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).

One Week project, day two

For day two I painted pants and sleeves green on most of the figures getting green uniforms, though I didn't manage to get the last five done.  The green appears too light now, but I plan to finish these off with a dip and that should get it to about the right shade.

 

(click to view larger) 

I'm pleased with my progress so far.  Tomorrow's plan is to finish the last guys getting green uniforms and start on the flesh.

One Week project, day one

Over on MacPhee's Miniature Men, Scott posted daily updates on his project to paint 250 figures in one week.  I decided to try to push myself into painting more (or at least stay on a project until its finished), and try the same with some 15mm US Army figures from Rebel Minis.  I bought their Force on Force US Army platoon box (about 60 figures) to use as Stargate Command teams and mid-tech troops for scifi games.  I like the figures;  they were molded cleanly and have good detail, with little flash to remove.  They should be fun to paint.

I plan to have about 2/3 of them in the early series green uniforms, and the other 1/3 in the black uniforms that showed up later.  I cleaned them up for painting a few weeks ago; today I glued them to craft sticks, primed them with black gesso and followed that with a drybrush of Ceramcoat charcoal grey.

 

Figures hot-glued to their craft sticks. Click the image for a closer (but not particularly interesting at this point) view.

  

Primed and drybrushed.

After some problems with the hot glue not holding the figures very well, I grabbed some more sticks and glued the figures down with Elmers' glue instead.   I'll go back in the morning and touch up the spots where I scuffed paint off raised surfaces while switching them.  Hopefully they'll come off the craft sticks easily when I'm done.

Resolutions

I've realized that I haven't been keeping this updated, or getting much work done on much of anything for a while. No real reason for it, I'm just easily distracted. Thus, in addition to the usual New Years' resolution failures (lose weight, keep up with the housekeeping, etc.) I've also resolved to put paint on figures every day I'm at home and to update the blog at least monthly. So, to further that, photos of the month's work.

First, some German Aeronef from Brigade Models, ordered from Wizard's Workshop.

(As usual, click on the pictures for larger versions.)

This is the German Fleet Pack #3, mostly completed.  I still need to detail the windows and finish up the bases with nametags.  I misplaced the labels I use for the nametags, and need to find them or get new ones. 

All were primed with Liquitex grey gesso and painted (Ceramcoat color names unless stated otherwise) with Hippo Grey hulls, Bambi Brown covered with Golden Brown decks, and Folk Arts' Parchment for the windows.  Tail markings are Black, Parchment and Vallejo's Flat Red. 

A Moltke class Battlecruiser

Prince Heinrich heavy cruiser

Karlsruhe destroyer leader. 

The pack should have had two of the Karlsruhe and a VA7 patrol nef, but mine had three Karlsruhe instead.

These are fun and pretty quick to paint up.  The tail marking suffer from my inability to paint a straight line, so I'm going to try to make decals (with the Testors decal kit) to replace them.  We'll see how well it works out.

We'll also see how well the resolutions work out.  Maybe I'll manage to finish up some of these other projects on my workbench.

Some progress on the British

I'm painting up some of the British now; the martians need some file work before I can start painting them.  Below are some in-progress shots, up to what I completed today.

I'm using a method I read on TMP (I think), painting from the bottom up rather than the inside out.  It works well for me when I do it right, because I'm less worried about staying "between the lines" as I paint.  I just have to worry about one line, the other side will be cleaned up when I move up the figure.

The earlier martian test was painted top-down.  I didn't like that as much, because it turns out often will rest the figure on its head so I can get to the bottom of weapons and equipment.  This scuffed the paint off the already painted helmet.  Bottom up works much better.

Also, I really hate painting white.  

Test Figures for Colonial Mars

I've finally finished the Martian native test figure for my Colonial Mars project, and have the pictures to prove it.  Here are shots of him and the earlier British soldier I finished.  

(Click the images for larger copies.)

Both figurse are from RAFM's Space: 1889 line; one from the Soldiers of the Queen set and the other from Legions of Mars.  The British soldier is on a Litko plywood base, with wood filler bringing the surface up to the level of the figure's cast-on base.  The base hasn't been painted yet.  Paints are all acrylics, with a gloss coat of Future followed by washes and sealed with Krylon's Matte Finish spray.

Both were fun, quick paint jobs.  It should be easy for me to paint up both units of figures quickly.