Van Saar from Staart to finish...

First of all apologies for the title, you get to a certain age and puns become amusing for no good reason.

This blog is covering how I painted a recent Van Saar commission and as always I am not claiming any super ability. As the slogan on my website says, "not the best and not the cheapest but pretty good value for the money" so bear that in mind!

As usual the first step was to prime. Helpfully these models arrived built by the customer so I was keen to get them started. Vallejo black is my normal primer but i also use a dark brown when appropriate. There were 11 models in total with 2 previously painted guys returned as colour references.

Base coat was Vallejo Panzer Aces Periscopes which is a great colour as a base for any vaguely turquoisy mini. I must check to see if it is now in the game colour range as I believe Panzer Aces range is on it's way out. Though I may be wrong.

Next a light turquoise was added and some modulation started on each panel. At this point it is as quick to do them all as I had not decide which would get the secondary colour.

.A final highlight was added with white onk before going back over any spattery areas with thinned periscope to neaten up the effect

You can actually see the airbrush modulation effect better in this photo taken after the purple was painted in by hand. This was then highlighted by adding magenta and then some sunny skin tone. Probably could have washed in some darker purple in the shadow areas but not really possible to do everything at £10 a mini.

Black areas reinstated at this point and trousers blocked in.

Vallejo Luftwaffe green used for all the weapons with first coat darkened and then progressively lightened with yellow on parts of the weapons

Edge highlights applied. I havent done every single edge mainly the ones facing up. You can see them clealrly on the right hand figure on the shoulder pads and the gun. I know some people like everything edge highlighted but I'm not a fan. I use a winsor and newton series 7 size 1 for all my edges as it carries enough not to be running out all the time but still be controllable.

The metals were next with the gold being ak 3rd gen tin bitz as the base then highlights done using greenstuffworld metal pigments which i mix with flow improver. Th e rare stell parts are just vallejo model air colours , especially Aluminium. Weird eyes were painted in dark red and highlighted with scarlet.

The effect of the greenstuffworld metal pigment is clear here. It has an intensity that no actual metallic i have come across can match. At some point I also painted the faces none of which appear in the photos annoyingly but for completeness they were painted in a mid grey with a smidge of purple so a slightly purple grey. Then subsequently worked up to an almost white.

Using this method I was able to knock out 11 guys in a longish day. They could obviously be better and if you were doing them for yourself you could spend more time adding glazes for contrast. All were matt varnished with vallejo through the airbrush.

Hopefully of some use to people. If there is one thing to takeaway from this I would say buy an airbrush!