Tuesday 4 December 2007

Current wip



A short hiatus again whilst the new stuff is based. The 2nd New Hampshire is now almost finished; the final 4 figures will be varnished tomorow morning. Above are two "work in progress" shots taken last week. This 20-figure regiment is going to be one of my smartest Continental units, which probably means that it will never last more than 3 turns in any battle before being routed...The regiment has some interesting flag history, which I shall talk about in my next post.

Plans for December? Well, it's Christmas (which of course means lots of shopping) and next week will be very busy at work; so I'm not going to set myself too hard a target. I want to do the Hessian von Bose Musketeers, because I just feel the urge to paint more Hessians, although the next batch on the painting table is some Conquest Miniatures Delaware indians. I also have a couple of random bits and bobs that I want to do, and some Nap cavalry that I've been postponing for ages - I see xmas as a time to catch up with all kinds of things I have neglected over the past few months: I must finish my first Sudan Beja tribe, 40 of which are already painted, leaving another 20 to do (photos only when the entire 60 figures are ready).

The first week of January 2008 will mark the first year of this blog.......many thanks indeed to everyone who's travelled along with it. As an "anniversary post" and in response to the many emails (well, the 3 emails) I've had asking how I paint, in the New Year I will try to post a "how I paint regimental faces" article, i.e. how I try to "gel" 16 figures' faces together into something that looks like a regiment. I've been thinking about this the past couple of months and have concluded that it's dead easy; all you need is a 0000 paint brush, brand new pots of white and black paint, 4 decent flesh tones, a bit of patience and some very relaxing background music (such as Bach, Handel or Sir Arnold Bax).

5 comments:

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Hello there Giles,

The Von Bose Regiment, you say? Goody, goody, goody!!! This particular unit has fascinated me for years. I'll look forward to reading about your treatment of it here.

Best Regards,

Stokes

Anonymous said...

Lovely stuff Darling.
Whats the gunk you use to build up you're bases?

Giles said...

Hi Purp.

Gunk is just any old polyfiller; i use the stuff in tubes rather than tubs. Once it's all dry I then put PVA over the base and place the figrues in a box of grit/stones etc (I usually use GW stone scatter but I'm currently using a bag of stuff from Timecast I think). Once the scatter has set and the excess shaken off, I paint the base with GW "Graveyard Earth" and then highlight with Foundry "Base Sand B" and "Boneyard C". Finally I glue onsmall clumps of bushes and foliage before adding more PVA and sprinkling on lots of static grass. All that takes a few days...

In answer to your earlier question (which I only spotted the other day!) I always use a black undercoat.

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

...I'll second Stokes's comment... lovely painting as usual, any idea's why some of them appear to be wearing their tricorne's sideways??? Precursor of the bicorne perhaps?? :o))

Peter Mark-Smith said...

Thankyou Giles, was just wondering.
I use a textured coating stuff myself - ready mixed and in a tub that will last me, well forever!

All the same stuff really.

For the static grass have you tried the two tone effect? Something I found, especially on terrain boards was that the static grass covers poorly - so I always wait till glue is tacky - then sprinkle the longer static grass - then straight after - when you've got rid of the excess grass that hasn't stuck - poor on a load of small flock, of a slightly different shade and it fills all the patches missed and creates a really great grass effect.

I think I stole the idea from Mr Watts - but I shall take credit ;)

Better explained here -

http://www.petesproject.co.uk/layout/staticgrass.html

Beats Staticing 40 times :)
Looks awesome in the flesh.

BTB - Black Undercoat, I shall never forgive you!

Cheers!