A New War

It's been quite a while since I worked on sci-fi figures, so these have been an interesting new challenge!

First, it is fun to paint something that is not greens or earth tones... and also some metals.  I used the Reaper Blue, Brown and Gray liner paints.  To lighten them, mixing in seafoam green, light flesh tones and light blues gives the mixes just enough variety to create subtle transitions and color shifts.

Otherwise, it is very likely that endless seas of "grey" would get very boring!

I believe that all of this is from Puppets War, made by DreamForged Games

Working within grays has been so important over the years, I even made that part of the Painting Pyramid.  As you might imagine, that episode was called "Shades of Gray".  It was one of 5 'color theory' videos that I did, similar to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnvcMwauXZk

I will be trying to finish off one of these on Twitch once I get that figured out!  

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Horse and Rider

Here are some more images from the set of figures done completely with oils.  As I have discussed in previous posts, the advantages offered by oils have been very nice to work with!

I already talked about those hard to reach areas, etc., but this set of images shows how much fun you can have with NMM and painting something like the horse.

Both of those elements have a lot of subtle color transitions, and being able to blend that wet oil paint across the surface was a huge help!  The horse had a lot of decently sculpted musculature on it, as well as a good face.  Getting the tan/grey fur colors to transition into the much darker colors on the legs was a matter of blending, as opposed to several layers of glazing!

Here's a live session that really shows how this blending works!

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10212917227339543/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

Charlemagne: A Color Test Figure

I know that people always have a bit of a chuckle at my preference for all things in the Early War period, which was the case in both Flames of War and Bolt Action.  Part of this had to do with my introduction to those games while being "nominated" to be the French player!

While I painted away at all the various units, I did a lot of research, not only of the Second World War, but as far back as the Napoleanic era and beyond.  I was more interested in the cultural and political situations that created the seeds for conflict than the conflicts themselves.

The Interwar Period was rife with all kinds of crazy weapon systems, from turreted fighters that would only hunt bombers to multi turreted tanks.  Nobody knew what would really happen with these once the shooting started.

This is the long winded way to say that all of my armies have focused on early war Battle of France and Operation Barbarossa.  That will continue as I move to the desert, but I am actually working on some mid to late war forces!

The Charlemagne Division was another political/cultural story that fascinated me, so I had to add that into the mix.  Not only did they fight on the Eastern Front, they actually fought their way back into Berlin during the final days of the siege. 

They also represent my first opportunity to attempt some of the camo pattern associated with the German forces... splinter, pea dot, oak leaf, etc. When I found some reference images, I had to paint the first color test figure to match this.

I have a great many figures to paint in the various schemes, as my army for the Operation Sting tournament is a Monte Cassino Fallschirmjager army!  I will have a lot of fun creating the bases for them, and I am planning on doing some of that in YouTube videos.

Also, I want to try and create some tutorials on how I painted these camo schemes for the blog and YouTube, since I see that question asked so many times on the Bolt Action Facebook pages.

I am hoping to use these guys in the next Barbarossa fight... we shall see if they are a match for Comrade Royamanov.  Eventually I would like to create an entire 'army' in the Charlemagne theme.

Stay tuned, and if you can support the Patreon Page in any way, that will be of great help, as all the editing and rendering takes many many hours!

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Chaos Reigns

This is the largest scale piece that I have done so far, as 72mm.  I have done a few other figures in this scale, but they are not mounted on a giant steed!

This one is covered in freehand, as each of the 4 chaos gods are represented.  It is pretty obvious which one is featured in these views!

He is also on ebay at the moment:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/323279256553?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

On this side, you have the Slannesh and Tzeentch markings.  I have to say, it was nice to be able to do this kind of freehand on a much larger surface than the usual 28mm!  I felt like people would actually see all the subtle designs.

The penny gives you a sense of just how massive this is!

The entire base was scratch sculpted using Apoxy Sculpt, one of my favorite materials.  I did a number of base sculpting videos using that as part of the Painting Pyramid project.  There's forest basing, swamp, rocks, and more!

It has all of the advantages of milliput and green stuff, but none of the disadvantages.

Checkers

Here's another Clan Escher painted in oils!  Once again, a link to the original live session:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10211936982874044/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

Now that I have the new set of Mig Ammo OilBrushers, I will be able to do even more finely detailed aspects of the figures.  Since I made this video, I have learned a lot about using the oils in various ways.  Now I can paint the entire figure in oils, which is very cool!

Lest we Forget

Today is obviously a day for remembrance, and a chance to talk about one of the reasons that I have delved so deeply into things such as Bolt Action.

My Dad was in the Marine Corps in the later years of WW2, stationed in New Zealand training for the final assaults which did not occur.  On my Mom's side, they participated in the North Africa campaigns, into Italy, etc.

In fact, we still have a coin that he turned into a ring. You can still see "New Zealand 1942" on the inner portion of the ring.

I used to do some Civil War reenacting myself, with an artillery unit that is still based in Rockford.

The more research I do, the more things I discover... campaigns which you hear nothing about, or information that is now available due to lifting of secret designations, etc.  Also, the people who were a part of it are telling their stories more often before they become lost forever, which would be very tragic.

As far as the miniatures go, these are from Black Tree, and part of something new that I will be adding to my battle reports.  In addition to all the other very interesting character and infantry figures that Black Tree makes for games such as Bolt Action, they also make "casualty" figures.

I have been slowly acquiring these, and they are something that I will place during games to mark (as often as is possible) where casualties have occurred.

Aside from the visual reminder of the costs of fighting, I have in the past used a variety of those markers with other systems.  This has helped a lot with post game analysis, as they really show where the action happened, and how you might have misdirected your troops, etc.

This was also one of my first opportunities to use the new homemade shrubs and flower tufts!

Here's a link to the article in which these grass, shrub and flower tufts were created, starting with part one:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/05/home-made-tufts-part-one-shrubs-and.html

And now for part two, and a thank to to all who have served, are serving, and will serve in the future:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/05/home-made-tufts-step-two-shrubs-and.html

Gangs of Rome

Here's another round of gladiators from Gangs of Rome.  Just as I did with the mobs, I painted the mosaic tile patterns onto the bases.  In that case of this guy, I matched the design from one of those larger multibases, so they would appear as if they were walking on the same floor.

These are the original bases, with the little cut outs for the wound counters and the identification numbers. I had a bit of fun with the shield design, playing the colors off the blueish grays of the mosaic tile floor.

I have a step by step guide to the mosaic tile painting here:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/05/mosaic-tile-basing.html