My "really little" ponies

Time for some minis from the Memoir '44 equipment pack.  These cavalry figures are multi purpose... mostly used as both Polish and German early war cavalry.

While there is not a ton of detail on them... and some difficult mould lines to deal with, you can still have a lot of fun!

There are enough of them to tray out just about any color scheme.

These are the more basic colors.  I had lots of fun with the Dapple Gray.

Forward!

The Charge of the Light Brigade.

We used cavalry in one of our first battles, and it was a blast!  Very fast movement, a swirling maelstrom of action.  Until the tanks showed up. :-)

We are starting to work on these again, as we want to do some early war France and Poland scenarios.

The rest of the Siege Train!

More train cars!  Once again, using the new super cool blue backdrop from Hangar 18.

As you will see, the three lengths of track really pushed the limits once again.

So... lots of little details on these cars that are not really easy to see.

The view from above gives you a sense of how massive even these smaller cars are!

I enjoy the way the blue backdrop plays off the blueish grays on the rail cars!

A few strategically placed rust stains :-)

Let's not forget the heavy artillery caboose!

Bang!

Don't mess with that last car!

A little more...

Tomorrow I will try to "engineer" a few images of the entire train :-)

From "When the World Was Flat"

OK, I think this will be close to the Grande Finale on the 2D art.  This is a whole range of stuff, starting with a pastel that I did about 20 years ago.  Or maybe more :-)

You can see a lot of similarities with the way I paint my flesh tones, how the value patterns are arranged, the reflected light, and even some NMM to boot!

This is a design that I painted on a few Celtic drums...

And this was supposed to be an piece for some illustrated novels that I had been working on.  This character has actually been shown in a few other sketches...

I did this wild picture for Nordic Fest.  Yes, I know that Vikings didn't have horns, but you must give the people what they expect.

Painting on stained glass with Pebeo paints...

And close it out with Celestial Phoenix, which was also made into a puzzle like Spirit of the North.

The Blue Choo Choo

Huzzah!  Happy Day! Hooray!  Yup.  Now I get to try out one of the big Hangar 18 backdrops which had not been used yet!  'Cause it's HUGE!

My hope before I started using these was that the backdrops could also be used horizontally, as opposed to the nearly exclusive vertical setups I have done.

Even on such a massive backdrop, the giant train engine takes up a lot of space.  That's only two lengths of track, by the way!

And now for some 'studio' shots.  For obvious reasons, I am going to have to break up the train into individual elements to get it to fit.

I am still trying to set up some shots of the whole thing together.

It is very very gratifying to see these kinds of images, I can tell you that much!

Coming right at you!

I wanted to use the blue fade for this first set so that I could get that "true" view of the colors which I have mentioned in the last few posts.

However, I will shoot these again using the brown backdrop.

I am quite sure that one is going to make for some dramatic lights and darks on The Beast, as I have called it.

I did use some Secret Weapon powders on these cars as a final touch.  It was not actually for weathering.  In fact, I used them to get a few subtle color variations in the gray colors.

When applied with one of the filbert brushes, I could add a touch of green to an area, or a touch of brown, etc., in an extremely light fashion.

This would take seconds instead of hours to blend in with the rest.

When you are working on something this huge, it is easy to lose sight of what you have done on one side or the other, or even from one small area to the next.  The quest for variety made me feel that it was essential to do this step.

Subsequent posts will show the other cars, as well as the whole set and the series on the other backdrop!

A new Favorite is found

Here are some more types of backdrops.  I knew the red one might be a little too much, but I just had to see what it looked like!

It's still fun, because it does create an interesting theme.

Now for the crazy one!  Trying it on green this time.  I thought this would be really crazy, but once again, I wanted to see what it looked like.  It does emphasize certain colors, that's for sure!

Now this one is my personal favorite.  While I will always trend towards the blue/white fade, this one seemed to be the most balanced.  It didn't burn anything out or make something invisible, and it set off the red nicely.

The heavy mottling of the backdrop is very helpful.  The infusion of the purple/gray is great, while the warmer tans keep the reds from going too bonkers!

So, I will continue to see what the other ones look like!!!

More testing of the backdrops

It seems like just about every army I have made has been very difficult to photograph... mostly due to lack of backdrops.  As you know, the Hangar 18 solution came along, so I am attempting to fix that issue! :-)

The flyers and skimmers of the Dark Eldar army presented an especially tricky problem.They were taller, wider, and more complicated in terms of color, freehand, and sheer amount of stuff going on!

Heck, I was happy enough just to try out the blue/white fade on these.  A vast improvement over the original dingy piece of drawing paper!

As usual, this is my 'classic' method of photographing figures.  There is a reason why most industry types went with this initially, since it does have a tendency to show all the surfaces of the figure in a more neutral way.

Once you get into the colors on the backdrops, you will have one aspect or another emphasized a little more.

I took images of this vehicle against several of the backdrops to see what it would look like!  I have two here...

The dark blue backdrop.  Three more tomorrow!