Some time ago I completed my first batch of the Pan-O Fusilier platoon using the method for painting the ubiquitous Pan-O blue as laid down in Painting Minis from A to Z by Angel Giraldez. In the end the results were... mixed for me. I'd put it down mostly to lack of skill on my part rather than there being anything fundamentally flawed.
The final results are slightly above average for my local scene in terms of paint job quality and would probably earn me about a table-top standard in terms of final result. The Pan-O blue of the armour was copied from the Joan'D Arc tutorial in Mini Painting by Angel Giraldez. Overall I think it worked out, the difficulty in the execution comes in with getting the final highlights on the model. Until those final highlights are needed all of the prior airbrush work consists of variations of zenithal brushing to build up a few graduated layers of highlights with a mix of Turquoise and Prussian Blue. The very last highlight is an airbrushed dot of Flat White to create some lighting hotspots on the armour. This looks really good, when you can pull it off. My issue is aiming the airbrush and firing it in a manner so precise that you produce the desired single dot highlight, for me the airbrush is a tool that lacks the precision to pull this off. Perhaps my airbrush is not precise enough to make this happen. Mine is a Badger Renegade Khrome, in case you are interested.
The faces are far less impressive than many of my previous pieces. I was experimenting with many of the Vallejo skin tones, though a few came out gloss rather than matt, I suspect a bad, or separated batch of paint. To achieve shading I tried what Giraldez seems to do with flesh tones and glaze in Beige Red and Flat Earth to get the shades and use the base tone mixed with small amount of white for the highlight. I couldn't quite get this to work, so I ended up repainting a few with some reaper paints that I picked up at PAX, a line of paints that I should be experimenting with more. In the end the results were fairly average, but I wasn't in the mode to repaint them again.
The weapons I am somewhat happy with, I started with a basecoat of German Grey and glazed a soft highlight Grey Green towards the upper surfaces of the weapon, then did an edge highlight of Medium Sea Gray. For the magazines I basecoated with Sky Grey, gave the magazine a wash with black shade, then used a glaze of Flat White to create a NMM effect towards the middle of the magazine in the case of the banana clips and the most raised areas on the cylindrical HMG magazines.
Overall, I'd say this job is okay, though finishing the subsequent models from this batch will allow me to refine and improve on the process, especially for the flesh tones. That is all for now and I'll catch you later.
