Darius Miniatures

I received one of these really cool Darius Miniatures 'wedgies' from my good friend Iain Hamilton of AK Interactive USA to play with today and couldn't help but dive right in. There are only a few parts that make up the scene but they are superbly cast and all of the wedgies consist of very cool subjects.







After assembling the few parts of this particular wedgie I gave it a primer coat of black, set it aside and dug out an old Verlinden figure to set the scene. It's a German soldier in winter gear so that means dead, brown plant life, frozen ground and snow and some chipped up white wash on the half track.











I then moved on to painting this morning and have been taking photos as I go. My main objective for this project here, is to showcase the Darius product, some new AK products I just received and while I'm at it I figured I would attempt to paint as much as I can using Badger Model Flex paint sets that I won in the SMA Big Spring Contest.


First up was painting the half track. Being an almost strict builder of mainly olive drab subjects, I've grown accustom to my own personal preference of what I think the color should look like. I wasn't too keen on the Model Flex Olive Drab right out of the bottle as it seemed too green for my taste, but I mixed it with some of their Field Drab and arrived at something I could accept. For some highlights, I simply added a bit of their Antique White to the mix. All this was done with my Badger Renegade Velocity








While that dried, I used a photo etch mask and some blue painters tape and made a stencil in my usual way. These usually last me a few models but they get pretty beat up after a few uses. The trick in painting for me is very, very thin coats, as flooding the surface will only cause a ridge when the mask is removed. I sprayed a very fine mist using my trusty old Badger 100SG and when I peeled the tape there wasn't any ridge to be seen and I set that aside to dry for a bit.







Lastly for now I began mixing up various colors using Model Flex Olive Drab, Field Drab and Earth to get a few different shades for the canvas items. These paints are bright and dry with a bit of a sheen when brush painted, (which by the way took at least four coats due to their airbrush ready thinned state) but this will all be knocked down later with a dull coat and the subsequent weathering.






As always, right clicking and selecting 'open in new window' will allow much larger photos for better views of the details.

Thanks for following along, comments, questions and critiques always welcome.