Basing Das Biest

One of the most unique experiences of working with the Bolt Action armies has been the basing of weapon teams and artillery pieces.  You have seen a few of the smaller and mid size guns, but now I am working my way towards some of the heaviest pieces, like this German howitzer.

The materials were pretty basic... wood glue, super glue, oxide paste, and pieces of tree branch.  This time around I was also using some cork and other elements to enhance the "diorama" look of the base.

I do have a blog post article on basing the French 75mm gun, which gives you a good sense of what's involved.  Eventually I will try to do one of these artillery basing sessions live on Facebook.  Here's a link:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2016/08/tank-busters.html

This view shows some of the added elements, like some vehicle stowage, machine guns, ammo crate and more.

The heavy cork was used to create the mound of earth in the front section of the gun emplacement, along with the wood glue and oxide paste.

The inset shows the use of leftover round sprues to create spent shell casings and even a few ready rounds in the ammo crate!  I tried to match the shell that was in the loader's hands as close as possible.  I used a small emery board style sander to shape the nose of the shell.

You can see how I tried to make a very active site, surrounding the crew with various items.

Here's what it looked like before I started priming it...

As usual, I brought out the Stynlrez primers from Badger to do my initial layers of painting.  While I do this for infantry and vehicles, it is even more handy for pieces such as this, where there are a lot of hard to reach sections, rough textures, and potentially some fragile bits too.

This illustrates the difference that this "pre-shading" makes.  It is much easier to work from this point, where the gun can be removed and painted, leaving easier access to the crew and the rest of the base.

There are more light and medium pieces on the way, including our Early War American weapon teams.  A whole range of French, Italian and Russian teams are in the works too, including urban winter and desert themes!  Stay tuned...

I will probably paint these live on facebook, taking you through the process!

Here comes Barney!

Just when I think I have done every kind of crazy thing possible in miniatures, you have this!

I was handed a group of toy plastic dinosaurs with a request to snazz them up a bit, and certainly make them a much brighter color scheme!  The comparison was to my Lizardman army, where I really went wild with some colors...

I thought it might be really interesting to paint "real" dinosaurs with the fantasy style Lizardman colors.  After a brief google search, I located some interesting patterns that were actually associated with dinosaur species.  Despite the name of this post, the one color that I was going to avoid would be purple.  I did use a tiny bit of it as an accent around the eyes and mouth.

I used one of my large filberts on this guy, since he was fairly large, easily twice the size of a Carnosaur.  I worked very quickly, which allowed me to do some neat blends with the greens, and then into the subsequent layers of reds.

The same bright yellow was used to highlight the greens and the reds, which provided some de-facto color unity between what are normally opposite tones.  While these are bright, contrasting colors, they are not completely overpowering.  A few spots were added for a bit of interest.

I put Secret Weapon Miniatures water effects over the mouth, eyes and claws to give them a different texture.  None of these will have bases, by the way, as per request.  It would have been interesting to build a diorama around them!

Stay tuned for more :-)

Lavender Chieftan

I was not really sure how I would approach this figure, even when I started painting it.  In fact, the overall color scheme changed more than once during the process!  That is a huge advantage in the Shaded Basecoat technique, where all you are doing it blocking in lights and darks as rapidly as possible.

A side advantage of this approach is that you don't have hours of time invested in painting any one part of the figure in those early stages, so completely changing the colors is not a hassle, and you feel more free to make the changes needed.

While we can usually guess what color scheme might work best on a figure before we start painting it, I think that everyone runs across a few that end up not working as the original plan intended.  Being able to quickly adjust that on the fly, and experiment right there on the figure itself can be very handy!

Since a lot of the shading is done through glazing and tinting, you won't be piling up lots of paint and losing details.  Most of the time it is about shifting color of some areas... but I have switched colors entirely, as in going from a "white" wolf to one that was essentially black :-)

Dead Eye Jane

This is the second Bombshell sculpt by Patrick Keith that was done as an Adepticon special release.

I will be using it in a special class for the Geek Nation Tours at Adepticon next year.

As usual, the idea is to show the Shaded Basecoat technique, and the glazing techniques too.  This will help to 'free up' your painting, not worrying about endless layers of progressively lighter paint or very specific 'color formulas'.  The concept is to simplify your palette down to 5-7 colors, so that you don't have to perpetually hunt down just the right color for a highlight or mid tone.

You can get a nice view of that in this blog post.  Of course, if you want to see these techniques for yourself, I have them available through my Painting Pyramid video series, which is available on USB drives!  Each episode is 100 minutes long, and it takes you from primer to painted miniature.

There are 53 different episodes to choose from, with basing, color theory, skin tones, metals, and even terrain videos!

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/p/using-shaded-basecoat-technique-to.html

The Ancient Past

Here's another one of those very old GW minis, long out of print.  It was a practice piece that I used as a spot demo, and then finished off later.  The idea was to show how the shaded basecoat and glazing technique could still be utilized on something even as ancient as this!

Of course, these 20-25 year old pieces don't have the kind of smooth, well defined lines of toady's minis, so it is very challenging.  Also, there is an additional challenge of attempting to break up these blockier shapes.  This means some fancy color work to try an add extra depth and dimension to the sculpt by making some interesting patterns in the mid tones and darker tones.

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/222593499218?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

Czech Marks

We "Czech off" one more early war vehicle for the German army with the Panzer 35T, manufactured in Czechoslovakia.  This was considered a medium tank at the time, but it soon was passed by the German Panzer series.

You've already seen the 38T, which is another Czech design.  That chassis would continue as a self propelled gun, but this kind of wheel assembly would only live on in Hungarian and Italian tank designs.

I have another blog post that dives into the painting of this vehicle, so here's a link for you!

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2017/07/top-secret.html

The 35 and 38 series comprised a large portion of the German tank forces during the Sickle Stroke advance into the Ardennes, which was a big surprise to the original German player in our group!  In fact, Ronmel himself rode atop a 38T.

While these are not very powerful, you do have the option of picking veteran tanks in both Czech designs.  The points cost is also lower than a Panzer 3 or 4.  This design has proven itself to be quite capable in games, bringing just enough firepower without presenting a large target, which the Panzer 4 would do.

I will shoot some group images of what I have thus far so that you can get a sense of the size comparison.

The Big Guns

This is one of two special sculpts by Patrick Keith for the folks of Geek Nation Tours.

I will be showing the people who are part of the Adepticon tour package a special demo on painting this with my Shaded Basecoat and glazing methods.

The general idea is to give you some flavor in how those techniques work, and how it makes your life a lot easier when it comes to getting lots of figures painted to a high degree at once.

Be sure to check out more of Patrick's amazing work on the Bombshell Miniatures website!!

More details on the Adepticon class to come, so stay tuned...