Tiding up the loose ends - hills, bases and snow

This week was all about closing off a few of pending projects that were small but not quite done.  A cleaning out of the books so to speak.  Also I had to make some new wooden toys for the kids so weekend time was limited.

On the drying rack

First was flocking the two hills I purchased at Cancon this year and that I had painted green a few weeks ago.  Many containers of flock came out and I did my best “sprinkling spices” impersonation to give a bit of random variety to the hills.  Very unlike my previous hills which were a uniform static grass green all over.

Maybe too much static grass and flock?

A new base

Second was to make a the wooden base for my 54mm knight.  The big black base was too dominating for the figure as the base was 50x65mm on the side and that much black just overwhelmed the figure.  Back into the spares pile for that base.  Hopefully some larger figure in the future will match up to it.  So I went and purchased a tapered chair leg like I did for El Torres and cut that down to size and stained it.  The clear coat and green felt are drying now so by tomorrow it will be ready.  Also I will match nicely with El Torres on the shelf.  I will use a small layer of foam between the wooden base and the ground work so I can sculpt in some ground effects.

Thirdly I did a test run of the snow base on a small resin rock I had painted previously.  This was to make sure that the final technique from my snow tests was going to work out.  It looks good and even the wife said “That looks like snow”.  So green light on that.

Fluffy snow

Lastly the two Flemish figures got a little bit of love.  Hopefully tonight they will get a bit more time and paint.

Please paint us...

Getting over PDD with some Saga and Bones figures

After not much painting over the last few weeks due to work and family issues I decided it was time to get over my PDD (Painting Deficit Depression) and just get some stuff going on.

Flemish figures for Saga

So first I got out another two 28mm Flemish figures for Saga and started blocking out some base colours on them.  This was mainly to fill in the gaps while I waited of paint on my 54mm figure to dry.

Second was the repaint of the banner for my 54mm knight.  The wife (who has a much better eye for colour than I) has been telling me to repaint the white chevron on the shield and banner as brown/orange to add some colour contrast to the figure as she though the blue/white all over was too bland.  In the end I kind of agreed but started with the banner first as it was easier to fix up in case I changed my mind, and the blue on the shield was finally looking good after 4-5 attempts.

Before the buff glazing

The first orange (a base of the old Citadel Leprous Brown with shading from VMC Vermillion and highlights of VGC Orange Fire and VMC Lemon Yellow) attempt looked ok but was too bright and stark compared to the very flat and pale/faded blue on the banner.  I had made the blue on the banner quite light as it was the highest piece of the figure so it should be the lightest and most sun faded.  To correct the orange I did a number of very light glazes of an off white/buff (old Citadel Bleached Bone) to fade down the orange.  This is something I had picked up from some AFV magazines where a buff colour is airbrushed over the whole piece to create a sun faded look to the paintwork of the vehicle.  After about 5 glaze coats (note the glaze coats were 80% water) the orange had come down a few notches and was matching up with the blue on tonal level.  Next will be to redo the shield.

I also added some deeper shading to the inside of the blue cloak on the front of the figure so the deep blue shading on the shield was also mirrored with the same level of shading on the figure.

Finally I have had a Reaper Bones figure sitting in the paint pile for some time (Valkyrie).

Opera?

Unfortunately her sword was all warped and too thin to get straight (it kept bending back).  Also the shield back was dead flat with no detail and a bit high on the arm.  So a few snips later and I replaced the sword with a long plastic spear and the shield with a plastic shield at a better position with some wood detail on the back.  I used super glue to glue the plastic onto the soft Bones plastic and it seemed to work fine.  I can almost hear the opera now…

54mm face painting, Ice Viking in 28mm and some static grass

A mixed bag this week.  I spent the first part of it working on the face and hair of my 54mm knight figure.  There isn’t much flesh on the figure as the alternative head I choose has a beard.  So I went for my usual flesh range (dark to light) of

VPA Shadows Flesh
VMC Medium Flesh (base)
VMC Dark Flesh
VMC Flat Flesh
VGC Dead White

Yes, Medium Flesh is darker than Dark Flesh :)  I also usually add some dirt shadows with Earth or so other dark tan.  After all there wasn’t much washing in the middle ages.  I took the highlights beyond what I normally do (I have the Cancon painting classes with Meg Maples/Mark Soley to thank for that) and yes, it does look better.  At a few meters away the face really pops.  Not 100% on the right eye, I think it may have to move up slightly.  Never been good at eyes and my own eyes aren’t helping things as they get older.

Slightly over exposed there..

For the hair I tried something different and went for fully white hair.  Normally I do the standard brown or grey.  The base colour was a warm off white (i.e. looked a bit yellow) VMC Light Sand.  Rather than do my 28mm hair technique of doing a dark wash followed by some dry brushing I tried to paint the entire hair as one piece, much like painting an irregular shaped sphere.  Another technique picked up thanks to the internet.  This was helped as the sculpt had the hair in waves down the head.  I medieval perm job.  On the underside of hair wave I shaded down with a tan yellow to brown and on the top of the waves I highlighted up with flat white to gloss white.  The end result was a little harsh on the shadows, so I need to go back and have another go.  But this is the way to paint hair so it looks like hair rather than strands of straw.

Still not being sure of the main colours for the knight I did a test figure using an old Ral Partha 28mm figure.  I went for a cool (blue) white for his shirt and a light blue for the cloak.  For the flesh I went for a lighter nordic skin colour and made the VMC Dark Flesh the base.  For the white tunic my range was

VGC Ghost Grey + VGC Dead White
VGC Dead White
VMC Gloss White
VMA White - I find the airbrush range white is great.  Very bright but totally smooth.

For the blue cloak the range was

VGC Magic Blue
AP Electric Blue (the lightest blue I had)
VGC Dead White
VMA White


So a “grey white” and “blue white” combo.  The blue cloak was too dark for what I was aiming for.

The final highlights of white are too extreme next to the Magic Blue.  Next time I will start with a lighter blue.  I’m also going to trial some snow effects for the first time on his base.  I’m not sure if the 54mm knight will have snow but currently he is looking like being a very cold colour scheme so the snow would add to that.

I’ve been doing some reading of various learn to paint oils/acrylics/etc books to expand and improve my skill set.  Something I picked up was that it is almost impossible to make a colour lighter and brighter by mixing.  By adding white you make the colour lighter/whiter but adding white always makes the colour duller.  Mixing any two colours will always also result in a colour darker than the lightest.  This is because paint is colour subtractive.  So for really light colours you need to buy them.  So after 30mins of trying to make a blue lighter and brighter than the AP Electric Blue I found those books know what they are on about.  I could get a lighter blue, but it was dull as.  Luckily I’m 5 mins away from The Combat Company so I went and grabbed a pot of VMC Sky Blue.  This is all going towards doing the cloak of the knight as a faded out blue.  So a very light blue base up to white/linen due to sun fade and weather.

Finally in all that excitement I finished off the bases of my two Flemish warriors with my usual dirt mix, flock and static grass.  More recently I’ve started to paint the grass tufts a few different greens and yellows to break up the uniformity.  Green base rims just to kick it old school.

Some Flemish figures for Saga and steampunk resin casting

Just add earth..

Having a break week after finishing blue man I went back to 28mm land and did two figures (out of eight) for my Flemish unit for Saga.  These figures are Normans from Conquest Games.  I wanted to trial some different techniques of painting chainmail too.



Rather than just dry brushing all the chainmail the same way all over I did a graduated dark to light approach so the top of the figure was lighter than the bottom.  Once that was done I did a bit of earth/sky glazing and did a earth colour glaze on the bottom half and a sky blue glaze on the top.  With the chainmail done that was 75% of the figure.  I did struggle to get back to 28mm size faces but overcame that by going down a few brush sizes :)  Just need to finish off the bases and these two are done.

The wife has gotten back into sewing recently and has decided she wants to make some steampunk outfits/gear.  In my other hobby of electronics I have a large collection of misc. gears from old cdroms/etc so I volunteered them for the cause.  Steampunk costumes love gears painted up like brass.  But that got me thinking that my wife will only be able to make 2-3 pieces before the supply of gears is done and cdroms are getting hard to find.  So why not copy them…

Mould box and original gears ready to go

So out came the pinkysil and east cast resin and now we have two mould blocks of gears.  Really this was just an excuse to trial out some more mould making techniques and I did learn some new bits:

It's alive!

The big pour

 * always have a second item ready to become a mould.  That way if you have spare silicon you don’t waste it.  That is why I have a single gear in a mould by itself.  That was the surplus silicon mould and sure enough there was some pinkysil left over to make it.


* don’t change where you are pouring your silicon from halfway through a pour.  It’s a sure way to get air bubbles into the mould.  For a big mould pour in the middle as the pinkysil is quite slow flowing.

Resin casts ready for priming (sorry about the yellow light)

* always have an extra mould ready for when you are mixing resin.  I now have a very small new resin rock made from the larger rock mould from the surplus resin from the gears casting batch.









So next week is still school holidays so not much painting time as I’m taking time off to be daddy daycare.  However I will try and get going with my next 54mm figure, the Soldiers knight, Prince of Novograd.

Eureka milking set, Conquest Games Normans and something special

I have finally finished the Eureka milking set, just in time for it to be released.  To jazz up the base I added a small wood stack and some rocks/flowers/grass as usual to break up the large expense of unbroken ground.

I really do like the faces of the milking woman and the boy.  Both dreaming of a better life…away from the cows.

On the WIP front I have put together the 7 Normans from Conquest games which I will be using for the Flemish swords for hire.  The figures aren’t as well armoured as the official versions but I play social games so I don’t think anyone will mind.

The figures went together reasonably well but I found the arms a bit annoying.  The arm socket in concave and sometimes the top of the arm piece is a bit flat so the join isn’t too good.  It hides the joint but doesn’t always result in a good join surface.  When in doubt add more glue and blow to speed up the drying process.  The odd man out is from the Eureka Dark Ages range and seems to fit the part, even if he is a bit on the short side.  I’m sure the other 7 guys respect the diversity he brings to the group.

Dapper Dan

Racing stripes

Finally something that makes painter dads proud.  I purchase some architectural models for my kids (6 and 3) to paint.  The 6 year did pretty well (having been painting since 3 years old), but then started to embellish.  I’m sure pink and green skirts will be back in fashion as some stage.  The 3 year old was more of a study in wet on wet blending technique.

MOAB and Sy-Co conventions 2014

Once again I made the annual pilgrimage to MOAB and the Bring-and-Buy store.  I never get that much as I don’t play Warhammer or 40K which is probably 75% of the content.  However I’m always on the lookout for old Ral Partha figures, boardgames from the 1970’s that no one plays (but I have fond childhood memories of always wanting) and hopefully some special thing (like getting 30 back issues of WGI from Cancon on year at $2 each - yeah!).  So below is the swag from the Bring-and-Buy.

Academy German tank crew at $3

More 1/35 figures are always good practice, and this included 40 odd American and German jerry cans which someone had added to box - score!

Hail Caesar at $40

I managed to avoid collecting Fields of Glory (which I never would have played, just wanted a copy) but couldn’t resist Hail Caesar.  All those battle reports in WGI were definitely a factor.

Pegaso Models St John Order Knight at $40

This was the special item.  I’ve been wanting to get a large scale, good quality figure as part of my painting journey.  I keep looking at ordering one online (from Pegaso, Scale75, etc) but keep putting it off thinking I’m not ready, etc, etc.  However I was hoping that there would be something like this at MOAB this year and there was.  The god of lead dollies was kind to me this year.

I had to resist strongly a box of 28mm Warlord Romans at $20 and various Germanic war bard figures.  Still have that little voice telling me I need to have a large historic army (or two) before I die.  Buying Hail Caesar was an effort to get that voice to quiet down.  But 200 28mm Romans would look so good…

After enduring the smell of the Bring-and-Buy I made some retail purchases to get the swag bag up to size.

7 norman infantry (Conquest Games) at $9

I wanted a Norman war band for Saga but I’ve put that on hold for awhile.  However these two loose sprues (5 figure normal sprue and 2 figure command sprue) is enough to make up most of the 8 figure Flemish mercenary unit from Saga.

Vallejo air colour - basic colours at $50

16 air colour paints, what’s not to like

Vallejo Black surface primer at $19



That night I went out to The Combat Company for their Sy-Co convention and big kids night.  Had fun, played Zombicide, chatted about painting with Luke from The Sound of Machines, etc.  I went in the 20 minute speed painting contest which was great.  Wet on wet blending whether you like it or not.  Tried my hand at the dice rolling game but lucked out.  While there I picked up something from the specials bin.

Degra Miniatures - 54mm El Torres at $9.50

A really interest looking large scale figure which at that price was an easy purchase.  Another adventure into non 28mm scale figures.

So a good, long day in what is usually the second biggest figure shopping day for me after Cancon.  New rules, new paints and some great new figures.