Little Wars Part One: A new arms race begins!

After many years of attempted persuasion, we finally made it to Little Wars!  I had no idea what to expect, aside from seeing lots of historical minis. :-)

It was held at the old Adepticon hotel, the Westin in Lombard.  There were lots of huge tables set up in the main ballroom where epic games of Flames of War and Bolt Action were taking place, along with many other historical wargaming systems.  There were some 1/700 scale naval combat games in progress that certainly seemed interesting!

I never got to see that much closer than a cursory glance, since a quick walk through the vendor's hall revealed a set of tables with Gorgon Studios figures (of Hank Edley fame) and Ken from Badger Air Brush!

Moments later, I was able to get some plastic and die cast metal toy tanks, and an airbrush was in my hand!  How did that happen?

I had a Bolt Action Panther tank as well, so I thought that I had a nice variety of things to play with.  Also, several of these already had paint on them, so this would be a very interesting experiment!

I was going to be able to see how the airbrush worked on "pristine" tanks, and even a die cast Centurion British tank!

Since I hadn't touched any of my airbrushes for over a dozen years, Ken had no idea what kind of madness might take place...

Straight away, I had to "undo" some of the painting that had been done on the toy tanks.  Take note: these toy tanks were just a few dollars each, so they will not be to scale or completely accurate from a historical standpoint!

Once I had done a lot of structural work on the undersides of the vehicles, as well as the treads, drive wheels and such, I could get a solid base on which to start painting camo patterns or even the gray on the Tiger 1 (I'll have to make a new barrel for that guy!)

There was no way to show this in a photo, but I was having a lot of fun "layering" the paint in the airbrush.  That is, I would pour in some orange rust color primer, followed by a layer of black, followed by a layer of yellow.

When I started spraying, the first color to come out was orange, of course.  However, as I kept spraying, that color automatically transitioned to brown, then to black!  Once the black started to run out, the color changed to green, as the yellow started to assert itself.

Eventually, the color became mostly yellow, which made a very nice base for those late war German camo patterns!

From there, all I had to do was inject a little of the orange color back into the mix to complete that late war color scheme.

On the Centurion, I didn't use much of the orange, but stuck with the black/yellow "layer cake" approach.

All the while, I was preparing and planning for the time where 'regular' brushes would be brought into the mix.  Meaning that I was doing all the usual tricks for creating ideal areas to show off rust, paint chips, streaks and so on.  If you have seen my previous tank weathering articles, you know what I like to do there.

This is also where things got interesting.  I had not brought ANY of my painting tools!  No brushes, no paint, no nothing.

So, I bought a few brushes, grabbed a piece of paper that seemed somewhat water resistant, and realized that I had no paint colors!  All that was available was a few of the primer colors still on the table.

You all know that I like "primer painting", so it was not a total loss.

You can see how mixing up some of the primer with the one or two airbrush colors made some very nice shades to use for the next phase.  I focused primarily on the shading of deep recesses and paint chipping.

This small amount of additional painting, done without my magnifier light, made an instant impact!  I was trying to do these as a demo for folks gathered around the table as well.

Because, when you haven't touched the airbrush in 12 years, and never painted a tank with it before, that's the perfect time to demonstrate it!!

I only had white primer available, but it still made a nice base for some of the insignia.  Hard to do without my magnifier light, but it was necessary to continue the demo.

You can see those yellowish green colors that I was using to shade some of the more detailed recess areas on the various tanks.  I worked around hatches, rivets, gaps between armor plates, and more.

Once I had the paint chips established, I could do some streaks running down the sides of the turrets and hulls from those "starting points".

Stay tuned for much more from the Little Wars Airbrush Escapade!!

Erik the Red

Here's a little break from the pirate basing series.  The latest in the set of Red Box Games barbarian style figures.

As before, these guys are following the same basing and color scheme which has been used for the rest of the massive army!

I have had fun working with a variety of color combinations on the metals.  The latest experiment involved mixing a Reaper midnight blue with a very light grayish green.  When juxtaposed with the warmer rust colors, those greenish blue tones are neutralized a little and a reddish blue tint appears in some areas.

When you are painting a broader expanse such as the back of that armor plating, getting this kind of color variety and transition is more important.  The viewer doesn't really know why that surface became more interesting to look at, but they will notice all the same!

Last but not least, some of the same colors used in the snow must appear on the figure too... particularly on metal surfaces.  To have that influence the skin colors, making them somewhat greenish does the trick.

As for tinting the reds to show this influence, using a grayish green to lighten them will make a grayed down, lighter red color.  This also means you won't get pink or purple, which would happen if you mix light blue with your reds.

Ninja Gobbo!

This pesky little guy was converted for the Samurai Blood Bowl team that you have seen me working on.  The figure was originally a 40K Grot with a pistol.

I cur the gun from the hand, and shaved away the rest as well as possible.  He already had the bandanna over his mouth (where I got the Ninja idea for starters!), so I sculpted on the robe.

I'm waiting to paint on all the numbers once the rest of the players are done... so stay tuned.

A Pirate's Life...

I thought it might be a good idea to snap some images of the bases before I started the painting process, so here you go!  I'll be posting some step by step articles on that process for you as well.

These overviews give you a decent sense of the variety in textures and extras across the whole set.

While there should be plenty of room to fit any kind of figure on the 30,40 and 50mm bases, I will have enough gold coins, masts and wood pieces to keep the entire batch interesting!

Within the batch of 30mm, there are plenty of differences.  In fact, there is just about one of each 'style' of base.  For further differences, a rope coil or cannon balls could be added.

However, that's the kind of thing I would have needed to work around an actual figure.  Not having them on hand meant that I needed to be more conservative.

Now for some 40mm goodness...

And one last view of the set!

Remember, this kind of basing is one of a dozen different basing techniques that are part of my Painting Pyramid set!

http://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/James-Wappel-s-Wood-planks-Barrels-and-Chests-p/jameswappelwoodplanks.htm

A Golden Age

Here's another one of the Golden Boys for you... a brief return to the bright golds and blue combination.

I did a slightly different freehand on this one, but the essentials of the color mixes remained the same.

With gold NMM, it's very important to have a few intense colors balanced alongside the more muted, cooler tones.  I often include some of the Vallejo fluorescent yellow into the more saturated mixes, so that they can be more intense without having to also be lighter!

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/222101572315?

Treasure!

We last saw our pirate bases in need of a few more touches.  While there are many possibilities, such as rope coils, barrels, wooden pins, skulls and sea shells, I will focus on one simple addition.

That is gold coins!  And even a few spikes for the masts.

I have a variety of polystyrene tubes, which are perfect for this!  Of course, you could also use coils of green stuff which have cured as well.  I have done that when I didn't have any tubing on hand.

The tubes are cut into coins with a very sharp exacto blade.  This can be tricky, as he pieces sometimes want to jump away!  You will probably lose a few in the process.  Also, it is not always easy to keep the blade straight as you cut it.

The narrower the gauge of the coil, the easier it will be.

I like to have a large collection of coins on hand, so that I can make some nice piles!

I put down a splotch of super glue (it was a thicker, gel style glue), and began placing the coins.  I tried to stack them up on each other, attempting to keep the piles as random as possible!

It's always a good idea to have a few piles.  One should be larger than the other... or at least have a few stray coins rolling away from the main pile.

Like this.  However, always keep in mind the footprint of the figure that will be standing on this!

They certainly make a nice touch around the base of the mast!

Two more piles of coins strategically placed.  There should be no problem getting a mini on here!

Last but not least, you can see that I used some of the coins as spikes for the metal rings on the masts.  You could use different gauges of tubing for those, and even for some nails on the planks.

Again, these are more for an army style project, so keeping things simple was a major factor.

You can go as crazy as you want!

Now that they are complete, the painting process is well under way.  Stay tuned for some step by step articles on those as well.

Raise the Masts!!

As promised, the next episode in the pirate theme bases, showing the addition of the masts.

The first article showed all of the various sculpey pieces, including these rolled tubes.  I try to have a nice selection of widths, so that I could also have broken yard arms in addition to the thicker masts.

Since these are being made for someone else who will be adding the figures later on, I had to guess at what might be put on a given base.

This is important, as I try to avoid having the broken mast be the same height as the figure.  Shorter or taller than the figure is ideal, because two items of the same height in such a confined space is a poor composition.

You can't always avoid this, but it is not a bad rule of thumb to work with.

The broken section of the mast is carved away.  I try to let the sculpey break in a natural way, creating its own pattern.  It is best to have one part of the break be deeper than the rest, to show either a weak spot in the wood, or the interior wood grain.

To make things go a little quicker, I began with the wedge tool.  In the past, I have only worked with the scoring tool of a narrower gouging tool, but I felt like I wanted a stronger texture on these masts.

After working my way around the mast with the wedge carver, I took out a flat carving tool, and did some broad shavings around the mast to tone down parts of the texture.  This was much quicker that the scoring tool method... and you can see how much the texture was smoothed out.

I had some very thin plasticard on hand to create some metal rings on the mast.  You could even use paper, but that sometimes tends to bend and kink rather than wrap smoothly.

Some super glue was applied to the area, and the strip was wrapped around it.

A second, thinner strip was added further up the mast to make it more interesting.  You could hang wooden pegs from this, or even some rope coils if you really wanted to get fancy!

Once the masts are complete, it's time to glue those guys down!

The next episode will cover the quick addition of some gold coins, and some spikes on these metal strips that were added to the masts.  Stay tuned!