Sunday, 29 May 2016

Town House

Late last year, I finally took the plunge and ordered some terrain from Tabletop World as I've had my eye on their stuff for a while. Their Christmas sale tipped me over the edge, so my cupboard now has a few of their pieces. It's time to paint one up.

One of the challenge here was for me to paint as much as I could with just the airbrush. Bit of time spent with the airbrush and slow going as I've learned about tightening seals, and airbrush maintenance when you haven't tightened them (whoops), paint mix in differing humidity - but all positive stuff.

This is the first Tabletop World sculpt I've played with, and it's fantastic quality. So a work-in-progress scenery piece done purely with the airbrush to this point ...


Black primer, Sombre Grey, Cold Grey, Dead White as normal then Devlan Mud wash - applying it very thin to the surface then using air to push into the recesses. Little scruffy, but going the right direction and considering this is my first proper use of an airbrush to do more than a boring base colour, the results to-date are better than expected.

Not quite brave enough to tackle the timber with the airbrush and not undo all the stonework, so that's painted by brush as normal.



Couple more tweaks to colour on the wood and touching up some edges of the stone with pure white to give contrast and correct a few mistakes when painting the wood ...


One of the nice things about these terrain pieces from Tabletop World is the level of detail present everywhere, so I'm looking forward to painting up the metalwork next. Windows will be blue just to offer some visual contrast inside and out, and should offset the lead strips in the window nicely.

At this point I realised there's been no shots of the inside of the house so far ...


On the wood I've gone for a bit more variation in colour than on the outside beams, and the walls are painted to look like they've been rendered. I put the airbrush down and started painting in the wood to frame the stonework, and feeling pretty pleased with how it looks now.

One final push and I was able to finish up the Town House. Very pleased with how this turned out for my first terrain piece in quite a few years!





I know that picking out the bolts on a rusted area isn't really accurate, but I like the contrast it offers.

Getting the feel of the airbrush now, it was the main tool for painting this and shaved days off painting terrain by brush. It's no longer a chore, but something enjoyable and this should help to clear down the backlog of terrain pieces sat needing my attention.

Does the colour scheme look familiar to anyone? I based the colour scheme loosely on an old friend ...



I may come back and adjust the windows, as blue windows with the blue roof isn't quite right. But it'll stay like that for the time being - and the next building can be a test piece for that change, rather than continually tweaking the finished one.

Even inside the house, detail is abundant. I love the crumbled render that reveals the original stonework underneath.



It's a good height inside too, the daughters have confirmed it's suitable for their Happyland figures to sit in without feeling cramped. Which is good to know.

Sunday, 15 May 2016

Star Wars: Armada Rebel Fleet test

A friend picked up the Star Wars: Armada game recently. It's not quite to my taste, but I volunteered to try and paint up a few of the figures as the small supporting fighters for the big ships don't come pre-painted. There are 70-80 of these and they're tiny, so I wanted to generate something that would be quick to replicate without leaving myself in a hole for the rest of the year.

A-Wing

Y-Wing


X-Wing


B-Wing


Basically they were primed white, washed with thinned down Army Painter strong tone with a few white elements picked out. After that just a couple of quick details like exhaust wear, engine colouring and unit markings.

Did I say they were tiny? Here's an idea of scale for these figures ...



Monday, 2 May 2016

Black Scorpion: Preacher

Finally completed the hired hands from Black Scorpion, with the Preacher joining the party ...


Group shot of the finished crew ...


Sadly I dropped the Navigator and the candle snapped off and I can't find it anywhere - so that's why he's relegated to the back row :( Miffed about that, but I'm hopeful it will turn up at some point.

Enjoyed painting these, but the sculpts aren't as crisp in the minutiae as others I've painted recently - and when, like me, you're limited in ability it's surprising how often you rely on the features to do the heavy lifting for you. With that said, I picked up their Salute 2016 figure this year and that looks to be a little step up in quality again, so more power to them.

While this finishes off the set of five, it doesn't see the end of the pirates just yet. So here's a teaser for what's coming next ...


To paraphrase Princess Leia ... aren't you a little short for a pirate?