One month later.....

Somehow I allowed a month to pass with no painting.....tut tut.

Following a day at Salute 2010 in London, I came home with my final AWI Baccus order - British Infantry and (proper) Rebel Infantry.......As I had the time available, I immediately set about undercoating them all, somehow close to about 1200 figures! However, my Chaos Black Undercoat Spray ran out of paint with just one infantry unit and the mounted officers left to do!!

Tonight, I have started to paint some of the British Infantry their (Vallejo Blood) Redcoats (tunics), about 160 figures. Going to try and get back into the habit of painting for around about an hour each evening even if it is at 11pm to midnight.

One of those weeks.....

Sadly, I have had no opportunity since Tuesday last week to do some painting.

I plan to restart tomorrow, and hope to do some over the Easter weekend.

Tunics, Tunics and Tunics!

Tonight, I painted the tunics for the 1st Canadian Regiment (rebels) using Magic Blue (vallejo) and the 4th New York Regiment using Off White (vallejo).

I am now pondering whether I should continue my tunic paint mode, and do the German Light Battalion Regiment and the German Grenadier Regiment, before then facing the skirmishers, or whether I should focus on the 1st Canadian, 2nd New York and 4th New York, and do trousers, flesh, and muskets.....I have until tomorrow night to decide.

Tomorrow night might be the time to photograph the 1st Connecticut Militia, 2nd Connecticut Militia, the Loyalists, and the Canadians (british).

Started work on 2nd New York Regiment

Painted the tunic Scarapena Green, which I may need to tone down as I wanted a pale green.

Trousers painted pale yellow, which is my equivalent of cream colour.

Took about an hour an a half to do those two areas......


Wondering if my approach should be to aim to do tunic and trousers for each regiment, then as a mass batch do flesh, followed by wood part of musket and then metal part of musket.....it might feel like no progress is happening but it defers the need to base them until either I have more shallow trays to store them in, or its Salute 2010, and in which case, I will have purchased a case with the right shape foam holes to put them all in.

Skirmishers are hard work.....

You would think having only 48 figures to paint instead of 96 would mean you should paint them twice as quickly - oh no.....because they are based in an irregular fashion (to reflect their skirmish status), extra care is needed when trying to paint them as you need to navigate the figures to get to the one you are painting.

The quality of my painting is improving, and I suspect that the skirmishers are going to take time to do, so I may mix things up e.g. do an ordered infantry, paint some skirmishers, do another ordered infantry and so on, as the infantry are going to be quick to do, whilst the skirmishers may each take a week to do.

Not much painting done this weekend, due to Dragon Age:Awakenings being released on XBox on Friday, and general tiredness (daughter waking up just after 6am today and yesterday), so I've focused on;

1. Undercoating my second batch of figures that arrived on Saturday (mainly rebels but some germans, artillery and british skirmishers).
2. cutting up the british marksmen and picketts.
3. basing Morgan's Riflemen, ready for painting.
4. researching uniform colours for both rebels and brits.
   

Tricky old things those skirmishers.......

Having got the Canadians and Loyalists out of the way tonight - fully based - I eagerly turned my attention to my three skirmish units (Morgan's Riflemen, Dearhorn's Light Infantry and the Indians) left to do from the first batch of figures ordered.

So, first challenge was how many figures per base and what size base to use. I settled on 8 per 40x30 base (infantry are done on 40x20 bases), so five bases per unit.

Problem no.1 - It seems the only 40mm frontage bases I have are the 40x20 ones with the rest being 60x60, 60x30 and 30x30, so I have resorted to multilating the 60x30 into 40x30.

Problem no.2 - Those skirmishers on each strip face to the right, which will make it harder to paint their front, so I had to cut each strip into the four individuals earlier than planned. As each figure is fiddly to pick up, I also had to base them before any painting had even been done! The plan was to fully paint then cut them up then base them....ah well.

On the plus, I cut all three units worth (48 each) tonight, so that job is done, and for the Indians and Rifleman, they have gone back into their bags, whilst the Light Infantry have been based, and some have even had some leather brown (vallejo) painted as their tunic.

Less painting done tonight than hoped but we are ready to go for tomorrow night.....

Sometimes speed isn't everything.....

Made great progress with the Loyalists and the Canadians, and they are done in terms of painting........except that I was too sloppy with the cross straps, and now needs to tidy it up......

I made a decision that if the Rebels have blue drums, the Brits will have red ones....

The Connecticut Militia got their flags added except I virtually trashed one as a result of accidently soaking it in the PVA glue - water mixture - will take a photo this week of them along with the Loyalist and Canadians.

Good progress with loyalists and canadians

Painted the trousers - off white (vallejo) for loyalists and pale yellow (vallejo) for canadians.

Painted muskets - terracotta (games workshop) and mithril silver (games workshop).

Just the flesh (probably stick with elf flesh from GW) and base (graveyard brown from GW) then I can try out the black glaze (vallejo) as my black wash.

Started on the Loyalists and Canadians

Painted the tunic for the loyalists with ultramarine blue (vallejo) and for the canadians with mutation green (also vallejo).

Did the foundation wash for the bases of the connecticut militia but may need to re-do some of the sand as some of it came off.

Monkeying around with the glue

I had a clever idea with sticking the figures to their bases, and decided to use the monkey glue I had.......it stuck fine but created a bubbly excess of glue, which I then had to waste time trying to remove from the base....so not a good idea in the end, as it also appears between the two ranks on each base.

I did manage to to at least use the PVA glue to put the baccus sand on each base, so I will be ready tomorrow night to do the drybrushing of the baccus basing paints.

Going to get some more Vallejo paints tomorrow lunchtime, so I can then decide which regiment is next to be painted.

Dearhorn's Light Infantry or Canadians and Loyalists?

With the Connecticut Militia done (except for basing), I have been researching what to paint next.

I already had an uniform for Dearhorn's Light Infantry, which is based on another blogger's excellent 28mm paintings - http://macpheesminiaturemen.blogspot.com/2009/11/dearborns-light-infantry.html.

But...I am tempted to do the Canadians and the Loyalists, even though there is no real record of their uniforms.......however, I think dark green tunics for the Canadians and dark blue for the loyalists, both with beige or white trousers. Both will have black hats but with a trim that matches their tunics.....should be easy peasy to do them compared with those Militia, and also I now know what I am doing.......I hope......

First two regiments almost done....

I used elf flesh for the flesh, painted the base graveyard brown (GW) then used the GW black wash over the figures - I think the wash needs diluting further, as I lost a lot of variety of browns (for tunics in particular) I used on the figures.

I painted the sash dead white (vallejo), and used electric blue (vallejo) on drums.

Essentially they are done, but for basing, and whilst they are not brilliant, I have essentially used these to learn some important lessons about 6mm, the main one being dull colours don't work as a main colour for your regiment.

Going to do the rebel Canadian/Loyalists units next, and they will have a standard uniform, so that should speed up the whole process.

Once the basing has been done for the 1st and 2nd Connecticut Militia, I will post pictures of them. I reckon I have spent around ten hours on them, so five hours per regiment.

Another three hours done tonight

Finished the muskets for both militia regiments.....used the brown foundation paint (Games Workshop) and mithril silver (also GW).....with hindsight, I need a different brown, so the next batch of regiments will have a different brown tested on them - also, will rethink mithril silver as its too bright but gunbolt metal is too dull.

Managed also to paint the hats for one of the regiments using leather brown (vallejo) for the round hats, and a dead white (also vallejo) mix with leather brown for the tricorne style hats.

Up until I started the hats, I had completely failed to spot the variety in my strips for each infantry - obviously I could spot the command strips but the non-command strips are not all the same, which is a shame I had failed to spot it before, as instead of painting the tunics of all figures on the strip the same colour, I could had tailored it to the type of hat worn - it would have had created the look of a non-uniform regiment far better - another lesson also for the next set of regiments I do....take a proper look at the figures....duh!

So, these two regiments have taken me six hours to do....felt I got more done in the second three hour session, which might mean I am already start to speed up.....we can hope.

Why Do We Always Buy More Than We Planned To?

Went to the toys/models shop in the city to purchase one bottle of white paint, and ended up with half a dozen bottles of paints, going "ooh, I could use that blue for some of Rebel soldiers, and that red for the Brits" and so on.

Be interesting to see what these Vallejo paints are like compared with my (mainly) Games Workshop paints.

Painting these 6mm will be really quick.......lol

My first painting session ever with 6mm tonight, so I am focusing on the 1st and 2nd Connecticut Militia, essentially the same as each other, so do all 192 figures at the same time.

After three hours, I have done their tunics/coats in a range of earthy colours (although each strip of four figures is the same), and for half of them, painted part of the musket.

I reckon there is another two hours worth of painting minimum for these two regiments are ready for basing.

First Posting To Reclaim The American Colonies

Just recently, I bought the Black Powder Rulebook, something unusual for me, as previously I was not particularly interested in wargaming the musket era. For about six months, I have got into WWII, and am currently in the process of (slowly) painting a Russian (circa late 1942) army.
Prior to that my interest in wargaming was purely fantasy-based and mainly Dark Elves.

The Black Powder rulebook covers from two hundreds from 1700 to 1900, and gives you a main set of rules, with additional special rules for each war. Its old school wargaming, where someone will act as the umpire, and you are encourage to resolve ambiguous situations in a gentlemanly manner, so not for the rules obsessives out there.....
The book is not cheap (around £30 in the UK although I managed to get it for £24 from Ebay) but worth every penny.

So, having got inspired to play Black Powder, I now needed a war to adopt and build both armies for. I could have gone for one of the popular wars(to wargamers) such as American Civil War or Napleonics but the ones that appealed to me were the Zulu type wars or American War of Independence, and I finally settled on the latter.

The next stage was to decide what size figures to purchase, and whilst the Black Powder is packed full of 28/30mm figures, I do not think 24 of them really represents a regiment in the same way that 80 6mm figures would. 6mm would also be a lot easier to paint on account of being able to be more slapdash with the painting of them - their impact is from a distance not close up.

So, I've put a small order of Rebel units in with Baccus6mm, and now await for my box of metal to arrive, hopefully in the next few days.