Degra El Torres is done

Almost like a real one

I made it, with just under a week before Cancon (although the last two weeks were pretty easy).  It was just the last few pieces done this week.  First a light varnish with Vallejo Matt varnish.  I use an airbrush to do all my varnishing now and can’t recommend it enough.  No more rattle can and speckled finishes and frosting from old cans.  Also $5 for a small bottle of varnish is a lot better than the $25-30 for a spray can and lasts longer.

Once the varnish was done I did some more dust work on the boots and lower legs with some pigments to add to the dust washes already done.  I also added some more rust pigments to the tongs.

Unable to stop fiddling I redid some of his face, mainly the forehead.  It just was a bit too plain.  I’m not 100% with the result but had to stop as things are getting lumpy due to all the repaints done.

Then it was on to gluing.  I used PVA glue for the smaller items and polystyrene glue to attach the figure to the modelling foam.

Lastly was the brass plaque.  After a few nights of playing around with the Dremel and some brass strips I was getting better at engraving, but not good enough.  The low quality of the engraving would be a bit distracting to the overall finish.  So off to Mister Mint and $20 later I was all done.  This makes the plaque cost more than the rest of the piece combined.  I also found Mister Mint have gone high tech and don’t do the engraving by hand.  Instead they have what I assume to be a little CNC machine which they just type in the text, select the font and size of work piece and everything is done by machine.  Great of the end consumer but a little sad as one more skill is lost from the workforce.  I glued the brass onto the wooden base with some two part epoxy.

I’m a bit out of sorts now.  Happy El Torres is done, but still wanting to do better.  I have a number of other things to look at (finish the Doom figures, some figures for Saga, 1/35 scale german AT gun, the banshee bust, 54mm Pegaso figure) but I think I will wait until after the painting classes at Cancon to see what to do next.  Maybe some 28mm Saga figures just to keep things ticking over as they are pretty easy to do.

I also have to consider do I keep doing two streams of painting, one ‘churn and burn’ army stuff and the other high detail work?  But the army level is starting to loose it’s appeal.  I feel I’ve painted enough armies and maybe will just finish off the few remaining ones I have (LoTR elves, few saga bits).  Mind you I said that a few years ago when I was coming to the end of the LoTR figures and then went out and purchased two armies for the then new Saga game.  After all everyone knows that you die when you paint your last figure.