Current wip

Apologies for the lack of posts of late. Running out of command figures necessitated a quick order to the Perries (which arrived within 3 days - phew!) and as a result I find myself with 3 units nearing completion at the same time, said completion delayed by a weekend away and ongoing prep for the big trip to Kiwiland and South Africa. So above is a wip shot of Seth Warner's "Green Mountain Boys" ("GMB"). I'd be interested to know what readers think of the colour scheme. I found the recreated GMB's website last week (see here)and that shows the men in a mix of the green faced red coats that sources refer to and hunting shirts in a variety of greens, mostly very pale greens. These 3 chaps are "test" figures insofar as I wanted to see which look I preferred. As it is, the figures I am painting now are in different shades to these, so the end result is going to be what Whistler might have called "Symphony in Green. It's been good fun though - it's always tempting to paint hunting shirts in browns, beiges and whites; largely because, I suppose, those are readily available colours. But hunting shirts came in all colours, and the colours I am using for the GMB are all "self-mixed".

The GMB aside, I thought I'd use this post to say a few words about how I base figures. This is in reply to a couple of email discussions about the colour of bases. When I first started basing my AWI figures (about 2 months after I started painting them) I wanted a look that was quite "bright", so reflecting my own painting style and conveying the impression that the figures were in American meadows; I thought this would capture a "New World" feel. So the colours I use are these (after covering up the metal bases with Polyfilla and adding Games Wokshop or other grit/stone mix : the base coat is GW "Graveyard Earth"; first highlight is Foundry "Base Sand 10B"; second highlight is Foundry "Boneyard 9C". I then use a variety of Woodland Scenic stuff, mainly "bushes" and "coarse earth", with some flower scatter and then whatever static grass I've picked up at shows. You can buy seasonal grass these days, but as said above I like to have a summer meadow look so mid-green is fine for me.

The pics below show, left to right, "Graveyard Earth", then the first drybrushed highlight and the then second of "Boneyard C".