Today I was in and out a fair bit but I did manage to get some painting done… to be honest I am getting a bit sick of painting 🤯. But needs must as they say!
So first up are the Dinocrocuta… these are almost finished….
Really just the two armoured ones to work on.
I also did a lot more on the ghouls…
And finally I got going on the crossbows…
Once the crossbows are done then I have eight riders of various sorts and the big beastie to do. Although I complained about lots of painting, I only really have myself to blame as I added two dozen miniatures to the pile.
Today I cracked on and got the remaining nine Zombies finished…
This now gives me two units of twelve for Dragon Rampant, or a horde for other games.
I also spent a good while ‘building’ a set of zombie crossbows. There are nine distinct ones and three that are mirrors of some others. I know I said I wouldn’t print any more, but I still had some resin in the vat and it should be enough for the twelve miniatures. Now as I mentioned the Ian Lovecraft ones are a lot bigger than the rest so I took the height down to 92% and the other two planes at 88% to try and match in with the current batch. I will find out tomorrow if I have cocked it up 🤞🤞🤞.
And finally I need a bit of help on deciding on the colour for the Dinocrocuta… I decided to go away from a natural brown colour to something a bit more fantasyesque…
I have got the red/black or the white/grey. I like them both and cannot decide on which way to go. Both take seconds to do, so neither is harder than the other… what do people think… which would work well for an undead army?
Tonight I worked on my spectral steeds. They were a bit of faff with all the colour transitions from the bone to grey to green, but I think it kind of worked…
I should hopefully get a good crack on with the riders tomorrow as well as finish these off… on second thoughts I think I will finish these and then get on with the zombies… speaking of which… I just remembered today that I have a pile of multiple zombies on my hard drive from the Frost Kickstarter…I may have to go and have a peek. The Frost ones though are huge, so a lot of shrinking will be required. Not that I am printing anything else until the undead are done …cough, cough!
Anyway whilst painting the above I was watching a live stream by the Basic Brush… I follow him on YouTube. It was nice to sort of chat on the keyboard… well worth a watch in my opinion. I have mentioned him before when I was talking about the issues with the speedpaints…
You may have noticed the grey ghouls I the above photo. These are the scaled ones mentioned yesterday. The 90% size is what I wanted so I am pretty pleased with them. In hindsight I should have added the head in the software rather than trying to get it glued onto some of them between a raised bone and a neck. It is a miracle that they actually all had heads… if I do decide to print some of the Frost ones then they will be built electronically and printed out as a one piece.
Talking of printing things, if you remember, the big beastie is hollow, today I got all the components to make a small device to shove where the sun does not shine…
The light is a UV one to shove inside hollow models to cure the resin inside. Unfortunately the drain holes on the big one were too small to go right inside, but I was able to shine the lights in to help. Usually I would decide on the size of the drain hole, but these were built in and it never occurred to me to check, otherwise I could have added my own.
He is now undercoated with a zenithal highlight to help with the light and dark.
Well sort of…I still need to get the washes on to add some shading.
So this week I have painted 62 miniatures…. somwhat is left from the printed lot… six wraith cavalry and the mounted Liche and then the zombies… so I reckon that by this time next week I should have the whole army finished…. well hopefully 🤞🤞🤞.
The remaining miniatures are almost all undercoated so I will make a start on the zombies tomorrow.
Today we power washed the stables at the farm…
It got a bit wet in there… but we got it all cleaned off…I now ache though… hoisting twenty odd 6×4 rubber mats that are an inch thick takes its toll.
Now what undead army wouldn’t emmmm be errrr seen dead without Zombies. So here are some
villagers and warriors below.
There were eight villagers and only five warriors which is a little disappointing. I double up two by flipppng one over, top right and left for the villagers. Now these are really unique poses so really only those would work.
Now something weird happened to the warrior in the middle, well apart from being run through by a spear and coming back to life. There is a better view below…
As you can see the top of his head didn’t print absolutely no clue why, perhaps a glitch in the software. Now I did forget to drew the build plate down but as you can see the crossbow man came out fine!
I think I have now got a full army for Dragon Rampant. So after I have printed some 15mm Ronin then the printer is going to have a rest for a while whilst I paint them all up.
I even got my airbrush out to give the big beastie the once over. Haven’t used it for about four years so wish me luck.
Tonight we had a family game night and as such I didn’t get a lot of time for painting. I did however repaint the blue shroud to fit in with the grey ones…
Well after painting loads of undead Napoleonics and starting on a plan to take over the world with undead skeletons I decided that I needed a way to make rust look good….so i had heard of this range of materials…
So rather than just slop on the rust I decided tonuse some superglue and fine sand to make a texturedsurdace on the axe…in hindsight I should have just used baking powder, but hey ho…
So when it was dry I slapped some metal colour over the top and then threw some of the rust stuff on the axe head…. bloody he’ll in about two minutes it looked like rusty metal… I kid you not
I was actually bit gob smacked, sadly with the size of the mini it is really hard to see with a camera but I did try and get a photo…
You will have to trust me, it looks better in real life.
I then went for the moss effect for the grave stone…..
You can just about see the rust colour on the head of the axe in this shot.
Again I was happy with the result.
Now to be honest this was me spending 30 seconds flinging a new product on a model, but it seems to do what it is meant to do. I will find something a bit bigger to paint another day.
This stuff isn’t cheap, at all. Makes Contrast paint look cheap. The best deal I got was the three bottles for £22 with free postage. It is a solvent based paint and dries really, really fast, so no smoking fags near them when they are open. As you can see from the bottles they are a good old size, so should last a while.
As for the verdigris, I want some of the skeletons on bronze armour…so thought this might help.
I am hoping to do some more testing of these sometime soon and will keep you updated to speed on what I find.
Tonight I got the vampire finished. To be honest I am not too happy with him…
I think it is the colours I chose as I really like the pose. I am torn to be honest. Part of me thinks repaint and another part thinks sod it… he is painted. There is of course another option and that is to print another one, look at some reference photos and start again.
We never got our game on Monday as my lot weren’t feeling well so we are going to have a try of something on Friday as well as plot some games. I decided to purchase some paper armies to try out Strength and Honour. I will still use the 2mm minis but might base them differently. Each ‘base’ is a legion two are on temperate ground and two are on arid.
This evening I managed one miniature done. This was deliberate rather than an inability to get two done.
Here he is…
A bit of a scary chap I think you will agree. Now I normally say something like it takes me about half an hour or so. Tonight I decided to actually time myself….so this chap took me…
Yes from start to finish he took me 29 minutes to do. I wasn’t rushing, just painting in my normal way.
On this one I went in the followingorder… boots, green smock, trousers, brown jacket. This was to allow some drying time for each of the different parts. The mask was a mix of zombie green and orange with various splodges of orange over the top while still wet. I also added leather brown into the eye sockets then used my thumb to remove paint from the eyes. These were then dotted with red.
Once again superglue on the base and showed in the base ready. A quick zip around the edges with my super wide black sharpie and voilà one scary scarecrow. Start to finish thirty minutes.
In case anyone is wondering..this is Worzel Gummidge…
Worzel was played by John Pertwee, who also played Doctor Who… I know which I prefer and it isn’t a wierd scarecrow from Ten Acre field!
Oh while I remember, the four beasties are by Tytantroll miniatures.
One day I will work out how to tag people on my blog as they really are lovely miniatures…I really fancy having a go at some of the miniature busts..there are some really great ones, the only reason I haven’t got one yet is because I can’t decide on one.
Finally, I said I had only painted one mini this evening, part way through writing this I decided to make a start on the vampire.
So here we have the scary boat and the witch with her basket of apples. To be honest if I were that boat I would avoid that red and green apple like the plague.
Again these were done in contrast. I did mix the flesh tone on the witch by adding a putrid green to the flesh colour. They won’t win any prizes but hey, they were both done in about an hour so that will do me. As the motto says you can have quick or good. I go for quick and okay every time.
Sadly there was no game tonight as all three of my kids were feeling crap today.
Finally … Exciting news… I am escaping my rock and going to my first wargames convention in about 12 years. I have booked the ferry for me and my son to go to SELWG on 6th August.
We were a bit naughty and got a cabin going down so it came in at £190… you can see why conventions don’t occur that often. Oh the above price was with my islander discount. The cabin is the killer at £121.
There were none on the way back but we can sleep when we get home. I now have to find some form of accommodation for two nights. Wish me luck!
Bogenwald 