Basing the SG teams

For those who are interested, here's a quick walkthrough of how I am basing the SG teams.  The bases themselves are 3/4" fender washers.  I filled the hole with wood putty then glued a figure on it with white glue.  Once that was dry, I built up around the figures' cast on bases with Golden's "Light Modeling Paste".  The paste dries white, so I painted it brown.

To texture the surface, I used white glue and Woodland Scenics railroad ballast and earthblend turf.


I put together a magnetic stand that I used while painting the bases and putting on the ground cover.  It's simply a small wooden spool I got from Michaels, with two holes drilled in it and two magnets glued in the holes.  It holds the figures firmly while I'm working, and I can move the figure around however I need without worrying about getting my fingers into the areas I'm working.


First, I paint the base with undiluted white glue.  I do my best to not get any on the figure (I think I failed in this photo); if I do, I clean it up with a clean wet brush.


Next, using the scoop end of a sculpting tool I pick up some of the ballast and sprinkle it onto the base.


I'm not going for thick coverage, just a scattering of rocks on the base.


Once the rocks are in place, I drag the base through the turf flock.


Then I turn it sideways and firmly tap on the bottom of the base a few times to knock all the loose flock off, and I'm done.


The process goes pretty quickly, maybe a minute or two per base.

SG team closeups

I've been working on the bases on my SG teams, and took some closeup pictures of the nearly finished figures.  I need to clean up the base edges, but that will depend on how I want to identify teams.

One Week project, day seven

Yesterday's work looked just like day 5, except shinier, so there wasn't anything interesting to look at.  Thus, no post.  Today I used Minwax Antique Walnut polyurethane stain to wash the figures.  Not much to say about it, I just brushed the stuff on and let it do its thing. All that is left is a matte coat to take off the shine and basing them.

 

 

I'm not very happy with how the black uniforms turned out.  They would have worked better with a bit of contrast; maybe using different shades of grey on parts of the figure.  A lesson for next time.

One Week project, day five

This really should be day four, since I couldn't paint yesterday, but I'll be a good boy.  :)

As I said before, today I painted unit badges (I know that's not the right word, but my brain isn't cooperating at the moment) and other bits I'd missed before.  The Javelin launcher tubes (back row) were painted with Ceramcoat's Green Sea to get a subtle difference form the uniforms.  The sniper teams' hats got the same color as their uniforms.  Badges are a black circle with a Rain Grey dot in the center; at this size, any more detail than that wouldn't be visible.  Pictures are below.

Tomorrow, after all the paint dries completely, I'll give everyone a coat of Future.  And then Friday they'll get the dip, and I'll be done with them.  Once I have a stack of figures ready I'll hit them all with a matte coat, and then I'll worry about basing.


EDIT:  Rather than spamming RSS feeds with little of interest, I'll just say here that day six looks just like day 5, except shinier.  Tomorrow should be more interesting.

One Week project, day three

Day three is done, and I've painted the flesh on all but one stick of figures.  Since I expected to only get about half of them done, I'm doing better than planned.

I put several colors (Dark brown, bambi brown, medium flesh and fleshtone, all Ceramcoat; while on the topic, the uniforms are wedgewood green) on my palette and switched between them from figure to figure for variety.  I slopped it a little bit, but I can clean that up once I finish the skin.

Tomorrow evening I'll be busy, and don't plan to do more than get the last of the skin painted and clean up my sloppy brushwork.  Next post on Wednesday, after I get the shoulder badges painted and take care of the details I missed (like the Javelins).