The latest Army Painting series is well under way, with episode 3 nearly complete! This time around we have Rohan, and that means an exercise in painting various greens. However, every series begins with basing, and I chose to create some tree bark and cork style bases for the army.
While the materials are quite inexpensive and relatively simple, the results that you can get are second to none, and make each individual infantry figure a tiny diorama!
In each series I try to toss in something new and different. Instead of using an airbrush to spray on my shading layers of Badger Stynlrez primer, I chose to go back to a time before we had an airbrush. This means brushing on the primer by hand! For years, we brushed on the Stynlrez primer, and it always worked very well.
I used 3 different colors of primer to achieve the same sort of "pre shaded" look that I normally get with the airbrush. It may take a little longer, but if you don't happen to have an airbrush, this is certainly a viable solution for you.
With the unit based and primed, it was time to move on to the Color Test figure episode. It is at this time when you can assess how much time a given effect will take on a figure, which allows you to do some quick calculations on how an entire unit or army might require to complete.
I discuss this in every series, often timing myself to see how long it takes, and then multiplying that by the number of figures needed. It can start to add up quickly, and it is best to find that out as early in the process as possible!
I don't know how many times I have heard people that I know giving up on an army project because they had ambitious goals, but no real idea oh how long that was going to take. That lead to frustration and boredom. After all, this is supposed to be your FUN thing, and not be an additional burden to endure each day.
With each series and "one off" tutorial, I try to show you how to break down that much longer, complex process into more attainable goals. These let you see some progress each time, and also help you to decide what effects might be neat to do, but would ad too much overall time to get that project out of the way.
Even on this color test figure, there were a few occasions where I timed myself , such as the freehand on the shield and on the tunic. If I decide that it too much to do on every figure, I might decide to save something special like that for champions or characters. By making that choice before going on to the rest of the unit, I have made the goals more reasonable, and I am less likely to be upset later on when I realize that the original vision is just not possible.
The Army Painting pledge is $15 per month, and you get links to all the previous series when you sign up! In addition, all the other tutorials on basing, Dark Sword minis, Creature Caster, Nocturna, Big Child Creatives minis will be yours to view as well. It is important for you to see those, since I try to show more individual techniques and ideas that can be applied to army and unit painting.
As I mentioned before, the Army Painting Pledge level will provide access to all of the tutorials each month, not just the Army Painting episodes! You can check out that pledge level on the page here: www.patreon.com/JamesWappel
