Turning water into fire!!!

Yes folks, it's true!  You can make fire from water!

All you need is a brush and some Vallejo Water Effects.  Like all the Vallejo gesso products, it has quite a bit of body, and literally stands up on its own.

I had a number of Reaper BONES fire miniatures that I wanted to use a fire markers in various games, such as Flames of War and Wild West Exodus.  Just using the flames themselves had little appeal to me, but trying to sculpt a bunch of extra flames to juice them up had even less appeal.

For some reason, the thought crossed my mind that using water effects gesso might actually make passable flames.

I started out by putting the black lava around the flames at the base to create embers.

Then I started to build up the flames using the all purpose craft brushes.  All you have to do is plop down some water effects, and then 'pull' it off to the side, twisting the brush along the way.

I even carried the effect up the side of the miniature itself!  And, there was no 'collapse' of the material.  Every flame was just the way I left it hours later.

Some white primer to unify the effect...

And time to paint!!!

I started with a white/yellow mix at the base.

And gradually began to add Vallejo fluorescent orange to the mix...

Each layer meant more of the fluorescent orange.  I didn't drybrush this.  I used flow improver to thin down the fluorescent paint, which despite its transparent nature, is quite thick.

At this point I began to introduce a bit of burnt orange to the mix.  If the previous layers were still wet, that was fine, as I took advantage of that situation to do some wet blending.

Each layer was more of the burnt umber color, which you see on the left.

I added a reddish black to the mix for some of the final layers.  You can see the difference that it makes already.

I didn't want to get too dark on the tips of the flames...

I then went back in with a white/yellow/fluorescent yellow mix to enhance the brightness at the base of the flames.

Here you go!

These will be fantastic for just about any game system, and they really took no time at all.

I am going to use this method from now on, and I intend to use it on a tin of stuff!   I will make flamethrower tanks for Pacific Theatre in Memoir '44, flame effects on my Warrior Nation WWX minis, 40k, WFB weapons, and much much more!!!

A beast of a man...

From Mierce Miniatures, another beastman.

He had a neat face, and some fun shapes to the armor.

One big honkin' weapon, though...

Eight is enough?

I'm not quite sure how, but it seems that I forgot to post group shots of all the Wayward Eight together!!

These are a set of mercenaries for Wild West Exodus.  They do a variety of interesting things in the game.

Ladies first!

These gals can fix vehicles, irradiate you, hack you apart or whisper sweet nothings in your ear...

Now for the 'Gents'.

Again, a whole different set of skills!

And yes... the Eight all in one view!

And again.

One last time!  I do hope to get a set of these for myself, and see what these characters can do in our games.

The Mysterious Stranger

Yup, the Stranger is in town, and she's mighty mean with that Winchester.

This is a very fun Reaper BONES miniature that I ran across, and thought it might add some flavor to the Wild West Exodus scenarios that we wanted to run using the new Jailhouse.

For some reason, I kept thinking of the Next Gen episode 'Fistfull of Datas', where Troi joins Worf & son on the holodeck.

She helps them out with the Hollander gang, and even guards the prisoner in the jail.  I thought it might be fun to have that character in our scenarios, helping out the Lawmen.

Ironically enough, much of the costume Troi wore in that episode matches this mini... and it happened to be very similar to my Lawmen color scheme.  How convenient!!

You're in the Jailhouse now...

We continue with our Jailhouse project, the fantastic new building from Burn In Designs.

No Jail is complete without Wanted posters, so it was time to hit Google. I selected a variety of posters, including those which left a spot for your own image.  

I figured that I would make my own Wanted posters later, and use this selection for now.  One of them was even Billie the Kid, so that was perfect!

Posters printed... time to cut them out!

The posters already add so much flavor!

More posters on the side walls...

And inside too!

I brought out some Secret Weapon weathering powders to do some final work...

Using a large, soft brush, the dried pigments were applied towards the bottom of the walls to indicate the kicked up dust.

A darker mixture was used to indicate some stains coming down from the roof.

I love the difference little touches such as these make.

Looking more and more like a jail...

Here's your sign!  Done in glowing red, as my Lawmen love.

The 'mysterious stranger' arrives at the Jail.  Could Worf be inside?

My next effort will be taking care of the boardwalk sections and possibly the Gallows.

Cutting no corners...

Now for another phase of the Jailhouse from Burn in Designs!

After the Flex Paste had dried, it was time to paint the walls!

I put out some basic colors on the palette... a few reddish browns, a grey, and an off white.

The reddish brown and grey were mixed together to create a darker, cooler red shade.

Some of the lighter browns, and even the off white were eventually mixed in as I brushed over the lighter colors with a larger flat brush.

By working rapidly with these broad strokes, the paint stayed wet enough for enough time to allow me to mix right on the panels.  The same was done for painting the stucco portions of the walls, scumbling the paint as before.

All four exterior walls painted!  Again, keeping the colors somewhat grayed down important, as well as maintaining a lot of subtle variety in the shading.

I used a mix of metallic paints and regular colors to paint the window bars.

Some preliminary stains painted on... but the majority of that work will be done later with weathering powders.

To hide the corner seams a little more, I applied flex paste to those edges once the pieces were glued together.

Once the secondary details were added, such as the weathering powders, these seams would be far less noticeable in the stucco areas.

I used a few Secret Weapon washes on the metal bars to tone them down and stain them a bit, and then glued them in place.

I also made some more variety of shades in the exposed brick portions of the exterior walls...

And finished gluing the cells in place.  Stay tuned for the next episode, where you will see all the final details, including wanted posters, added to this fine Jailhouse from Burn In Designs!!!