More base work and some Dungeon Saga

Base work looking better

Slacked off this week.  I cut down the resin rock and glued it (with pins) onto the base.  I then made some ground work with some DAS clay and then covered the clay in PVA glue and added my normal rock scatter mix (made up of sand, small pebbles and slightly large rocks).  Since the photo this has been undercoated in black.

Nothing but rock

Dungeon Saga figure

Since it’s been two plus weeks since painting anything I’ve lost the mojo on painting flesh.  However I need to get back on the horse so started on one of the Dungeon Saga characters I have.  A tree spirit/being so lots of good wood textures to play with.  It’s one of the best sculpts in the game I think.

So more of him/her/it tonight hopefully.

54mm Cimmerian King (aka Conan) base

Figure on rock base

The shed life continued this week but by Sunday morning I had finished the large outside bench (3.6m x 0.6m) attached to the back wall and also painted up and finished my new mobile shed bench.  Now finally back to painting (and making foam weapons for the kids).

On the figure I undercoated all the components.  I did a little presiding on the banner too.

Nope, just doesn't look right

With the rock that I want to use it is 7cm at its widest.  My normal wooden lounge leg that I use as a base is too small so I found I had a nice piece of 7x7cm pine in the shed (no idea what it was originally purchased for).  So I cut a 5cm long chunk and tried that out as a base.  The wood looks fine, but the rock (in order to fit) is off centre, and thus the figure is off centre.  Not what you want for a single figure.  After trying a few options I decided that perhaps a round base would be better.  Rather than find a large chair leg to cut down I tried to make one out of resin.

Mould and new base size

Finding a nice sized circle from the inside of a masking tape roll I then used the same tape roll as the resin mould.  I covered the inside with PVA glue and then hot glued the roll to some foam card.  In order to save resin I put a piece of wood at the bottom which was 2/3 the height of the base.  I also put some nails in the wood so the resin would have some good attachment points.

New base

The resin (I use Easycast brand) bubbled a bit probably because the PVA glue wasn’t fully dry.  Or I mixed it too long?  Either way I had a lot of little bubbles in the side of the base.  I sanded down the outside (starting at 180 grit and ending at 400) but as I sanded more bubbles would be exposed and result in pock marks.  To get a smooth finished I used wood putty (watered down so runny) and filled in all the small holes this way.  I finished off with more sanding switching to wet and dry and going up to 800 grit.

Wood bottom to save on resin

Next thing to do is trim down the rock a little to fit better.  But now the figure is in the centre of the base and having no straight edges means the hard edges of the rock are easier to work with.  On the square base I found that it was hard not to have one rock edge parallel with the base edge which doesn’t look very good.

Much better

54mm Cimmerian King (aka Conan) base work

Well the only painting this weekend was in the shed and so far I’ve gone through about 3.5L of exterior paint on some new benches.  But on the miniature side not so much.

I did however try some different base ideas out.  The ship idea with the figure sitting on some barrels was ok, but not great.  I also tried the figure sitting on top of some ruins/broken up columns, etc but that didn’t work either.  The columns resulting in to much of the overall composition being down at the bottom and made the figure look smaller.  That was no good as Conan should be larger than life.

The original tree has a very nice line that matches the figures outstretched leg.  Ie the leg and the top of the tree make one long diagonal for a nice composition.  All those painting and diorama books have sunk in a bit so I’m thinking more about composition than I use to.

A new base

I then tried the figure on top of my resin rock as it has a nice long slope that would draw the viewers eye up to the figure.  Also with the figure on top of the rock the two slopes of the rock result in the head of the figure forming a triangle.  Again another good composition shape.

My resin rock needed some bulk cut out so I used the Dremel for that and then sanding down the area to make it smooth again.  I pinned the figure in the bum to secure it to the rock.

At this point, I was still at a simple figure, no diorama.  However I couldn’t help myself and decided the figure needed a banner in the background.  Kind of a captured flag/war trophy.

Banner and shield.

I had a bag of 28mm banners and this was the largest so it fitted quite well for a 54mm figure.  I had to cut off a few heads as the were out of scale for 54mm.  The shield is off the original tree base.  I just cut off the shield and hollowed out the back.  Again I will pin this to the rock.

So a new setup and I think I like it.  Once the shed life settles down back to painting.

54mm Cimmerian King (aka Conan) by Andrea Miniatures

Well the flesh trials from last week went ok so I’m going to try the 54mm Conan figures I got a few months ago.  My new flesh recipe uses..

* VGC Leather Brown
* VMC Red
* VMC Light Orange
* VGC Dead White
* VMC Voilet Red
* VMC Flat Yellow
* VMC Yellow Ochre

The last thing I want to try out on the test figure is some tattoos.  Never done that before so need to work out how to make tattoos instead of just painted on skin.

Yeah, not going to be able to paint it this well...

On the Conan figure there is nothing but flesh, hair, undies and boots.  The figure comes with a nice tree for Conan to sit on too so hopefully the base work will be minimal (read - not spend months on diorama base work).  However I am thinking of transposing him from the forest to a ship deck (maybe sitting on a barrel).

Pins for everyone

The figure is made up of 5 parts and the sword, with the base being in two parts.  So lots of drilling and pinning.  I pin every part on metal figures as I’m paranoid that something will break off over time.  After quite a few hours I’m really wishing for a resin figure again.  So much easier to work with.

The base

For the pins I just use cut up paper clips.  Nice and cheap and a 3-5mm paper clip rod isn’t going to bend at all.  For glue I use the cheapest two part epoxy glue I can find.  Save the Araldite for where it matters.

Not looking too happy, probably because he has no arms

So more pinning and gluing coming up and should be ready for some paint by the weekend.