Shopping Trip #1

Off to Spotlight and Bunnings tomorrow to have a decent looksee at brushes and to pick up some Simple Green (surprised me that I couldn’t find it at any of Coles, Franklins or Woolies but this is Aussie so go figure). I’m pretty much sorted on what I’m going to be painting for the next few weeks – Fallschirmjäger, Fallschirmjäger and more Fallschirmjäger, alll of which will be in the grey-green bonesacks.

I’ll make do without acrylic retarder, extender and matte medium for now just because it’s winter and evenung temps are sufficiently mild that I’ll not run into the risk of excessive early drying out of pigment. I may even try using a wet pallette at some point.

Brushes wise I’m on a strict budget so I’ll be looking to pick up some Francheville #0 or #1 sables and at least one liner in Taklon – probably from Spotlight although I gather Bunnings may stock Francheville, in which case I’ll be happy as.

I’d love to grab some proper W&N series 7s (nb, not the dire W&N series 7 Miniatures which don’t hold enough pigment or wetting agent to work well in 15mm) but that’ll have to wait until I can grab one or two per paycheque.

By the time I’m ready to move on to anything technically advanced, I should have a nice selection of paintbrushes and most importantly tools. I made a huge mistake in not shipping it all over in hindsight as it’ll be a fair while before I have quite so nice a collection of tools and painting supplies again.

The main thing on the paint front is to start obtaining some Derivan and Foundation paints – as I have a lot of German Dark Yellow and Panzer Gray to work on.

I’m also looking forward to picking some Battleworn and Gloider Assault FJs to flesh out my 1st ed Fhs ranks. I have hordfes of spare ATG ammo crew and gunlayers but only two poses of Stg44 and FG42 fiugures to work with on the Late war infantry teams and i’ve pretty much used up all my Panzerfaust figures to bring up the numbers. It’ll be good to check through the LG40 10.5cm and mid war Mediterranean FJs I have coming over by ship to see what other figures I may have overlooked – IIRC there are at least another 8 HMG crews and a full FJ Coy HQ and Platoon to work with.

It’ll be good to sit and paint for once – I seem to be well over the whole issue of Painting Ennui/Enervation. I’m definitely looking forward to experimenting with some different techniques for getting winter camo right on the FJs as opposed ton vehicles which are a much easier canvas to control.

I do need to grab some Pak97/38s and GebG36s still thouigh I’m not sure I really want even more 10.5cm LG40s – I have about 16-20 of the suckers to go along with the same amount of 7.5cm pieces. I may just say stuff it and field 10.5s as per the original 1st Edition Diving Eagles Lists – as always an element of contentiousness on whether the change was really warranted.