Vinnie's Ductrats Finished!

I would have probably had these done at the start of the week but for the last several days I've been pretty sick and not in my studio much. What was suppose to be a side project for a few days took 8 days to finish but that wasn't all brush time. In fact even when I was in my studio I rarely had more than an hour at a time to work on these guys. Although I lost track of my time log I estimate I have under 20 hours in these guys which is still a bit much. I need to get a group like this down to 10-12 hours at most. I got a bit fiddly in places on these guys so they ended up just a tad nicer than what I should consider rank and file figs but not by too much.
Ok tonight I pretty much just had bases and some touch up to do. I started the bases by drybrushing with GW boltgun metal. The Tank on Liza's stand and the ammo box of Vinnie's stand were painted and highlighted before this stage.

Then I applied a fairly dark rust wash that I mixed with some craft paints. I think Delta Cermacote Autum Brown, Midnight Blue, and Black. I like using craft paints for rust washes because they are a bit grittier and more random which for rust is what you want.

I then used some Vallejo Model Color orange brown for some of the newer rusty spots. I want to point out that normally when I paint miniatures on plastic bases I paint the edge of the base black and only "landscape" the top area under the figures feet. For these guys I decided to go a differtent route and continue over the edge with the rusty effects. I just felt it was a better choice for this type of base effect.

After putting down the brighter rust I washed over the base again with a slightly darker but thinner wash similar to the first one. I also added a bit of dark glaze to some of the areas on the figures that needed a bit more definition. It's most clearly evident on Gomez and Fabio the two cats with the submachine guns. You can see where their arms rest against the body of their jackets. That's where I added the dark wash it give a little more seperation and depth. I didn't go overboard on this however because these guys are just rank and file after all.

That's pretty much a wrap on these guys. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out but I feel I need to loosen up just a bit more if I'm going to start doing big armies again. Clearly these are looser than I normally go on character type figs but you just can't spend 8-20 hours each on rank and file figs in a big project.