Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part IV - Detailing

In case you missed some:
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part I - Intro
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part II - Preperation
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part III - Airbrushing

Well, I'm not sure how much I would call this detailing.  Not for the tanks anyway.  I basically paint everything that needs to be painted before a wash.

One thing that could possibly be the best thing to advance my painting besides the airbrush, is a wet palette.  I can't believe how many years I went without one of these.  It saves so much paint.  I always found, especially with brown and flesh colours that they dried up so fast.  Dried acrylic paint is amazingly hard to clean from a plastic palette.  The wet palette is just amazing.  Its super cheap for how much time and paint it saves.  I would suggest it to anyone.  Its basically a piece of paper over a wet sponge.  I can leave a spot of paint over night or even a few days, and still be able to use it.  I cannot stress enough for new painters (and experienced ones) to get a wet palette.

The artillery crew, I paint everything.  Belts, pouches, guns, everything.  Recently I've had a problem with what colours to paint this stuff.  Especially for the Germans.  I have 3 or 4 different guides for painting Germans and rarely do they say the same thing.  The helmets are a great example.  We've all seen WWII movies, and German helmets ALWAYS look dark grey.  BF's mid war guide says German grey, and BF's late war says German Camo Green or middlestone.  I've never seen a green German helmet except for DAK forces.  In doing some research it would seem that German helmets varied in colour as much as the soldiers themselves.  I found that no 2 helmets ever looked the same colour side by side.  So there is probably no right or wrong answer.

Another issue, is pouches.  Most guides say Green Grey.  Well this is insanely close to Field Grey, and hard to even tell apart using the 3 Foot rule.  But its all trial and error to find out what looks good and is still historical.

The last thing I do, once infantry detailing is done, is to go back over each guy.  Mistakes will be made.  Its usually flesh colour on the uniform base coat.  So, I just quickly check things over and cover up any mistakes.

Tanks I don't do any details.  I do a pretty heavy drybrush after the wash, and it ruins any details you might paint, like tool handles.  So there is no point.

What I do paint is the tracks and exhaust a rust colour.  And like with the RSO's I also paint the tarp.  Everything else is left until after the wash and highlight.

Then everything gets mounted (ha ha...I said mounted) back on the prescription bottles and ready for a layer of Gloss Varnish.

I'm thinking of doing a gloss varnish on the artillery crew.  I've never done this before a wash with infantry before.  But I'm hearing more and more the gloss varnish helps a wash flow...I'm still thinking about it.































And a little teaser to the BergePanther. Added a chain and pulley.