Category Archives: Painting

Posts, articles and links mostly concerning the painting of miniatures. Lead Painters League posts, links to resources and inspiration elsewhere, and such.

The Workbench at the End of the Year (Dec 31 2023)

A quick look at the workbench right at the ragged end of the year! After not really painting anything for most of the second half of 2023 I rediscovered painting energy in November and have been plowing through a whole bunch of stuff.

The workbench at the end of 2023. Click for larger.

The anklyosaur person is from Fenris Games and is massive – that’s a 60mm base and they hang over every edge. The baggage ogre and little robot are Reaper, as are most of the random humans over on the back left. The sea serpent and big frog are Footsore Miniatures.

Overhead closeup of the current entertainment. Click for larger.

I’ve shown off some WIP photos of the anklyo-person over on BlueSky but they were early, no weapons mounted and painting not quite finished. I’ve got a whole bunch of WIP photos of this figure and will also be taking some good closeups after I finish painting and basing, because I’m really, really pleased with how they’re turning out!

The baggage ogre is just a fun figure, much more interesting than yet another horse and wagon if you need a baggage element for a fantasy game!

Rear view of the anklyo and ogre. Really, really pleased with how the shell of the anklyo turned out! Click for larger.

Hope everyone had good holiday season, and an excellent 2024 as we roll into the New Year!

Back To Gaslands

We played a lot of Gaslands in 2020/2021 when COVID restrictions meant we couldn’t game in person, because Gaslands is fairly simple to organize over webcam, and we kind of burned out on it.

Then we took Gaslands to Trumpeter Salute 2023 back in April, because it’s also really easy to set up pickup games for, and our pair of great chaotic games re-ignited our interest!

I’ve cranked through a trio of new cars since Salute, and then moved onto a new set of three cars. Two of the first set had been partially converted back in 2020/2021 and then neglected (and apparently I took no photos of them…) and the ’34 Ford hotrod was a new purchase while we were in Vancouver for Trumpeter.

The second trio of cars include another sports car all spiked up, a rally car up-armoured, and a Jaguar D-type converted into a monster truck. The Jag was the most complex conversion I’ve done for Gaslands yet, and started with a set of 3d printed monster truck wheels.

The basecoats are coming along nicely. The Jag is starting as British Racing Green, the spiked sports car is a gloriously weird yellow/green that Reaper calls Dungeon Slime, and the rocket rally car seems to have gotten trans pride colours, because why the hell not? Lots of weathering to do still, of course!

These three done will give me eight or so cars, a buggy, and three bikes for Gaslands just in my own collection. I have ideas for a heavy truck conversion starting with mashing together two big American 60s/70s Yank tanks, but I think I’ll switch gears slightly after this trio is done.

Decals for 1/1200 Miniatures

Way back at the very end of 2020 I contacted Misc Minis about decals suitable for 1/1200 ship and aircraft miniatures. After a couple of rounds of email, Kevin sent me a PDF proof sheet with a mix of 1mm and 1.5mm insignia for the Luftwaffe, RAF, and USAAF, as well as some hull numbers as used by the Royal Navy. He’d started with the smallest size of decals for his standard 1/600 ranges, done some tests, and figured out what would work (and what wouldn’t!) when taken down that tiny.

I mentioned the decals in passing in an April 2021 post here, then tucked them away in the dreaded ‘safe place’ and did absolutely nothing with them until this Easter long weekend, two full years later!

With the various Luftwaffe aircraft seen on my last Workbench post based and painted, I sat down with the tiny 4″x2.5″ decal sheet, carefully cut out even tinier individual crosses, and began putting them on the wings of the Me110 heavy fighters and Ju88 Stuka divebombers.

The full decal sheet, with finished Stukas behind and Me109s still waiting for their turn. Click for larger.

The bulk of the Luftwaffe crosses on the sheet are the black outline/white fill style; there’s also a row of pure white crosses as used (I think?) primarily on night fighters. The lower left has no fewer than six different RAF roundel variants, upper right has a bunch of US Army Air Force winged star roundels, and the lower right has RN hull numbers in both white and black. There aren’t any pure black outline Luftwaffe crosses, but honestly I’m OK with that as the black/white ones stand out a bit better and help ID these tiny, tiny airplanes more clearly!

The best closeup I could manage with my cell phone camera. That’s a Stuka with one wing done and the other waiting to be done. Keep in mind that wingtip to wingtip, that entire airplane is about 12mm across! Click for larger.

The Misc Mini decal sheet is full-film so each roundel needs to be cut fairly close to the printed outline. I worked with fine-tip tweezers, a sewing pin, and MicroSet decal solution to get each cross in place. They’ll get MicroSol decal conforming solution next and then matt spray varnish to seal everything in place.

Two Me110 heavy fighters with their roundels in place. Not sure if I’m going to bother doing the insignia on the sides of the fuslage or not – I might just do them with a fine-tip paintbrush as on the Ju88s I painted a couple of years ago for this project. Click for larger.

If you’re in need of tiny decals for tiny aircraft, drop Kevin at Misc Minis a note and ask! This little sheet was thoroughly reasonable for a custom one-off print run (under $10 including shipping) and will last a good long time at the rate I’m using it up. Misc is an American outfit but regular envelope mail for decal sheets is still cheap over the border to Canada at this point!

The Workbench This Week, 28 March 2023

The workbench this week… is up and running in our new condo! We had an offer accepted at the beginning of February, got the keys ten days ago in mid-March, and are largely settled, set up, and getting on with things.

Set up in my new office/hobby lair but still looking fairly familiar. New larger cutting mat, though.

Gradually getting the painting and hobby stuff sorted and functional; the new room isn’t as large as the one at our rented place but forcing me to organize and stay de-cluttered is not actually a bad thing…

Tiny Messerschmidts for some fokkers to fly around in. (credit for that joke apparently goes to Douglas Bader…)

Decided to work through the stash of 1/1200 WW2 aircraft I got from Last Square a few months ago, starting with a trio of Bf110s and five Bf109s for the Luftwaffe to cause trouble in.

Always the random Reaper figures. Need to add some details to one or both treasure piles so they aren’t so obviously identical, but they’re neat sculpts!

I’ll be at Trumpeter Salute 2023 in Vancouver in about three weeks running a 1/1200 naval game of some sort, probably KM Schnellboote attacking an RN-defended British coastal convoy this time. This’ll be the first Trumpeter Salute since 2019 (a smaller event happened in 2022 but I didn’t get to it) so it’ll be fantastic to be back!

Masts & Booms, Part Two

After doing the detailing of the JMS 3d printed ships, I pulled out the rest of my 1/1200 WW2 ships, all pewter from Figurehead, and added masts to all of those ships that needed them. Most of these came with pewter cast masts that I had deliberately left off while assembling and painting these ships over the last few years as they’re incredibly fragile and my slightly ad-hoc (ie, bad) storage and transportation solution would have destroyed pewter masts in short order.

Masts all over, still needing paint. Various Figurehead pewter coastal vessels in the foreground, the JMS/Antics 3d printed larger ships background.
Stern-on view of the mast-installing session’s end. Very pleased with the masts and booms on the large coastal freighter on the right there.

Nothing special about the techniques here, just a tiny drillbit, fine tweezers, bits of plastic broom bristle, and superglue. Oh, and patience and a certain amount of bad language… The various coastal freighters all have booms alongside their masts as needed.

Overhead view. You can see the masts & booms on the two rear coastal freighters nicely here. Just for scale, the eight vessels in the center block there are all on 20mm by 40mm plexi bases. I still need to base up the JMS/Antics ships to match…

Finally, just for something else to do, I’ve got some more impossibly tiny airplanes based up! In this case, that scourge of surface targets including shipping, the Luftwaffe’s dreaded Ju87 Stuka, five of them all on 25mm wide plexi hexes, more broom bristle for their flying stands. Primer and paint on them in the next week or so, hopefully.

Stuka! Wee tiny little Stuka, anyway. A 1/1200 scale Stuka has a wingspan somewhere around 12mm across.

We are moving in the second half of March, however, so there might be a temporary slowdown of production and posting as our lives get packed up and moved across town to our new condo!

The Workbench This Week, 27 Dec 2022

I’ve got the week between Christmas and New Years off entirely this year, so there’s been a bit of painting going on. Mostly I’ve been working on the 3d printed WW2 ships from Antics, as well as a few fantasy bits just for fun.

The workbench this holiday week. Naval stuff on the right, random Reaper fantasy stuff on the left!

The ships are coming along nicely, although the larger ones are slow going – so many details to paint around! The four U-boats in the foreground are basically done, unless I decide to do a bit of pin washes to pop the few details a bit more.

The larger vessels are all at least basecoated, although several are going to need a second pass as I realize I missed bits on the first pass. The two Royal Naval vessels (a Hunt DE foreground and “O” Class Destroyer behind) will get some sort of camo paint and the German KM T13-class torpedoboat might also get some, although it’s unclear to me if the Kreigsmarine ever actually did anything other than plain grey on most of their torpedoboats and destroyers.

From the front, U-boats times four, the RN Hunt DE and KM T13 torpedoboat, “O” Class RN destroyer, T2 tanker.
The back half of the naval dockyard. O Class DE forward, T2 tanker again, Ehrenfals freighter, Lake class freighter (armed), and finally the Athenia passenger liner at the back.

On the non-naval side, I’ve got little group of Reaper fantasy figures. An armed ghast/ghost/haunt, a pack rat, and a pair of treasure markers. Not much to see here yet, but for those of you not into ships, here you go!

Various Reaper figures, very early stages yet. Two treasure markers, a ghast/ghost/haunt thing, and a pack rat who’s both a travelling merchant and his own pack animal. Reaper has a gloriously broad range of fantasy figures, if you’re not familiar with their offerings!

Happy Holidays, everyone, and hope the tail end of 2022 and the start of 2023 are good to you and yours.

Folk Horror Miniatures

I tripped over this little Kickstarter earlier in 2022 for a dozen figures inspired by European folklore, Folk Horrors by Ana Polanšćak. They’re very much “things that go bump in the night” weird horror miniatures and I decided to grab them while the KS was still running.

twelve folk horror miniatures - image snagged from Kickstarter
Image snagged from Kickstarter – the twelve miniatures included, all assembled and painted.

Some of them might be humans in costumes (might be!) and some of them really definitely… aren’t. I think I’ll be using these as plot point markers or similar for Pulp Alley-powered weird horror games, either in the not-quite-17th-C gunpowder homebrew setting I’ve been gradually putting together or more conventional early-20th-C pulp horror games. A good creepy alternative to the Cthuloid fishmen and such I already have!

the twelve miniatures all in actual pewter, laid out on a cutting mat for scale.
All twelve figures laid out. The cutting mat is 1 inch/quarter-inch grid squares, for scale.

I’ll get this lot assembled, based, and primed over the next few weeks; painting should be pretty short and sweet if I follow the KS paint scheme!

The figures themselves are nice and clean, minimal mold lines and flash. I have some concerns about attaching the horns on some of the figures and the arms on the one “Bellman”, but thick gel superglue and tiny bit of greenstuff should work OK to keep everything in place!

Unfortunately with the KS closed I have no idea where you might go to buy yourself these figures. Meridian Miniatures appears not to have their own website, just a fairly inactive Facebook page. Andrew May has a Patreon page and has run a bunch of other Kickstarters, but again, no info about post-KS ordering. Slightly odd – if anyone has links please let me know in comments!

Bloody Miniatures Company of Wolves

Finally finished the sixteen English Civil War 28mm figures from Bloody Miniatures’ Release 1, The Company of Wolves. I did mine up a bit plainer than the painted examples on the company website, modelling them mostly after some of the county/semi-rural troops from the ECW with mostly plain grey/white jackets (unbleached, undyed wool cloth) or buff coats.

I ordered these back in March 2021 when these sixteen figures were the entirety of BM’s offerings; Releases 2 and 3 are now out, each sixteen figures in four packs of four, and Release 4 is due out sometime soon (September 2022, likely) and includes their first armed female figures!

The Company of Wolves has four figures with polearms, four dismounted cavalrymen, four pistoleers, and four with sword or sword & dagger. Scale-wise they’ve been deliberately designed to fit alongside Warlord, TAG, and Bicorne’s existing ECW figures and they do that very nicely.

Sculpting and casting are very clean, minimal mold lines or flash and no slipped molds or other casting errors.

Although I’d call my paint job workmanlike and table-ready rather than inspired, these are lovely figures, each one an individual with good levels of detail.

One thing that deserves special mention is how well the polearms fit into the open hands of their figures – open hands and weapon options are often a source of frustration and more of a nuisance than they’re worth with metal figures (and sometimes even with plastics!) but these four (sold as The Forlorn Hope) all fit their weapons and hands together amazingly well. No weird gaps around the hands/weapon hafts, no serious issues fitting them in place, and they look good without need gaps filled with greenstuff or other serious intervention! Nicely done to BM’s sculptor and caster on that front!

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming Release 4 mostly for the armed ladies, which basically nobody else makes for 17th C gaming, but I’ll be getting the full set of sixteen as everything Bloody Miniatures has done is well worth it. I will likely even go back and order their previous releases, even though I have more than enough ECW/TYW character figures for skirmish gaming!

Still Around… (and some Gaslands content!)

It’s been a bit of an odd year for gaming, I’ve been having fairly regular games but not painting or building things on a consistent basis.

Obviously I’ve been very lax about updating the old blog but I have gotten a few bits and pieces done since the last update here at the end of February!

Gaslands buggy and dirtbike, from the plastic Implements of Carnage II set.

Sometime earlier this year I assembled and painted up this pair of little Gaslands vehicles, both from the North Star Implements of Carnage II plastic sprues. Both very cool Hot Wheels-scaled (20mm, nominally) little vehicles of a type that (unlike normal cars) you can’t easily get commercially.

Buggy and bike heading the other way.

By way of a mini review, I’d say buy Implements of Carnage II if you’ve already gotten into Gaslands, want the specific two vehicles on it, and probably already have the Implements of Carnage I set, which has lots of regular weapons, armour plates, and other bits that are more useful for converting Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars than what comes on the 2nd set!

There’s no instructions included with the sprues. The dirtbike is three pieces and goes together easily; the buggy is a bit more complicated but some test fitting should show you how it assembles. There’s two pieces of armour plate designed to go on either side that I’ve left off mine – they cover the sides of the roll cage either side of the driver.

More soon as I sort photos and try to get back into the swing of active gaming and blog posting!

The Workbench This Week, 28 Feb 2022

Plague and megalomaniac idiot dictators waging unprovoked war on democracies and idiots honking in stupid pickup trucks… let us distract ourselves with some modelling instead, shall we?

The workbench this weekend. Based and mushrooms and plague monks and ECW and much else!

So what was, in fact, on the workbench this weekend? Starting on the lower left of the cutting mat, we have a batch of 25mm/1″ plastic bases with greenstuff cobbles added to the top, these eventually to have some “town watch” kitbashed figures on them – probably Warlord ECW pikemen bodies with Frostgrave parts for some arms.

Heading clockwise, we have some awesome Fenris Games mushrooms, the first I’ve finished from their massive Sporewood set from the 2021 Toadstool Brownie kickstarter. I’ve based four of them onto a chunk of scrap 1/8th plastic and will get that finished up soonish; the fifth mushroom painted is lying on the left there.

At the back of the cutting mat behind the Fenris-supplied “Love Miniatures Hate Fascism” stickers are sixteen Bloody Miniatures English Civil War chaps, their Company of Wolves bundle of their Wave One releases, also from early 2021. Really lovely figures, full of character. Bloody Miniatures has produced two more batches of sixteen since then and Wave Four is on the way; I’ve held off on buying Waves Two and Three because up until a few weeks ago Wave One was still all boxed up…

The five Fenris plague cultists, all set to lead ominous processions through a fantasy city.

Finally in the foreground we have five Fenris Games Plague Cultists all finished and ready to terrorize a table soon. Their bases were the test run for the urban bases off to the left there. I wanted grubby urban cobblestones and I think it worked. Nice simple figures full of character, too, and beautifully easy to paint up.

Hobby progress despite the state of the wider world, and that is never a bad thing. Stay safe, stay sane, and hobby onward!