This evening I managed to make a bit more progress with the Spanish, or rather Catalucian Elves.
Two grenadiers, two irregulars, two line and a light infantryman. Obviously these are elves, but I have tried to use 1808 Spanish uniforms for ideas… as an example the grenadiers and regulars should have white cross belts, but as they are fantasy, then mine have black.
I actually used Speedpaints for the purple, but as you can imagine I was super careful to make sure it only went where it should go, especially when the uniform was white. Obviously I could have chosen a whole host of facing colours, but I fancied purple.
I still have to work on the white on the uniforms, as can be seen on the grayish leg on one of the regulars.
Out of interest, Shetland had a bit of an unusual visitor in one of the voes near to where I live…
The above is a sperms whale and it is bloody huge, sadly, as it is huge, it shouldn’t be there. I took some better photos with my camera. I will share them on the Shetland blog when I get them off.
Well as, I undercoated the miniatures yesterday I thought it would be rude not to make a start on them this evening…
I spent most of the time on the two irregulars (not that it isn’t isn’t bit obvious). I did however reundercoat the three others before adding the White Conrradt paint onto them. You can sort of see the white grey on the uniforms. I intend to dry brush white over the top to act as a highlight and then give them a glaze to stop any powderyness.
Hopefully I will get the irregulars finished tomorrow and make a good old start on the others.
I will probably do them as all from the same unit, even though I intend to use them for the Silver Bayonet, where soldiers are taken from different units. I think it would look weird if the three of them have different facings and turnbacks.
This evening I ended up late in, but wanted to do something hobby wise, in the end I decided to put some Flintloque miniatures onto some 2p coins and get them sprayed.
It might actually kickstart me into finishing the two officers, last seen in this state….
To be honest I am not looking forwards to the white uniforms on some of them. I am hoping the white Contrast paint will help.
I am going to get back into a kayak tomorrow evening at a pool session with the Shetland Kayak club, so the above miniatures will probably be started on Friday.
It wasn’t a bad evening on the way to do the horse…
Well this was a very long time coming, but I think, and hope, that I have finished the 6mm Italian wars troops…
This is the final twelve bases worth painted and covered in sand. I have eighteen other ones in this state that will need the bases painting.
I reckon the empty filament spool landing on the pikes really put a dent in my enjoyment of the project. I checked back through my blog posts and began printing in July at the very least. In September I began painting after my Irregular Miniatures arrived, to be fair it hasn’t been a constant run of painting as I lost heart after the splat of doom occurred.
Anyway I will paint up the bases tomorrow and put everything out together to see what it looks like. In all honesty most of them have sat in a box since they were painted.
You may remember that I halved the number of pike bases jn a unit. I hope it is going to look okay in the final army. Only time will tell to be honest.
Not sure why but today I came out of work in a foul mood… but that was nothing compared to the absolute pillock I managed to make myself look when I went to do the horse.
The stables are at a farm, a working farm, so I met Linda whose stables we share, she works and lives on the farm. So, me being me, having watched a YouTube channel on a guy who trims cows hooves asked her if she has any cows on the farm… its an effing dairy farm, what else do they have there …Llamas. Funnily enough it actually cheered me up watching the complete incredulity on Linda’s face.
Anyway tonight I did a bit of finishing off… first of were the two Rohirrim..
Actually looking at her face I think I need another repaint, not sure why it has gone grey!
I also decided to do a bit in the slugs and get them based up…
Slithering to a Battlefield near you…
I will probably try and get the last remaining 6mm Italian Wars stuff done next.
I took a little bit of time this evening to get the bases covered in Geek Gaming Base ready stuff… and because I am a total pillock I forgot to get some brown paint onto the white tops. Needless to say, if any of the flock drops off then the white will stick out like a diamond in a sweeps ear hole.
But anyway here are the six of them… there are bits of white visible, but I will add a bit more flock or tufts over the top before I get them sealed down…
I also got something today that I had forgotten that I ordered…
Not the world’s best photo, but it was purchased to support Ukrainian charities. I love Jon’s artwork and was a bit chuffed to get a signed one, okay it is not an original piece of artwork, but I reckon the statement at the bottom pretty much sums up what is going onnjn Ukraine.
Oh and according to my wife and daughter I am being a bit of a fan girl about getting this 🤣.
Today I got both remaining Ogre Doppelsoldners finished. Tomorrow I will base them all up… but here are the last three done.
As you can see, I went for bronze armour for the last of them. So that is all of them done. One in Speedpaints and the rest in Contrast. The straps on the best plates were a sod to do carefully so a bit of re-undercoating took place. Luckily it was Contrast so there was no issue.
Interestingly Dana Howl has done a video comparing both ranges and in this she says that Army painters are not for beginners which is interesting in itself. Dana’s video . Are we going to see lots more people doing something similar now. I have noticed a few YouTube channels that are mentioning problems more openly.
Dana did say that the longer drying time of the Speedpaints allowed for good blending among other things.
Well yesterday I threw some enamel matt white over four of the slugs I had repainted. The colours I chose were still bleeding through after four layers of white acrylic.
I gave them a blast with the hairdryer then shoved them in the porch to cure for about eighteen hours.
I got the pallid bone colour to go over the four with the oil based paint. Here are the results…
They are pretty much all the same colour apart from the green one.
So what do I think in general.
If you use enamels then you can cover over errors or overpainting on your miniatures. This does take a long time to cure and as such makes a mockery of the term Speedpaints.
They are nice colours, but due to their low viscosity they can bleed into other areas. This can cause problems further down the line. Now I may not have shaken them enough, but I don’t think so.
The reactivation is a total pain. Although, thanks to John, I can recover from a mess up, it just won’t be fast any more… leading to Slowpaints.., yeah I can just not mess up, but with the best will in the world, some paint will end up where it shouldn’t.
Price is a positive. They are cheaper than Contrast paint, plus you cannot spill them everywhere whilst in a dropper bottle.
One thing I have heard, but haven’t tried is don’t use them on a wet palette.
I would like to think that I have given these paints an honest and more importantly, a fair review . It was never my intention to stop anyone buying these, I am no fan boy of any one company. At the minute you can only buy the starter set and not individual bottles. This means you have to drop £34 on a set of paints that might not to be your liking, or at very least aren’t like you expected them to be. It wouldn’t be so bad if one could pick up an individual bottle to try out. I did reach out to AP to ask to buy a couple of bottles, but they weren’t able to help me out. My little blog was in no way big enough to warrant the expenditure of time and effort… I say this with absolutely no malice at all. It is a statement of fact.
Hopefully my little journey with the Speedpaints has been useful , or at least entertaining.
So a while ago I posed the question … Contrast or Speedpaints… we’ll I have come to a decision… I am going to be sticking with my Contrast paint that have done me well for two years at least. I know they Cost more, but they do what I want of them and I can get them locally.
Sorry Army Painter, your Speedpaints, like your metallics are destined to sit on the shelf.
Well, not being one to ignore advice, ot is that a challenge, I went and bought myself a little pot of Humbrol matt white enamel. John had suggested it so off I went into town and bought some.
I repainted my slugs… as you can clearly see with the front two I had a bit of a brain fart as the grey became green and the green, yellow…nothing a sharpie couldn’t sort out.
At this point I would like to say that the last time I used enamels was in about 1990! So anyway, after a bloody good shake followed by a bloody good stir and another shake I shoved it over the coloured slugs…
Hmmmm … now to be fair, I used the hairdryer on these to dry them off a bit quicker, as would befit the term Speedpaints. This may have blown the paint off the top, but I don’t think so.
They are now sitting in the porch to be smelly on their own.
Tomorrow I will see if the Speedpaints goes back over the top of them. Once again waiting 24 hours, does not seem very speedpainty to me.
The daft thing about continuous testing is that I can already re-undercoat Contrast paint. I can walk into a shop and buy Contrast Paint on Shetland. Seems to me the only advantage that Speedpaints have is that they are cheaper…
I am not even sure why I am carrying on faffing about with something. Perhaps it is because I just spent £34.00 on a box of them. Tomorrow I think I will give up the ghost, I am spending my time trying to make them work the way I want when clearly they won’t. After Tomorrow I go back to painting stuff that I can use.
They may get used, or may, like most of my AP paints, end up in a box in the shed.
This evening I blasted the miniatures with the hair dryer, I actually made my lip uncomfortable when I tested how warm they were… so after 10 minutes I went for a white overcoat. Now I normally shove the white paint straight out of the pot but1 this time I decided to go for the two thin coats…yeah that was going to work…
So I went a bit thicker on them after this….
Before and after
So as I said yesterday, my aim was to see how far the Speedpaints would bleed through more and more layers so here are my results….
So as you can see from the above, I went through four layers of white paint… in between each layer I blasted it with the hairdryer and then left it for 10 minutes or so to let it cool.
I used the same brush each time and went up one side and back down the other. I washed the brush between each slug and dried it on a paper towel… in other words I tried to keep everything the same.
So I think the photos tell the story pretty much as it is, the blue, grey and purple pretty much were okay to do a different colour over the top after layer three. The orange, green, red and yellow are still a definite colour there.. flesh colour, I am not sure about. I reckon the ones above might be repaintable after a 5th layer of white, but repaintable I mean a lighter colour, obviously red would probably go over the yellow after the third or fourth layer, but definitely not the other way around.
If you were wondering about the letters, I thought it prudent to add them in case the colours covered over and I wouldn’t know which was which. I don’t think I needed to worry.
So with this test there is a caveat I would like to add. I have been using this white for a good old while and as such have used some medium in it to keep it useable.This however is the same white that I have used on most of my painting over at least the last year… so perhaps it is not an issue for this test.
Where can I go next with this, I am not sure. I suppose I could brush some varnish over something and see what happens, this would be to simulate an error being made, but in all honesty I would imagine a similar thing happening to the above.
Unless anyone can think of anything else to try then I am running out of ideas here. The one thing I will try is to paint something one colour then spray varnish it and see what happens. Obviously yellow won’t be able to go over red or blue, but if I out white over the varnish then that will give me an answer there at the very least
I really, wanted these to work, I bought them in good faith and sadly they seem to be letting me down. Maybe I got a duff batch, but let’s be honest here, it is unlikely.
Bogenwald 