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.

 

 

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 - slow but hopefully improving soon.

 Some more finished minis. Actually from back in May, with more Alternative Armies, Northstar, Copplestone (Grenadier) and Ral Partha.All a bit overexposed but hopefully some time I'll get to do some photography with better light.

Grenadier Future Warriors Scavengers sculpted by the brilliant Mark Copplestone. Now available from EM4 Miniatures.

Alternative Armies Giant Spiders, L, 2R and R. Ral Partha Sabre Tooth Tiger, Northstar Ice Toad.

Miniatures Painting Progress April 2022 part 1

 First batch of miniatures finished in April 2022 - some old Grenadier Future Wars figures sculpted by Mark Copplestone that will see service in Five Parsecs, my Frostgrave mage and apprentice and a couple of cultists, an Alternative Armies carnivorous plant and a Reaper Troll. These include my first efforts with Army Painter Speedpaints on the cultists and plant.

Future Wars Police - the "Copplestone Cops"

Frostgrave Cultists and AA Carnivorous Plant

Frostgrave treasure marker, apprentice and Sigilist

Reaper Troll painted as a frost troll

Miniatures painting progress - March 2022

 A few minis finished off in March 2022. All 28mm figures

Reaper Bones mainly, with the bear, rats and worm from that range and a Ral Partha wraith. 

Mainly painted with Vallejo paints

These will get used for Frostgrave, Rangers of Shadow Deep and other fantasy games.

Painting Update October 2018 Fifteens and Frostgrave

Lots of stuff finished this time

15mm ACW

More rebased ACW - 20 Confederate infantry, 8 Confederate command, 4 Union command and 4 Union infantry this time.

Newly Painted ACW - 20 more Confederate infantry and 4 command

15mm SF 

Security Force Alpha and a Laserburn Partisan scout car

25mm Frostgrave

Giant spiders and a tomb

Painting update - Mid September

Finally got some more painting and rebasing progress after a slow period. I'm concentrating on my 3Fs for the year - 15mm, Flintloque and Frostgrave though the release of the excellent Sharp Practice 2 from the Too Fat Lardies has distracted me a bit with the many projects this suggests.

Completed recently - more rebased figures from my old ACW collection from the 1980s - I've moved away from 1st Edition Johnny Reb rules to  a standard basing that should allow me to use the Lardies' They couldn't hit an Elephant, Fire & Fury and Real Time Wargames "Stonewall" Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley.

Completed

1 base of US Infantry Command and 8 bases of US Infantry

5 bases Confederate Infantry

Plans for 2016 and 2015 in review

Plans for 2016

Painting - priorities will be finishing off the stuff in the pipeline which means a lot of 28mm fantasy including my first Flintloque cavalry (Goblin Dodo riders) and Frostgrave warband, monsters and terrain. I've also got plenty of WWII stuff in 20mm to do with terrain and vehicles as a priority and in 15mm I'll concentrate on the American Civil War with cavalry and artillery as the main arms to focus on.

Gaming - going to try and finish profiles for some of the painted Flintloque sections that I have and get some games in with both Flintloque and Two Hour Wargames Chain Reaction, Long Rifle, Swordplay and Nuts rules. I'm also hoping to get in some games of the Lardies' Chain of Command with my WWII figures.

Other rules I hope to try out are Crossfire and Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames rules from the book of the same name.

2015 in Review

Good for painting not enough games played, not as many miniatures completed but a lot more 25/28mm figures. I did get a few games of Ogre and Up Front played but not much with the miniatures.

I managed to get to the Dragonmeet and SELWG conventions and maybe hope to get to Salute in 2016, but will have to wait and see how that goes.

Final Painting Update of 2015

So I did manage to finish off a few more figures over the festive period meaning that I have reached my best ever total for 28mm figures helped by the desire to get together both the figures, markers and wandering monsters to play Frostgrave with. 

The warband is mostly still WiP but should start to finish off early in the new year with my varied band of adventuring types from the plastic set and additional figures coming through. 

First up some humans - a Beowulf figure from Ral Partha and a near eastern thief that I'm not sure of the make of. 

My first 28mm mounted figures completed - 2 Alternative Armies Goblin wolf riders

4 Alternative Armies wolves that I got for my Erin project but that will be useful for other games like Frostgrave. 

A Wraith that is from the late 70s and I am unsure of the manufacturer of and 2 Mantic ghouls.  

All useful for Frostgrave. 

Some more terrain, dwarf, goblins and Frostgrave

Some more bits of terrain finished off and a couple of treasure markers for Frostgrave. There is a foray into paper craft terrain now which I suspect will be the majority of the terrain that I use as I have walls that can be made as modular terrain with the slots used to join them. The paper terrain I am using is from David Graffam games via WargamesVault.

Figures

A dolmen made of actual stones on an old CD-Rom with a figure for scale.

Frostgrave treasure markers

Papercraft building

Nilbog's band - 6 goblins from Alternative Armies.

2 scratchbuilt fences (each 15cm long) and an Alternative Armies Dwarf

Frostgrave Terrain Piece

One more piece of work finished - a stone circle which got started an awful long time ago, which shows just how long this and Goyah from the last update took to get finished.

 Firstly to show scale with an old Citadel dwarf and King Fernando of the Dark Elves from Alternative Armies.

Three views from different angles. Though I will use this for Frostgrave I have made the basing on this piece as summer style as it will mainly be used for Fantasy games.

 Some more WIP on terrain and miniatures - Wolves for Frostgrave - Alternative Armies figures with a few more dry brushes to get the coats where I want them.

 And a Dolmen - like the standing stones actual garden stones and an old CD repurposed.