Painting progress - October, November and December

Quite a few minis finished in this period, though with 3 months to work in it's not as good as I hoped though I have been learning things with the Speedpaints that I think will help me go through a lot of figures in a short period. 

First up Orctober painting 

An Orc and an Elf Lady from Alternative Armies Flintloque range - my first time of painting an Orc in Orctober.

Frostgrave Archer, Infantryman and Knight. Two plastics and a metal from NorthStar.

Three Alternative Armies giant spiders in resin, so I now have 8 of these painted.

 

Two 15mm Hordes of the Future cultist bikes.

Then December's massive set of rebased 20mms and 28mm Fantasy and SF figures.

 A Flintloque Orc and Todoroni, Frostgrave thief, Reaper Troll and a home made Stargrave marker.

 Second World War 20mm rebased command figures - mix of Ceasar, Revell, Italieri and SHQ.

 

  

 

SHQ German command

 

 

 Finally Matchbox British Commandos.

 

 

Another useful Speedpaint video

 

More useful tips on using Army Painter Speedpaints to get great effects, interesting to think about using them more like oils with blending than conventional acrylics. Thanks to Dana Howl for keeping on with these great tips.

Army Painter Speedpaints

 Speedpaints are the Army Painter's response to GW's Contrast paints where the idea is that a single specially formulated paint allows a base coat, shade and highlight effect to be achieved in one application. There has been some controversy about the reactivation effect where overpainting or highlighting causes the speedpaint to bleed in with any water based paint or glaze. This video shows how to get around it and to use reactivation to produce highlighting effects.

Overall I have found that Speedpaints are great for bulk paining armies, which is what they are intended for, but they reward painting that keeps colours in the areas they are meant to be in as they are quite translucent so anything under one can show through. 

Here are some trial pieces I've been working on.

Alternative Armies Sidhe (Celtic Elves) - using Crusader Flesh and Dark Wood. The flesh definitely works better over a flat white undercoat than something else I tried which was a pseudo-zenithal approach with a grey basecoat (AP Uniform Grey) with a white drybrush that I tried with the witches. I think next time I use Dark Wood I'll thin it with some medium as otherwise I find it a bit strong.

Frostgrave Witches made from the plastic set and Reaper Owl familiar. Crusader Flesh, Grim Black, Dark Wood, and Gravelord Grey used so far. I used my pseudo-zenithal technique on these but in future I'll use a plain white finish on skin areas. 

Skeletons from Mantic and Oathmark in Pallid Bone, Dark Wood and Gravelord Grey. Reaper bones troll done with pseudo-zenithal and Orc Skin. I'm pretty happy with these particularly the troll.

Painting Progress October 2022 and Song of Arthur and Merlin plans

 Some figures that I got finished this month mainly for Five Parsecs from Home and Stargrave, with one marker for Silver Bayonet/ROSD. These were largely painted with The Army Painter Speedpaints, where I've found that that it really is critical to get a smooth finish on the undercoat as otherwise the paint tends to clump around any spots.

 

For the Culwych and Olwen campaign I needed a giant which was not something I had in my collection, so I went with Reaper Bones for a Stone Giant, Cave Troll and Basilisk to give me a bigger set of large monsters to work with.