Thursday, April 1, 2021

Big Gun for the Tsar

What is a Russian army without artillery, and large caliber artillery at that?


My big bag of second hand Russians included 6 artillerymen (2 each of 3 poses). So I used 4 of them plus one of the superfluous officers to make a gun crew of 5. Sharp Practice has artillery crews set at 5 figures, so I bunged in the second ammo carrier.
During a weekend long web conference I got them scraped, glued, primed and under coated. This was something easy enough, and not overly mentally taxing, so I could amuse myself and still pay attention to the PowerPoint slides and presenters, but still simple enough that I could put things down quickly to make notes.
I also painted the gun, which I got in a trade already assembled and primed from Mikey. The barrel was painted in Vallejo "Bright Bronze" with a sepia ink wash. For the "apple green" carriage I used Tamiya airbrush paint "IDF/IAF Green" and then some craft paints celery green. Iron fittings were done with black ink.
"Hurry Ivan Denisovich! We must bring up the ammunition!"
"Da, Piotr Vassilovich!"
I then got them painted up over a couple of sessions this week.
I know, I said I wasn't going to get in a sweat over uniform details and I thought I'd just do the collars and cuffs black, but Russian artillery uniforms have all this really distinctive red piping. It was only 5 figures and I was feeling brave, so I did it.
Detail of piping on collar and cuffs

Obligatory posed action shots

4 comments:

  1. Nice gun and crew, surely will do well on the table.

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  2. Nice boomstick ;) These guys are coming together!

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  3. For five guys, sometimes it's worth splurging on painting time.

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