Recently Flames of War has pried my interest away from my Lizardmen army after I picked up some Operation Market Garden intelligence briefings - my favorite WWII battle. Before I jumped into my next FoW endeavor I'll share with you my experience during my first go around with 15mm mini's. In 2008 I was given a British Para company for FoW. They don't see much action, much similar to the real 1st Airborne Division, aka the Stillborn Division (that's not a sick joke - read A Bridge Too Far). Prior to getting my hands on the paras I had never painted anything besides 20-30mm figures. Despite the rather straightforward painting guide in the D-1 book* and the solid advice of
Art of War Vol. 1, painting 60+ of the buggers looked daunting. Particularly, I was concerned how difficult it would be to get effective shading and highlighting at this scale.
I painted these one platoon at time, ending up with 3 platoons, extra PIAT teams, company HQ, snipers and a blister pack's worth of machine gunners. With each platoon I modified my technique slightly, until I did the final platoon and though "dammit, why didn't I do this the whole time." Here's how I developed my technique as I moved through the company. Note that I used Vallejo paints for the entire company, with the exception of the bases. If you haven't tried Vallejo, I'd highly recommend them particularly if you're setting out to paint WWII mini's as the colors are close to being 100% historically accurate. The little eye dropper bottle are fun too. Sorry for the poor quality pictures, they where taken before I built a
light box.
