Dad's Guys

A few days ago I finally finished a big bunch of figures I have been painting. I decided to try to paint an entire squad at once - twenty-three figures. I'm not so sure it was a good idea to work on that many at once especially with the many modifications I did with these and all of the different camouflage schemes, but it is hard to stop oneself sometimes.

This group is meant to represent a SOBR unit of the 2nd Chechen War. The photos that inspired me are below. Modifications included lots of head swaps, cutting off of arm pockets and leg pockets, replacing back pockets with new three horizontal pockets and sculpted hoods and big collars. It took me five nights are so to sculpt all of this with my trusty green stuff. Uniform camouflage schemes include woodland BDU, winter SMK, spring SMK, winter tiger, bright spring tiger, dark spring tiger, reverse winter SMK and very faded winter tiger (those are the names I give them in my head anyway). For their assault vests I stuck with just three patterns: spring tiger, urban tiger and some sort of woodland that I haven't named yet. I also tried my first attempt at finger-less gloves and a soldier with a shaved head. 20mm sure is a great scale - any smaller and it'd be impossible to paint decent representations of some of these camouflage schemes while any larger it'd be tough to get away with painting on details like finger-less gloves.

Next up I'm taking a break from all of the camouflage painting and painting a big batch of winter Armenians suitable for the war in the Karabakh. Lately I've been reading a lot of books about Armenia and that has inspired me. I'm hoping a new set of progressive glasses (bifocals) help.

RH Models RUS25E; RUS21 with head swap; RUS20AK74* with head swaps

RH Models RUS26* with head swap; RUS20COME; RUS20AK74* with head swap; RUS25R

RH Models RUS20AK74* with head swap; RUS20E; RUS20BGE

RH Models RUS23* with head swap; RUS23E; RUS20COME; RUS23* with head swap

RH Models RUS20E; RUS20BGE; RUS20E; RUS20COME
Russian Interior Ministry troops patrolling Grozny. (February, 1996)

RH Models RUS20AK74* with head swap; RUS20COME; RUS20E

This group of figures was mainly inspired by a great set of pictures I came across in a posting about Vladimir Mikhaylenko a Russian as part of a SOBR unit participated in 1st and 2nd Chechen war. These photos are from the 2nd Chechen war.

I was also inspired by these images.

Russian Special Police running in Grozny. (January 24th, 2000)

Russian Special Police keep watch in Grozny. (January 24th, 2000)

Russian Interior Ministry troops helping wounded comrade. (Grozny, January 28th, 2000)