weapons and tyres that I wanted to keep black for later on, see above picture.

Next I primed the vechicles with German uniform grey (from Warlord).  With the paint dry I then applied Hairspray, why your see later.

I then sprayed on the next colour middlestone (warlord 882).  This was done lightly so the base colour could be seen through to represent a quick spray job to get the vehicles into the field see below.

The next paint to go on was German camo orange (warlord 823) This like the last paint was applied lightly and the previous two colours could show through on places.

Finally a light brown was applied to break up the pattern as you can see they have a factory fresh look that just wont do so it was time to make them look worn.

 

Prevously I would of at this stage applied the dry brush to get a worn look but I wanted to try the hairspray technique (if you remember the hair spray was applied with the german uniform grey after the Chaos black).  This is where the magic happens.  There are loads of articles explaining how to do it but to sum up this is what I did next:

a.  Applied a brush lightly over the part you wish to distress with warm water this will help loosen the paint.

b.  Do the above all over the model.

c.  Once your happy you can spray a matt varnish over the model to lock the paint down to stop any more paint coming off.

d.  Continue painting the model until finished.

Before I applied the varnish I pulled off the masking fluid to reveal the tyres, weapons and tracks on the hanomag's.  I also applied MIG Sub Sahara wet mud look to the tracks.

So thats it just a few little finishing touches to do I just thought I would share this with you.  I really enjoyed doing the above and cant wait to try out these techniques again.  Once these are done I best get back to my vampires