Painting Challenge entry 5: 6mm ACW Union Brigade

Up next my first contribution to our clubs Gettysburg project. A brigade of Union infantry with skirmishers and a few command stands to go with them. As I mentioned earlier this is my first foray into 6mm minis so still some learning left. Anyhow they are a pleasure to paint and it's really nice to see that a few evenings effort yields this many finished minis.

I basecoated them with my airbrush using the indigo color that would be the main uniform color. Then just quick block painting followed by a wash to bring out the details. For the next batch I'll have to add a basecoat under the indigo as I had some trouble with the paint coming of from some of the guys when I accidentally touched them before applying varnish. Not sure if I had some grease from my hands or the moulds on the minis or if it's just that Vallejo paint that are causing the issue. I've previously just primed them straight with a normal color without issues, but it might be the paint as some Vallejo blues have some coverage issues.

I really need to practice my photography with these guys too. It's really darn hard to get a decent shot when they are just so tiny. And the dark Union colors don't exactly help either. It's a bit hard to make out any detail on the black webbing when the whole jacket is already so dark.

Next up some Finns in snow suits. I've got a squad pretty much finished except for the guns and some mittens so hopefully I'll get them done soon. Lot of work to finish up today so that'll unfortunately take all my painting time away

Challenge progress

Painting is progressing, albeit quite slowly as I have to work on my Master's thesis to finally get out of UNI. I also only just realized that the next fortnight challenge is ending on this sunday and not next week so I had to jump another project in front of the ACW stuff. I won't have time to paint a Demon Prince as the Villain so I went for something that might be even better.

Here we have an Investigator mini from Lead Adventure with a certain familiar pet. Quickly did the skin and the mini Chtulhu (or Rare Bolivian Flying Toad as the character keeps claiming to everyone) as I have friends coming over today for beers and hockey and tomorrow being booked for playing Zombicide. I think I'll just paint a black pinstriped suit so that shouldn't take too much time tomorrow to finish him up.

ACW isn't completely forgotten either. The guys are only missing the metal parts for their rifles and some beards and then they are ready for basing, all 140 of them. The next batch will probably be slightly smaller to make them a better "snack" in between other projects. Pretty hard to take a decent picture of them with only my cellphone as I'm too lazy to get the DSLR for just 1-2 shots.

Painting Challenge progress: ACW Union Infantry

I managed to finish the Paras this morning and send pics off to Curt. While waiting for them to go online on his blog so that I can put them here too, I started the next project on the desk. We are starting an ACW campaign at my club in February with 6mm armies. It's a new period and a new scale for me so will be interesting to see how it'll go. To test paint schemes and everything else I decided to paint a test brigade (why settle for individual test minis?) first before preparing the rest of my horde.

These Baccus minis are a lot more detailed than I expected from 6mm stuff and I was positively surprised that not all the infantry blocks are identical. I've now just airbrushed the base color on and painted some pants on these guys. Around an hour of work and I've got 140 guys + some generals with jackets and pants painted. Nice to see stuff actually progressing fast, instead of the slow slugfest that my Paras seemed to be. Probably won't be that nice and fast when I start painting all the straps etc. but that's future me's problem. And I have a feeling that the bases will take quite a lot of time as they will really be the focus instead of the tiny lead men.

And as a side note, I don't know how it's still possible that I'm amazed at what women find when they are shopping, especially if there is a sale on. Apparently this bunny sitting on top of a top hat was on sale at a clothes store and it just had to be bought. Though probably it's just the same with me when I'm at the local gaming store...