18mm Blue Moon WWI - first painted figures

I finished off two groups of WWI figures tonight. a section of British and a section of Germans. Normally I would try and paint all the same figures at once and try and knock out two groups of the same army, but I wanted to test out my planned techniques first.

British

These guys were block painted in Vallejo English Uniform with the webbing and helmet covers being Desert Yellow. I used to use buff for the webbing, but looking at examples of real equipment I think it has more of a yellowy tinge. The block painting was followed by a coating of Army Painter Strong Tone dip. This had the desired effect of shading the figures, but didn't really bring out the facial features. So I went back and painted the faces beige brown, then painted in the flesh leaving the brown as shadow. I don't know what has happened to my painting skill. but these must be some of the worst faces that I have ever painted!

Germans

The Germans tunics are painted in Vallejo Grey Green and the trousers in Luftwaffe uniform. Helmets are German Grey. These are assault troops but I've chosen not to paint the helmets in the camo scheme so that they can be used for any battle from 1916 onwards. That doesn't quite work with the NCO though, as he is carrying a MP18, so I gave him camo. Same deal with the dip and the faces here, but these are possibly worse than the Brits. Hopefully I'll get my fine detailing mojo back soon.

Having said that, I think that part of the problem has been my switch to Gesso as my primer. Since I started seriously painting figures and using primer I have used sprays. This time I used brush on Gesso (decent sprays are becoming difficult to come by in these parts - no GW retailer) and didn't water it down. I think that this may have obscured some of the detail and prevented the dip from doing its job with the faces. The figures themselves are quite stunning, and I don't think that there is anything wrong with the depth of detail on the sculpts. The next batch of Germans has been primed but the Gesso is much thinner, so we will have another go with them.

Nate