Road to the FlamesCon 2012 - Israeli Sherman Company (1956)

With FlamesCon less than 1 week away I am starting to look a little dire on the painting front. I have all my tanks basically finished and it just a case of working on the details, my artillery (25pdrs) are painted, but the crew are not.

St Andrews Cross "masks"

With regards to the tanks I have been having a bit of a whinge about the fact I cannot get hold of the St Andrews Crosses which are used as Air Recognition symbols, or the Israeli tank number decals. In stepped a couple of friends... Victor whipped up a "cut file" in photoshop that could go into one of our lasers at work and Jeff finished the job, getting a sheet of masking tape "masks" cut for me.

With a little bit of fiddling about they worked a treat (thanks guys), so now I have one tank with the cross added, and need to get the rest done tomorrow night.

Mask added to the tank and painted blue

Interior cross mask put on the tank

And the gap painted white

Masks removed leaving a nice blue and white cross (best of all they are meant to be slightly off angle making it easier to do!)

After a quick tidy up, ready for a quick drybrush to make it look dusty and then varnish, unless....

Now despite the fact I have not finished my artillery battery, I am thinking about having a go at adding three more pieces details:

1. Aerials - not too hard, just requires some careful drilling
2. Bridge weights - just need to see if Blake's holepunch is about the right size and I can punch some masks out so I get nice circles to paint blue
3. Vehicle numbers - as I have mentioned before Israeli tanks have unique identification numbers painted on (later they actually welded on so that if the tank is destroyed they can more easily determine the number of it).

The numbering I am talking about is the little black bit on the side of the hull with the barely visible white writing

I've picked up a white pen from an art shop and might have a go at painting the small rectangle and then adding tiny numbers tomorrow, meanwhile I should probably focus on the artillery crew and finishing the Shermans before I do anything to crazy.....