Hello,
Well, today I've finished cleaning up the figures, glued the riders to their horses and superglued the whole army onto nails & primed them ready for painting. I've found that gluing the figures to nails makes them a lot easier to handle whilst painting and means I can get to all of the awkward nooks & crannies(undersides of horses etc) without too much trouble. It also enables me to paint a bit more quickly than before; working a "production line" method - all the flesh on bowmen 1 through 6, then back to 1 to start on the tunics or whatever.
Whilst I was cleaning up the figures I had a bit of a re-think about what to do with the Light Horse figure who's bow was broken. I'd initially thought about depicting him as a lancer, but after looking at the command figures which would make up the army's sole Cavalry element I decided instead to swap the least inspiring looking command figure with the now lance armed Light Horse model and use him as Vlad's standard bearer. This will give me an opportunity to try my hand at drawing and painting a banner, hopefully making the command element look a bit more imposing...
I've finished my reading about the Wallachian army and have pretty much decided on a palette of colours to use; bright greens & muted browns with grey-white sheepskin hats and jackets where modelled, with the occasional splash of red for a bit of variety should be enough for the Rustici & Curteni. I'll spend more time, and use more reds, on the Voivode, his Boyars and Viteji to make them stand out a bit more.
I undercoat all of my minitaures with Games Workshop's chaos black spray primer. I find that it covers well and gives a good surface for acrylics to adhere to. I like black primer because it's very forgiving - you can pass off any fiddly bits you happen to miss as areas of shadow! I know that there are a few colours, particularly red and yellow, which don't cover black very well, but I've got my techniques for those which I'll discuss in more detail as I progress...
I mainly use Vallejo and Citadel paints, but also have a few paints from other manufacturers; Winsor & Newton, Daler-Rowney & Humbrol - it seems that every time I visit an art/model store I seem to discover a colour which will fill some perceived gap in my paint collection....
I use Pro-Arte Acrylix brushes - they're inexpensive and I've found that they maintain a good point for a long time. I use an old white dinner plate for thinning/mixing paints. Because I do most of my painting in the evenings I have an old lamp with a flexible neck and a daylight simulation bulb (available at most hobby stores). Finally, I find that Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" or "Blonde on Blonde" are good background music for painting..
Well, the 1st coat of primer should be nearly dry - I'll go and re-spray any bits that i've missed and leave them for a few hours.
Whilst I'm waiting I'll measure & cut the bases for the army. I use mounting card for my bases, and have recently discovered that my local art store sells off damaged sheets (bashed corners, slight creases etc) for a 20pence donation to a local charity - I've picked up enough sheets this way to provide enough bases for all my DBA needs for the next couple of years...! Every basing method has it's pros & cons - Although it's inexpensive & easy to cut, I've read that people find that mounting card warps and isn't very durable. I use woodfiller to texture my card bases and find that this makes the bases a lot tougher and doesn't cause them to warp. I'm just cutting the bases for now and will go into more detail about my basing technique once I reach that stage.
bye for now
Bob
posted by Bob Mcleish @ 6:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home