Major John Howard – 28mm Stoessi’s Heroes

by theimperfectmodeller, posted in Uncategorized, WW2

With no time to call my own this week the best I could manage was to finish this figure which had been sitting around half done for a good few weeks.

This is my fourth and final individual 28mm “Stoessi’s Heroes” figure for the Plymouth Model Club D-Day display.

According to “Stoessi’s” web site Major (Reginald) John Howard was a British Army officer who led a glider-borne assault on two bridges between Bénouville and Ranville in Normandy, as part of the D-Day landings during WW2. These bridges spanned the Caen Canal and the adjacent River Orne (about 500 yards to the east), and were vitally important to the success of the D-Day landings. Since the war the bridge over the canal has become known as “Pegasus Bridge”, as a tribute to the men who captured it, while the bridge over the River Orne later became known as Horsa Bridge after the Horsa gliders that had carried the troops to the bridges.

This figure represents a first for me in that it’s the first time I’ve ever attempted to paint a camouflage uniform.  Probably not the best person to say whether it looks authentic or not but from a personal perspective I’m happy with it as a first (and likely last) attempt.

Photos below.

TIM

PS: Not wishing to embarrass me (I’m happy to do it for myself!) John at Just Needs Varnish being the top bloke that he is very kindly emailed me to say Airbourne should read Airborne.  A case for less speed and more haste.  That said if I am being truely honest I would have most likely spelled it wrong even if I had taken my time!  Cheers John, I owe you one.

 

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27 thoughts on “Major John Howard – 28mm Stoessi’s Heroes”

  2. Nice figure! I think the cam on the Denison smock looks spot on actually (no pun intended)! Painting camouflage can be tricky, since the idea behind it is to break up the appearance/outline anyway. I think for the size of the figure and the presence of any folds in the clothing you have got this just right, so well done!
    As for smelling mistakes, we’ve all made them!

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  10. Nice work. Painting camouflage in 28mm seems to be terribly hard, and so in some ways I find it quite heartening that even a painter of your skill can’t make it look truly amazing. I wonder if it is because the whole point is to break up the image and direct the eye away from the wearer, which of course is the exact opposite of the effect intended during miniature painting.

    The lighting, on the other hand, is truly amazing. Whatever you’re using for your photo set-up is clearly doing the job very well.

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    1. It certainly presents a different challenge and from what I can see there are various methods you can use. If I ever do more then I might take another look at the alternatives but I guess whatever route I take it will all come down to practice and more practice. Still, I’m happy with thefirst attempt.

      As for the lighting I bought a light box off of Amazon I think for about £30 or so. Made a big difference to what were much poorer photo’s that I had taken before then.

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  13. The camo looks pretty solid to me, mate – and as you’d well know, the only way to get better and more confident in doing it is to keep doing it!
    The trick I find is to remember that for a lot of patterns, your objective is to give the impression of a specific type of camo, rather than to replicate it perfectly.
    Follow that up by either no shading, or a simple and subtle brown wash and then a subtle sandy drybrush for your overall highlighting – which covers muck, wear, weathering AND what we usually do for highlighting.
    Now let’s see a squad of Germans in late-war winter pea pattern!

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    1. Thanks for the camo guide tips. Not sure when I will dip my toe into this area again although I suspect I will at some point. Practice and research are key that’s for sure and I do have a few ideas floating around in my head so maybe, just maybe, sooner rather than later.

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