Test Model - 15mm Panzer III

A German Panzer IIIL, awainting assignment to the Eastern Front

While I continue to get slaughtered in Curt's Painting Challenge, to try and salvage some pride I have been doing some historical odds and ends from the painting pile in between strings of Napoleonic infantry.  It hasn't helped me too much points wise (I think I am languishing it seventh or eighth or something like that) but getting the entries in regularly at least lets me pretend I'm in the game.

One such project was this 15mm Panzer III from Battlefront. I think this particular mark was the "L", a late version, with a long-barrelled 50mm gun and extra layers of armour bolted on to the front of the turret (which I think is properly known as the "mantlet" or something like that) and the front of the hull (the "glacis"?).  These tanks fought in the North African desert and on the Eastern Front. 

I should probably add some tactical numbers to the turret - will do that after I finish the other two tanks

I have three-tank platoon of these sitting in my "pending" box already primed - hence their usefulness in the painting challenge.  I have a collection of 15mm WW2 for North Africa, and likely that is the source of these primed but-unpainted models.  I have an itch to get into some Kursk stuff in 15mm, so I thought I would experiment and see if I could paint one of these for 1943 on the steppe, in particularly trying to get that strange-but-cool yellow colour the Germans used on their tanks to look right.

I find that yellow ("Dunkelgelb", I think) very tricky to pull off, but I love how it looks when it's done well (by other people, pretty much).  For my attempt at it, I used black primer (of course), then GW Snakebite Leather as a base colour, and GW Desert Yellow as the main colour. 

I've heard a lot of feedback from folks saying the Battlefront Spray Paints are the way to go.  I'm not big spraying anything other than primer, but that's probably just me being stubborn.  At some point I might invest in one of those sprays - especially if I decide to dive in an do a real project on this...at the end of the day, though, I just enjoy the painting.  The sprays kind of take that away...

In this shot you get a good view of the extra armour bolted ont the front of the turret and hull 

With this test model out of the way, I will probably finish off the other two tanks, and will throw some tactical numbers on the turrets. My project list for the early winter of 2012 is already packed with fun stuff, so it will be a while before I come back to 15mm WW2 after that, but hopefully I will start a 15mm Kursk New-Insane-Project in time for the summer - maybe Prairiecon?