Challenge Day 20 - Lazy Evening

I've been having a bit of a lazy evening tonight. After work I had a few bits of shopping to do, so by the time I'd got home and had my dinner it was nearly 8pm. There was no point to even considering starting on continuing the belts on the other half of the 6mm Rebs; that will wait until tomorrow.

I did spot that I'd forgotten to drybrush the Aztecs' bases so I did that before brushing on matt varnish. Once I've posted this I'll go over a few details with gloss or satin varnish.

I've also been drying out the rosemary that I started staining last night. I've just taken it out of the oven so it's cooling down at the moment. Once it's cool, I'll decant it back into its jar. Tomorrow I'll make up a mix of the mixed herbs and the rosemary and add it to the Aztec's bases as scatter.

Late last night I decided to mount the rest of my Aztecs on washers, then glued on weapons, shields and back banners. I'll be adding the basing gunk mix to them tomorrow and priming them on Sunday. Some of them will get painted up in batches next week in between the finishing steps for the 6mm Rebs.

Update - pic of the stained rosemary:

Stained; unstained

Challenge Day 19 (Part 2) - Herbal Happenings

In my post this morning I promised pics of the stained herbs. Well, here's one for you:

Ink stained; unstained; paint stained

Both the ink and paint staining worked, although neither is a solid brown. In terms of the texture and ease of dealing with, the ink-stained is better - it's a bit softer and more crumbly. I may just need to dilute the ink less and/or leave the herbs in longer for future batches. For now, I've combined the two types and returned them to the jar.

I'm doing another batch tonight, this time of dried rosemary using more ink, this time a 3:1 mix of sepia and burnt umber. This will be to represent bits of wood.

I've also carried on with the Aztec grunts and finished painting them. Tomorrow night I'll varnish them and add basing scatter.

Ha! You don't get a close up at this stage!

I may also go back to the 6mm Rebs tomorrow and do the belts and straps on the other half, ready to finish them over the weekend. That will give me next week to do the basing and adding of flags (I guess I'd better start cutting some of those from the sheets).

Challenge Day 19 - Aztec Painting

Last night I made a very good start on painting the Aztec grunts. I didn't complete them, but got very close. A couple of hours work tonight and they'll be finished. Here's a pic of how I left them:

I was also doing some work on the scatter mix I'll be applying to the bases. As the setting for my Frostgrave campaign will be an ancient city in a jungle, the scatter should look like detritus from all the vegetation - leaves, bits of wood etc. The easiest way I could see of doing this is to use some dried herbs, but as these are green when bought I was going to need to stain them brown to represnt decay. For a trial I split a small jar of mixed herbs between two cups, one with diluted burnt umber ink, the other with diluted dark brown craft paint.

After letting the herbs soak for a few hours, the mixes were (separately) strained through a tea strainer then spread over some tin foil and dried in the oven at a low temperature. I'll post some pics tonight to show how they've come out.

Challenge Day 17 - Minion/Overlord Duty

Well, today was (still is for a few more hours) my first tour of duty helping out Curt as an adjudicator for the Challenge. It's been pretty quiet so far, with only two entries (one each from Curt and Teemu). I'll bet that everybody on the Tuesday list is beavering away frantically to finish pieces off and will submit them just before the deadline, meaning I'll have to post them tomorrow.Either that or they have run out of steam or are working on points bombs.

This evening I have added some basing gunk to the Aztecs; a mix of acrylic modelling paste, large grain gel and medium grey ballast. It's still drying/curing, but might be cured enough for me to prime just before I go to bed.

Tomorrow night I'll start work on painting them. As these are the low level "grunt" warriors, the colour schemes will be fairly simple, so there's a chance I may actually finish painting them (provided I don't go OTT with layering highlights!). That will just leave the bases to finish.

Well, that's all for now folks - I'm off to check if there are any more submissions for me to adjudicate!

Challenge Day 16 - Priming Stuff

This evening I couldn't face doing any work on the Rebs. As I also had a small joint of beef to roast (which I didn't get round to cooking yesterday) I needed something to do which would fit in around my kitchen visits.

Thinking about things, I decided to get out the spray booth and airbrush and prime some minis. First up were some cavalry for my 15mm Korean army; these were primed white. Then I primed a batch of eight 28mm Aztecs in grey. Somewhat surprisingly, the Vallejo grey surface primer is very pale, almost white.

As tomorrow is my duty day as Curt's adjudicating minion, and as SWMBO for about 14 of the participants (including Curt himself if he submits anything on a Tuesday!) I probably won't be in a position to do any more work on the Rebs until Wednesday at earliest.

There is also the fact that it would be nice to get some more points on the scoreboard to consider. I think I'll probably begin work on the Aztecs tomorrow, probably adding some filler material to the bases (which I should have done before priming the figures!). I'm thinking some larger grain ballast towards the centre with some smaller grain ballast toward the edges.


In other news, it appears that my entry for the Nostalgia bonus theme round is rather popular. I'm please about that given the amount of thought and effort involved in putting all the pieces together.

Challenge Day 15 - Rebs Day 4

Aaarrrggghhh! I hate fiddly details on 6mm figures!

I'm at that frustrating stage of painting these where all the bitty stuff needs to be painted - belts, cross straps, scabbards, cartridge pouches, etc.

Earlier today I'd done the hats and kepis (I actually did the kepis and one of the 6 hat colours last night).

I have just spent nearly 3 hours painting belts, cross-straps and bayonet scabbards on half of the figures. I guess tomorrow I'll be doing the other half.

*SOB*

I guess I'll just have to make it one tiny detail per day, now that I'm going to be back at work. Why, oh why, oh why did I decide to do the whole lot in one go?


In separate news, by the time most of you read  Curt will have posted the Nostalgia bonus theme round entries on this blog. I think that my entry should be quite well received. I don't know if the voting for favourite entries will be open immediately - if it isn't don't forget to check back in later on and vote for whichever submissions you particularly liked.

EDIT: The posts and the poll are both up - click here to view them all.

Challenge Day 14 - 4th Blogiversary & Rebs Day 3

I hadn't forgotten. Honest guv'nor!

Yes, yesterday was the 4th birthday for my blog. I will be announcing a prize draw next weekend hopefully.

So, today has seen me put the finishing touches to my Nostalgia theme entry (having done some work on it yesterday evening), take photos and write the text for the entry. It's all super-high-top secret, so no sneaky pics here - you'll just have to wait for Curt to post them all tomorrow.

Last night I did eventually pluck up the mental courage to tackle painting the flesh on the Rebs. Three hours later, I had painted 616 tiny little faces and 1232 tiny little hands.

This evening I've been painting the hair. 616 tiny lots of head hair and about 200 tiny beards done in a bit over 2 hours (not including breaks). Next job will be hats and kepis, then belts, pouches, breadbags, canteens and blanket rolls. Oh, and sword and bayonet scabbards. then the drums.

So, here's how they look now:

At this rate, I don't think I'll have them finished by next Saturday. I'm also not sure if my sanity will hold up that long! I may need to take a teeny break and paint something different, if only to get some points added to the table. Maybe some Aztecs?