Sunday Workbench 23 June

I've had a productive few days since my last post, today in particular was rather busy. Some more figures have been prepped and stuck on bases. And some figures that I prepped a while ago have also been stuck on painting sticks or bases and the crew figures have had their brass wires inserted into corks as holders for painting.

Today I decided to start adding basing texture to some of the figures. I knew that I didn't want to use the Vallejo "Dark Earth texture" for the Paras, so I decided to make up a batch of my own homebrew version:

It's quite a simple mix: one 300ml tube of brown acrylic frame sealant (£1 from Poundland), 20 spoons of bird sand (£1 for 1kg from Wilko) and a bit of water. I did some tests on a few bases:

L to R: untouched; drybrushed; drybrushed and washed; drybrushed, washed and drybrushed; washed and drybrushed

When the paste had dried (it took about an hour) I did a few tests - you can see the results above. It gives a good texture, dries quick and hard and above all is incredibly cheap (about £1.20 for nearly 500ml; the Vallejo stuff costs £8 for 200ml). The bird sand is quite large grains - for a texture like the Vallejo paste I'd need to use finer sand. For different colours, I could use the white frame sealant and add paint to get the colour I want.

Once that was made, I cracked on with adding texture to bases. Over the space of about 3 hours I got all of these done:

Strontium Dog figures

Warlord, 1st Corps and Foundry Paras

Artizan (and a couple of Warlord) Paras

I've also got some more stuff on my dining table (the only free space available at the moment).

A bit of a mix

Jeeps with antennae added

I've assembled (and gap-filled) the Aussie Matilda II that I bought at Broadside. Various extra figures for my Aussies have been glued onto bases. I've also added antennae to the two jeeps (plastic bristles from a broom). The stuff on the painting sticks are the Choson Korean rocket artillery.

In addition to that, I've glued a lot of SYW Russians onto painting sticks:

These have been moved up the painting queue as there are seven regiments that are needed for our August Bank Holiday refight of Kunersdorf which I don't currently have in my collection. I've taken the decision to paint all nine regiments that I don't have; there are also a few extra figures which I might paint as dismounted dragoons. This will, of course, mean a delay to beginning to paint the Paras (well, I might squeeze in a test figure or two to try out painting schemes).


I've also been assembling some MDF terrain over the past few evenings. I need to get a couple of bits and bobs to finish tarting up a couple of them, so no pics for now.


The coming week promises to be very busy with getting everything primed.