British artillery observation officer

As a little light relief from the other, larger projects on the bench at the moment, I painted these little chaps, the artillery observation team from Warlord. As you get a free A.O.O. for your Brits in Bolt Action, I thought I had better add one to the army as the first order of business after finishing the British starter set.

Really nice metals, quite a lot of flash on the guy with the binoculars, not all of which I managed to get (there's still some on the back of the Sten gun, quite a lot actually, but I've tried to camouflage it as well as I can). I find this is always a problem with me and metals, for some reason my eyes just don't register that flash and mold lines as well as I do on plastic and I always find some weird knobbles when I'm halfway through painting something.

First up, the officer himself...

As always, the camera has picked up some little bits that need touching up. This guy is a lovely model, but very tall in comparison to the warlord plastics, and this is compounded by him having a really thick tab on the base. To mitigate this problem a little I have placed all three of these guys on the plastic recessed Warlord bases instead of my usual 2p sized bases from Warbases, and it does help to bring them down to a slightly more regular height.

You can probably also see here that I don't paint eyes on my miniatures, just a little strip of dark brown. I know an eye adds a lot, but it's a huge pain to do, and I'm not aiming for my miniatures to win any painting prizes, so what's the point? I just want a good looking army done, and this is just one of the shortcuts I take to make sure I actually finish things. A slightly half-arsed but complete model is better to me than not finishing it because I let my ambition overrun my time.

This chap is my favourite, very simple design, but very clean and very enjoyable to paint. I've just spotted that I need to go back and do his canteen in the correct colour. Sod it. Oh well, off I go...