Flemish figures for Saga, Reaper Bones Valkyrie

I was going to start on my 54mm Samurai this week, but when I got to the painting bench there were a few too many half done figures.  So I decided to clean up some space first.

Flemish figures for Saga

I’ve had two Flemish figures for Saga half done for months so I tackled them first.  This was when I remembered I haven’t really painted much for two months as everything was off.  My brush control was all over the place, my mixing was bad, shading everywhere.  Always annoys me on how fast my skills drop off without use.  So I’m glad I did these figures before my next 54mm figure, if nothing else than to get back up to speed.

Next was a few Doom figures.  I pre-shaded and base coated the Cyber-demons and did a quick AP soft tone wash on the last of the Mancubus figures.  They aren’t pretty, but I just want them done so they can go back into the box never to be seen again.  No pictures for them.  Just couldn’t get the Mancubus paint scheme right so I covered up all the mistakes with AP washes and dry brushing.  Hopefully the Cyber Demons will be a bit better.  Just three of them and all the Doom figures are done.  Need to get them done before the next big box game with figures arrives :)

Reaper Bones Valkyrie

Many moons ago I purchased my first Reaper Bones figures, a Valkyrie, while in Denmark (as it seemed appropriate).  With just the few hours working on the Flemish figures I was already feeling better about painting and spent an enjoyable two hours working on her face.  For such a cheap figure ($4 AUD) she wasn’t too bad.  Very glad I swapped out the original sword and shield for a hard plastic spear and shield.  Looking forward to doing some more work on her.

Hmm, wall

While in the shed spraying the Cyber-demons I did some playing with a section of plastic card paving that I’m thinking of using as a wall (paving, rough stone wall - pretty much look the same).  This was pre-shaded as usual (white from top, black from bottom) and then sprayed a light brown.  I then did some dark green/brown spray along the bottom to try and represent some algae, etc.  Next will be some colour randomising on the stones to break up the monochromatic brown and oil washes after that I’m thinking.

Super glue vine

Finally I did some more practice on gluing very small leaves onto tiny twigs.  Really getting the hang of this and want to trial a few more pieces to improve my skill level on this technique.

54mm Prince of Novograd white work and 28mm Flemish figure for Saga

Two main bits of work this week and a bit more detail on painting white.  Things were a little rushed last week hence the short post.

 I spent some time this week working more on the white surcoat of my 54mm knight.  This is a challenge as I don’t normally paint white and there is a lot to cover.  I’m using a very similar white range as I did for my test 28mm viking figure with some more shading down.  Colour range current is

VMC Black Grey
VGC Sombre Grey
VGC Ghost Grey + VGC Dead White - base
VGC Dead White
VMC Gloss White
VMA White

I’m pretty much done with the shading and am still working up the highlights.  To avoid that paste like consistency of white paint I’m working with very thin glazes with a unifying glaze of the base coat every 3-4 steps of shading or highlighting.  My shading was a bit too dramatic (i.e. bad) but with a number of base coat and mild shade coat glazes all over the surcoat I managed softened the transitions.    So I’m still not getting the smoothness of transitions right.  It’s getting there but is very slow work.  After an hour of thin whites and greys you aren’t really sure you have changed things much.

In addition to the base coat glazes to unify the shading/highlights I’m also doing some glazes of the shade/highlight colours.  But I’m being selective on this so for example the top half of the figure is getting more highlight glazes and the bottom is getting more shading glazes.  All this is in an effort to achieve that zenithal lighting result of the lower portions of the figure being darker than the upper portions.  Thus your eye is naturally drawn up to the face of the figure.

Taking a break from white, grey and gloss white I painted up another Flemish figure for saga.  This figure is from Eureka Miniatures from their Dark Ages range.  An ok figure but with horrible little squinty eyes.  Really deeply recessed and hard to not blob on paint all around the eye socket.  Just need to finish off the base 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.

Ruined Roman villa for Saga part 3

View from above

To show the ruined state of the villa (and to hide the messy bits) I wanted to add a fair amount of rubble to the building.

Front door

All these plaster rocks were glued in multiple layers around the building over a few days.  Finally I used a mixture of olive green scatter, mid green static grass and various grass tufts and flower tufts to green up the building and hide some of the bad bits.  I also made a creeping vine from some lichen.

Open side room

The whole villa took some time but much of that was trial and error on the wall colours with lots of repainting.  Next time I would make up a small scrap of wall and trial colours there until I was happy.

The landing

Having to repaint the entire villa every time I changed my mind/made a mistake got a bit annoying in the end.  The mosaics turned out better than expected and all the greenery blended in well.

The hallway

Ruined Roman villa for Saga part 2

Those Romans built well

The foam card is much too smooth and slick to be painted on directly.  I needed some texture.  Lucky for me I now know about texture paste which I covered the entire building with inside and out to simulate plaster.  Once the texture paste was on I used an old brush to add some small ridges/bumps/etc.  Nothing too dramatic as that would break the illusion that a 28mm scale person had hand rendered this building.  After all they have small hands.  Again this was left overnight to dry properly.

Good enough for Time Team?

Now it was time for some paint.  I'm sure that all this terrain making is a subconscious way that my brain working out ways to use an airbrush.  With this much surface to cover I went for the cheap $3 craft paints.  I did a base coat of off white mixed with a small amount of brown to get the aged/dirty building look.  The first mix was a bit yellow so I repeated it to get what I wanted.  I found it was hard to get the colour right as every re-coat takes a few layers to really cover the previous, so you are always getting a blend of the old and new.  With the base coat done I then did a brown mud splatter around the outside base of all the building.  This was to show the gradual ruination of the building.  There would be a lot of rubble added later so I wanted to get the brown in there before I started gluing on the rubble.

On the inside of the walls I went for a dark maroon just like the (Hollywood) Romans did.  I used masking tape to get a nice straight line that later I would dirty and weather.  However I only put on one piece of masking tape.  This meant some of the wall above the masking tape wasn't covered and afterwards had in parts a small amount of red misting.  Another re-coat in the off-white/brown mix fixed that up.  So in future mask everything you don't want paint on.  On the top of the walls I painted them a red/brown as that is what the brick colour would most likely be.  The top of the walls were then dry brushed to lighten it slightly.  Once all the painting is done I planned to add some flock/lichen to represent foliage growth on top of the walls.

Just add missile troops

To age the building I used Army Painter Strong Tone wash all over the building inside and out.  After all the roof has fallen in so things should be pretty dirty all over.  The walls were then dry brushed back up with the off ivory and then ivory with some white added.  Also the partial wooden floor was painted brown/black and then dry brushed lighter with a dark brown followed by a lighter brown.

Mosaic floor

For the floors I wanted to have them as mosaics (much like the article in WGI described).  Searching the web I found some appropriate pictures that I re sized and then printed out in black/white to test for fit.  Some more resizing to get the borders looking right was done before I printed the colour copies.  I used spray adhesive as I thought that pva craft glue would make the paper soggy and wrinkled.  The spray worked very well and some of the spray soaked into the paper to and gave it a very firm surface.

Front entrance pavers

For the front entrance way I used a sheet of plastic brick work that I found in the model railway section of Hobbyco.  This was repainted and aged already so it just needed to be cut out to size and the front chopped up a bit to show the outer brick / pavers breaking away.

Ruined Roman villa for Saga

N.B. Apologies for the fuzzy pictures in this post.  My camera was on the wrong setting at the time.

A very white villa

Recently I've subscribed to Wargames Illustrated which the wife rightly describes as terrain porn.  Every issue leaves me with a overwhelming desire to make some new piece of terrain or a new game board, etc.  In one issue there was a brief article on making a ruined roman villa for use in Saga games.  As soon as I saw it I wanted my own.  Plus it gave me an excuse to make a decent sized building which I hadn't done for some time.

Voodoo pins into the building

In order to get the scale of the building right I made a floor plan on a piece of paper and drew the rooms.  Then using a 28mm figure on a 25mm base I could make sure the doorways were wide enough and the rooms could fit the right number of figures.  As far as room layout and design I pretty much copied the design from the WGI article.  It was a nice layout after all.  Once I had the size of the floor plan I cut out a base from 3mm masonite (Whitecoat) which has on one side a white covering which makes painting much easier.  No need to undercoat or seal the masonite.

Always make sure the doors are wide enough

The walls are made of 5mm foam board which makes the construction very quick.  Since the top of all the walls were going to be irregular I laid out the sheet of foam board and drew the top wall line for the each room in one go, with spacing for the width of the walls.  This meant that each corner would match up exactly.  Much easier than trying to cut each wall out separately and measure and match later.  Cutting out irregular curves like the top of wall is best using a sharp hobby knife and holding it almost vertical.  That way the cuts are small and you can follow a curve easily.   I used PVA glue to put together the building.  Also I use dress making pins to hold the walls together while the glue dries.  This means you can make the entire structure in one go and let it dry overnight.  To keep the foam board walls at right angles I copied the Paul Davies (of WGI fame) method of using Lego bricks to make a right angle wall, pushed the foam board next to the Lego and thus keep the corner at 90 degrees.

The front entrance way

Looking at the piece the next day I decided that the high corner I had made in one room was too high, almost a three storey building in scale.  Such a high wall would dominate and make storage an issue.  More knife work and it was cut down to size.  I also put in a small first floor so missile troops have somewhere to shoot from.  Every ruined building needs a platform for the bow/rifle/zapgun troops to fire from.  I used more 5mm foam card as supports and a piece for 1mm plastic card as the floor.  This plastic card was then covered with wooden craft sticks painted to become wooden floor boards.

First floor ledge

Sheep for Saga

Baaa

I wanted to add some more dark age flavour to my table and also have some kind of objectives for a raid type scenario.  Being the dark ages livestock seemed the obvious choice.  Gripping Beast had a nice set of Manx Langton sheep under their livestock range.  The good thing is that Manx Langton sheep are still around so google images provides an easy way to get painting reference shots.

The sheep are usually white with dark brown faces.  The young are quite dark going on black all over.  I also painted one of the adult sheep non white to break up the look of the group.

I based the sheep into pairs so I would have three bases of sheep.  I used the 40mm Renedra bases which was then covered in my standard rock mix and painted the same as I do my figures.  Now it's time for the Vikings to chase some sheep...

Baggage train for Saga

The boss man

For the Saga scenario "The Escort" I didn't have any appropriate baggage like models.  I took the easy route of buying the set from Gripping Beast (part no. SSC01) from War and Peace Games during one of their 20% off sales.

You can lead a horse to water...

I also added a leader figure/merchant to the party.  He originally was the "Celt carrying coracle" (part no. 100DAK003a) from Eureka but I obviously didn't use the coracle.  Instead I sculpted up a hood from green stuff to go on his cloak and worked that into the rope around his neck (ie how the boat was carried).  Now he just looks like he is adjusting his cloak.

Ugly farmers

I used about half of the trade goods that came with the set.  You get quite a lot with the set which is nice.  The other trade goods I saved for future use with my Revell viking ship model.  That project has stalled a bit waiting for me to work out how to base the ship to fit my existing terrain boards.

Ox cart for Saga

As every historical miniature gamer knows every table needs an ox cart (and a camp site).  Mine started with the "Peasant's Ox Cart" (part no. 28R-CAW-306) from 4Ground.  There are two options for the wheels and I went for the spoke version over the solid wheel variety.  This was painted Vallejo Game Colour Charred Brown and then drybrushed up with Beasty Brown and Leather Brown.

For the oxen I first considered the North Star Oxen, but they were a bit expensive at $10 each.  From Eureka miniatures I found they had an "Ox" (part no. 100ANM02) for $3.50 each.  Once they arrived I found them to be on the very lean size.  Much more like skinny Indian Brahma cows than big tough oxen.  Guess this farmer is a bit on the poor side, well at least that's the story I tell.  The oxen were air brushed with a dark brown craft paint and then highlighted much like the cart.

Early mock up and base sizing

For the farmer I made one up from bits including a Wargames Factory unarmed viking figure, a Gripping Beast Saxon head and some green stuff for the upper legs.  This was my first body sculpt and I got the legs too short.  Since he was sitting down and wasn't going to get much table time I decided close enough was good enough.  After all I had real figures to paint.  Mind you he does make a very good inbred misshaped peasant.  I think his open hand needs a whip or something as he looks a bit off currently.

Watch out for those rocks

The barrels and sacks in the wagon were from a $10 grab bag of resin bits I picked up at Cancon.  One of the sacks was made from a left over piece of green stuff.  Sacks and misc. pottery are a great way to use up leftover green stuff and to add background filler to terrain projects.

Early on in the design process I was going to add a dog to fill up the base space a little.  That got dropped off and some rocks were used instead.  Originally I was going for a rectangular base to fit my other baggage train pieces but the base was just a bit tight with the oxen hanging over the end.  So I up sized to the large oval base from Renedra to make sure everything was within the edge of the base.

Wagons ho!

For the ground effects I used a dark brown scatter for the road with a mixture of light green / olive green on the sides.  The rocks were originally white quartz which I drybrushed light brown to tone them down a bit.  Then the usual grass tufts and flowers were added.  When you buy 120 grass tufts every bit of terrain tends to get one.  The flowers added a bit of colour to a very green and brown piece of terrain.

Rough ground terrain for Saga

Three rocks means Irish missile attack

Using another of the Woodland Scenics rock moulds I made three smaller rocks to be used on a single "rocky terrain" piece.  This would be another representational piece over realistic so rather than cover the piece in rocks, I would have just a few to show the effect.  If I covered the whole base with smaller rocks then figures would be unable to safely stand up and no one wants paint chipped figures.  Sad faces there.

Blue flowers for this rock

The paint job on rocks was the same as what I did on the larger version previously.  The base of the piece was again a piece of whitecoat masonite cut to size with the edges bevelled.  I normally paint the edge of my terrain pieces and figure bases in Vallejo Game Colour Sick Green to hide the transition from the static grass of the terrain board to the figure/terrain.

The base was then covered in PVA glue (50% dilution with water) and then sprinkled with a number of different scatter materials (mid green, olive green, dark green, light brown) and static grass (light green and a mix called "Flowering meadow").  To try and replicate the random nature look I sprinkle the materials one at a time from about 15cm above.  Think much like sprinkling cheese on a pizza.  Some areas get more of one type of material to avoid the constant bland colouring.

Finally grass tufts and flowers were added to give a bit of colour and height variation.  On the rocks themselves some olive green scatter material was added to break them up from being a uniform colour.

Saxon hut from 4Ground for Saga

Little hut on the flood plains

While browsing at my local game store I found they had gotten in a batch of 4Ground terrain.  This is laser cut mdf flat pack terrain with a range of buildings across the standard time periods (Dark ages, WW2, ancients).  They come (depending on model) as either unpainted or painted.  One of the buildings was a great little Saxon hovel (part no. 28S-DAR-104), prepainted and with teddy bear fur for the thatch roof (something I have used before on my Rohan buildings in LotR times).  The design allows the roof to be removed too.  All for $22!  The walls are double think, so you get an inside wall and an outside wall.  That way during manufacture only one side of the mdf sheet needs to be worked and painted.  Also include was the extra "detailing" part with included doors and a fire pit.

Assembly is with PVA glue and the only painting need was on the floor and the fire pit which came unpainted.  Of course you could bling up the paint job very easily but for this one I was looking for a piece of terrain I could complete in a weekend.  The teddy bear fur is first glued onto the roof and then a mixture of 50% water / %50 PVA glue is used to shape the fur.  Using a toothbrush the fur is combed with the glue and ends up after a day of drying to look quite like thatch.

All the pigs are at market

For the base of the building I used a scrap piece of 3mm MDF.  To make a muddy field I used texture paste and sculpted furrows into the surface with a clay sculpting tool.   The plastic wattle fence from Renedra was used to enclose the yard.  Final detailing was done with static grass flock and bits of lichen as climbing vines/bushes.  Finally I added some sand/rock mixture to the field.

The mud field was painted dark brown and dry brushed up to off tan.  The surrounding grass area was first painted green so any spots missed by the static grass flock wouldn't show up too much.

So another terrain piece to add to the collection.  Since the building was pre painted this dramatically cut down the time needed to get the whole thing finished.  However it does still feel a little bit like cheating.