Mob Violence

We return to the mean streets of Rome once more to show the last of the mobs, part of the new Gangs of Rome set by Warlord Games.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the most interesting aspect of the game for me is the random ways in which the mobs will react to the fighting going on around them.

They might run away, they might assist their favorite gladiator... or they may just try to kill him!  One never quite knows how the crowd will react.

For those who did not see the step by step post on the mosaic tile bases, here is a link to that article:

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

As you can see, each mob has a very interesting characteristic.  They really did manage to capture all manner of citizens, slaves, and passers by.

Let's not forget the individual figures!  I think these guys aren't sure if they should drop what they are carrying and run away, or if they should bash someone on the head!

I do have another set of these, which I was thinking of using for a series of tutorial videos.  

These would go into much more depth, showing how I did the skin tones on the individual figures as well as the clothing.

There is already a Painting Pyramid Mosaic Tile basing video available for the Patrons who have pledged $5 to the Patreon Page:

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Low Pressure Painting

While you have seen many different experiments with the oil paints, terrain, etc., over the last several months... there is one other area where I have been trying out some new things!

Until recently, the airbrush was used as a tool strictly for "Primer Painting", working on terrain, and so on.  It was really just a way to do mass prepping for working with my regular brushes.

Not only did several projects demand a slightly different approach, but my curiosity was also nagging at me as I pondered other uses for the airbrush.  This had to do with painting a bit more with the airbrush, more specifically at far lower air pressures than I had used!

Long ago, when I last used an airbrush for painting, I was working with an external needle Pasche which required very high PSI in order to make the mechanism spin up.  I got pretty used to this higher air pressure, and continued to do so when I used the Patriot and Sotar brushes from Badger.

This beast, however, would require a very different approach.  The interior is what posed a major problem, along with the sheer size of the vehicle.

You could see very little of the interior via the hatches, so there was not point in wasting effort on doing lots of glazes and other standard techniques there.  So, I had to figure out a way to maximize the airbrush phase to make it look more like I had done all those extra elements.

Using a pressure about 1/3 the usual, I was able to get some significant shading and color variations... more like what I would normally do with my brushes, glazing, and so on.  The Puma to the right was done at the same time, among several other items.

I also did a LOT more masking than I had done on any other figures.  Fortunately I have a large supply of blu tac!  I was able to mask off this requested camo pattern, and manage to get a lot of shading built into it.

Again, this had a lot to do with the extra effort of masking, and that very low air pressure.

Once the masking was removed, I went back into the shadow areas to get some extra colors and tones, and even a bit of weathering.

I was very pleased at how I could achieve something that was almost transparent at times, as if I was doing a standard glaze with my brushes!  This was something I did all the time with my watercolors (specifically Dr. Martin's Dyes).

Now, the Badger Ghost Tints serve that purpose, and I mixed them in every so often to get a more translucent effect.

As usual, most of the colors used were from the set of 12 primer colors from Badger, the beloved Stynlrez.  I also used a few of the paints that I first used on some terrain a few months ago.  Those colors also have some nice depth.

Most of the camo patterns were painted with those.

I will still be doing a significant amount of work with my regular brushes, but the weathering is supposed to be quite minimal, so you won't see a lot of chipping, rust or mud effects this time!

The other thing I noticed about the lower PSI is that everything was much more quiet, and the spread of paint particles was not quite as broad as I am used to with the more violent priming process.  So, this makes it more likely that I could do some sort of Facebook live or other kind of painting session with the airbrushes in the future.

Stay tuned, because you never know what might happen!

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!