More painting progress and plans for OcTrollber painting

 Finally finished my first set of the walls and barricades I bought from Alternative Armies in the very good value pack, each type of construction comes with 12 40mm lengths, so suitable for DBA or HotT in 15mm or other miniatures games. 

 

These stone walls could be used easily with either 28mm or 15mm obviously representing a much more formidable barrier in 15mm. The following photo shows a 18mm HoF Security Force Alpha officer and a 28mm King Fernando of the Dark Elves from Flintloque for scale purposes.

 

A lot of people use October as Orktober, but not having any orcs in my painting queue, I'll be working on these Reaper Bones monsters including a troll, meaning I can make it OcTrollber.

I am also tempted to pick up some of the old Asgard Miniatures trolls that Alternative Armies have recently released and paint them too.

Painting Progress and Scratchbuilding Terrain from scrap

A picture of my scratch-built terrain finished, made from scrap cardboard, builder's foam, grape stems and scouring pads.

Some papercraft buildings and containers from David Graffam Models on Wargames Vault

And my painting workbench is full of so many things that are close to completion but just not making it over the line in September.

All 22 of these should hopefully be complete by the end of the first week of October - 12 wall sections and 3 spiders from Alternative Armies, 4 Stargrave and 2 Frostrgrave figures from North Star and a marker for Silver Bayonet using an old Minifigs vase.

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

Some 28mm terrain - more for the painting log

A tomb as a marker

A signal beacon inspired by Tony Harwood's work, but as it was done as part of a speed build at the Guild a bit rougher than I hoped to make it. 

Also I put together two individual graves using Renendra tombstones and three small hedges using the same method as my previous hedges. It takes me up to 7 more terrain pieces finished in August. So a nice addition to my overall painting total. 

Some more hedges and project updates

4 More hedges done, with one having a tree from the Minibits range sold by Pendraken. Another 4 items into my painting log where I am nearly on target for 200 pieces completed this year, though I'll really have to accelerate to reach the challenging target of 300.

Project wise my AK47 army is getting closer to completion as I have some militia nearly finished painting and there will only be about 6 bases of infantry to do after that and the vehicles, 2 T55, 2 technicals and some transport. Flintloque, for this project I've nearly sorted out my Catalucian guerrillas and will also have a Catatonic priest done soon too. 

My WWII project is slightly held up as I'm looking for a good source of US armour decals as there are plenty of sets of the stars available and other bulk things but not of the vehicle serial numbers, etc the way there is for German or British vehicles. 

Finished Terrain - hedges

5 sections - 4 15cm and 1 7.5cm 

Size comparison to Revell 20mm US Infantryman and King Fernando from my Flintloque collection. 

Terrain making - hedges part 2

Tools and materials. I use a hot glue gun to stick down the pieces of twig then PVA to stick on the scourer. I cut the scourer with scissors and also tear and distress the pieces by hand. The cardboard ground pieces have already been coated thinly with polyfilla to give them a surface. 

Attaching the pieces of hedge with PVA.

5 bases now painted with art shop Burnt Umber paint. 

Terrain Project - hedges

Wargames terrain using largely found materials. Initially I'm making up some hedges for the Guild's terrain group build. Based on ideas from the useful Lloydian Aspects

Cardboard from a chocolate bar packaging, twigs from the garden and a kitchen scourer.

Test piece made up with a Flintloque Elf and a Revell WWII US Infantryman in 20mm. Still drying with the PVA glue showing on the test piece. Going to make the next pieces about the same height as they will be a useful size for both scales. 

Painting update 2 April

Some more miniatures finished and some further work on the terrain pieces, with at least the copse of trees done. 

AK47 Republic regulars in Russian helmet, this is pre flocking with the base painted in Burnt Sienna, with  a wash of Burnt Umber and a dry brush of Burnt Sienna mixed with white.

The finished article with flock applied to the base. 

The mortar bases that make up the rest of the unit.

And finished with flock

Sydney Roundwood with the base painted in Burnt Umber with a dry brush of White and Burnt Umber.

And finished with flock so recently applied that it still has the PVA glue showing white

The standing stones with the initial painting for the basework. I'll do a bit more work before flocking it.

Workbench - terrain, Flintloque, WWII and more

Lots of assorted work in progress from my different wargames projects.

Terrain.

A couple of terrain pieces as my first thing. A small copse of trees/wood for 10/15mm figures using trees from Minibits obtainable from Pendraken miniatures and a set of standing stones inspired by this article from Orcs in the Webbe. Both use old CD-R that are no longer useful and I'll next probably do an oasis in 15mm for my Hordes of the Things Fantasy Arab army.

The groundwork is an experiment for me using polyfiller (spackle for the US reader) ready mixed plaster filler for the ground work. This will be getting a coat of thinned PVA glue then painted with artists acrylics.

Standing stones kit of parts.

Standing stones fastened down with hot glue.

Copse of trees - aka Sydney Roundwood

Miniatures

All still WIP as I've not got far with a lot of miniatures yet this year. 

Flintloque - the artist Goyah and King Fernando of the Dark Elves.

Regiment del Nino Cisco command

Regiment del Nino Ciso line

Caesar WWII German Infantry in shelter capes

My missing project - Terrain!

This was the one project that I missed that is probably the most essential now that my WWII and Flintloque collections of painted and based figures are growing is making gaming boards and terrain to go on them.

There is a lot that I could do and thankfully plenty of websites that have guidance as well as useful tutorials in Henry Hyde's Wargaming Compendium. My priorities are to do a number of segmented or folding boards which will allow me to do games on 2 by 4 foot, 4 foot square and 4 foot by six foot tables. This will at least get me set up with a decent size area to game on.

Next up would be to add some hills, roads, streams and bridges. I already have a few assorted buildings in a number of scales and am quite happy to use card based designs which are easy to source and print off the basics for.

Hopefully soon I'll have pictures showing this being developed.