A Little Diversion
12 hours ago
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Numidian Light Horse w.i.p.
Hello again, sorry for the delay but there has been alot of playoff hockey on.
Recently I have begun working on 2 battlegroups of 4 bases of Numidian Light Horse, but since I don't own a camera I was more compelled to paint then post. Initially I thought painting these guys would be a breeze, not only were they similarly attired to their unhorsed countrymen, I had the previous experience of painting the Javelinmen on my side. I am embarrassed to admit my ignorance about painting yet again, and must own up to underestimating the horses themselves. There is only a grand total of 16 of them but they couldn't be all the same colour, and I only own 2 shades of brown (citadels Scorched Brown and Snakebite Leather), and taking into account my budget (broke = no new paints), I was forced to adapt and quickly. So I started blending paints. Something that I had been hoping to avoid attempting at this scale until I was more comfortable working within it. But there I was, blending up browns and greys hurriedly painting horses two at a time before the blend dried. Not fun, not an ideal situation, none the less this experience hasn't been a total wash just yet as I did pick up a couple things that made painting much easier.
One painting blog that I really like is Macphees Miniature Men, not only is this guy a world class painter, he is also an articulate source of a wide range of technique some of the smallest of which can make a startling difference. One of which that I thankfully had the (rare) foresight to try, and one in my imbecility (constant) was not applied to my current project, that I will endeavour to use from now on.
The first one is the simple use of jumbo Popsicle sticks as a painting base. This was a double improvement as not only was my previous method of using mactac and a paint pot frustrating (as they wiggled, or fell while drying), and added time to my process (as I often had to pick the mactac off after, sometimes exposing unpainted areas - arrgh). The Popsicle method is infinitely better, not only for the above mentioned reasons but also it enabled me to put similar models together in an attempt to limit repetition. In doing so I was able to make sure that duplicate models were on different horses, and that their respective horses were painted differently.
The second one, is the simple idea of undercoating with a lighter toned brown (ie: not too dark, nor too red or yellow tinted either), instead of white. Missed spots on Numidians look like stars in an afternoon sky when you undercoat in white and I am getting frustrated doing untold recoats of mixed spots. This little gem of knowledge (+2 on intelligence based skill checks), reminds me of a certain joke from the amazing art/humour blog Ninjabread:
http://www.ninjabread.co.uk/?p=20
Luckily that wonderful angel Ella swung by and snapped some pics, so now you can see how they are coming along (slowly). She said I am getting better at painting, and although the jury is still out on that one, I really thing she hit her stride at taking pictures in this scale take a peek at the shots above and I am sure you will agree with me.
Recently I have begun working on 2 battlegroups of 4 bases of Numidian Light Horse, but since I don't own a camera I was more compelled to paint then post. Initially I thought painting these guys would be a breeze, not only were they similarly attired to their unhorsed countrymen, I had the previous experience of painting the Javelinmen on my side. I am embarrassed to admit my ignorance about painting yet again, and must own up to underestimating the horses themselves. There is only a grand total of 16 of them but they couldn't be all the same colour, and I only own 2 shades of brown (citadels Scorched Brown and Snakebite Leather), and taking into account my budget (broke = no new paints), I was forced to adapt and quickly. So I started blending paints. Something that I had been hoping to avoid attempting at this scale until I was more comfortable working within it. But there I was, blending up browns and greys hurriedly painting horses two at a time before the blend dried. Not fun, not an ideal situation, none the less this experience hasn't been a total wash just yet as I did pick up a couple things that made painting much easier.
One painting blog that I really like is Macphees Miniature Men, not only is this guy a world class painter, he is also an articulate source of a wide range of technique some of the smallest of which can make a startling difference. One of which that I thankfully had the (rare) foresight to try, and one in my imbecility (constant) was not applied to my current project, that I will endeavour to use from now on.
The first one is the simple use of jumbo Popsicle sticks as a painting base. This was a double improvement as not only was my previous method of using mactac and a paint pot frustrating (as they wiggled, or fell while drying), and added time to my process (as I often had to pick the mactac off after, sometimes exposing unpainted areas - arrgh). The Popsicle method is infinitely better, not only for the above mentioned reasons but also it enabled me to put similar models together in an attempt to limit repetition. In doing so I was able to make sure that duplicate models were on different horses, and that their respective horses were painted differently.
The second one, is the simple idea of undercoating with a lighter toned brown (ie: not too dark, nor too red or yellow tinted either), instead of white. Missed spots on Numidians look like stars in an afternoon sky when you undercoat in white and I am getting frustrated doing untold recoats of mixed spots. This little gem of knowledge (+2 on intelligence based skill checks), reminds me of a certain joke from the amazing art/humour blog Ninjabread:
http://www.ninjabread.co.uk/?p=20
Luckily that wonderful angel Ella swung by and snapped some pics, so now you can see how they are coming along (slowly). She said I am getting better at painting, and although the jury is still out on that one, I really thing she hit her stride at taking pictures in this scale take a peek at the shots above and I am sure you will agree with me.
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