Book Review: Painting Wargames Figures - Allied Forces in Northwest Europe 1944-1945 by Andy Singleton

 To give it its full title:-

Painting Wargames Figures - Allied Forces in Northwest Europe 1944-1945, British & Commonwealth, US and Free French

This is the fourth book in this series by Andy Singleton (and the fourth that I have reviewed on this blog). Generally, I find that they make a good introduction to the subjects covered and if not a complete guide, they are a good starting place.

This book is no different, giving a great insight into where to begin when painting your allied troops.

It starts with the usual section recommending tools, brushes and basic techniques for assembling your minis, as the other books did. I must admit that I skimmed this section, as I am sure most experienced mini painters will, still, it is very useful for beginners and I think that it is justified to have it repeated in each volume.

The one error I did spot in this section is that the book states the the figure used in the assembly guide is described as the Warlord Games Fallschirmjager. Now, I may not be the most knowledgeable when it comes to WW2 uniforms, the photo on the opposite page (and the following pages) looks to be a US figure, there is even a very recognisable Thomspon machine gun in the photo.

I assume that this was simply missed when the section was lifted from the previous volume (last year's Axis Forces on the Eastern Front) to be used in this one. While we are on the subject of errors in the book, the cover mentions Free French, however, that appears to be the only mention of them in the book. I am sure that they probably wore a mix of uniforms, probably based on the US or British ones, however, as they are not mentioned in the book it may come as a shock for collectors of Free French forces if they buy this book to use as reference.

Moving on to the good things! The brief histories at the beginning of each section are really useful for explaining how uniforms evolved over the period covered in the book.

The other thing that I am very pleased about is that the photography in the book has improved dramatically from previous volumes. This may be down to the photography, or possibly the design of the layout on the page. Whatever the reason, the actual figures in the photos take up far more page space than in previous volumes. this makes all the difference to being able to see the development of the painted mini as it progresses. 

As with previous volumes, this book covers normal and camouflaged uniforms in separate sections and this is very useful.

Towards the back of the book, there are sections on skin tone and basing. Both of which will be very useful for beginners, and I would recommend that experienced painters at least have a look through the basing section as you can always pick up new tips to add to your armoury of modelling skills.

 

I am very please with this book. The improvements over previous volumes have made it far more useful. 

Highly Recommended!

Get it from Pen and Sword HERE!

Book Review: Painting Wargaming Figures - Axis Forces on the Eastern Front

 
This is the third of Andy Singleton's painting guides that I have reviewed ( Early Imperial Romans and WWII in the Desert). As usual, they are well researched and give some useful background on the period and theatre of war.

As the title suggests, it covers more than just a painting guide to the German forces (Wehrmacht and Waffen SS) on the Eastern Front. Also covering the Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, and also the Finnish forces. Due to the changing allegiances as the war progressed some of these could be used on either side in the conflict, and the Finns could also be used for the Winter War (technically separate from WWII, a conflict between Finland and the USSR from November 1939 to March 1940).

The book covers the preparation of the miniatures, a painting guide aimed at reasonable quality and speed, and a guide to basing in the various terrains experienced on the Eastern Front.

So far so good, and there is no denying the quality of Andy's finished miniatures. However, this book suffers from the same drawback that was seen in the previous two books. The photos of the miniatures as they are being painted are all "long shots" that include a lot of wasted space featuring the clamp holding the miniature. In this book in particular it is a problem as Andy has chosen to paint 20mm minis instead of the larger 28mm minis in the previous books. This makes actually seeing the different stages of painting very difficult (if not impossible). I even tried using a magnifying glass, and on some of the guides it is impossible to tell the difference from one stage to the next.

The following two examples of pages from the guides, I hope, demonstrate the deficiency in the photos.

The photos would be far more useful if they included some close-up shots so we could actually see the development from one stage to the next.

Even with the problem with the poor photography in this guide, I think it would still be a useful addition to any wargamers collection if they were planning to start collecting an Axis army from the Eastern Front. 

I hope that Pen And Sword take on my criticism about this book and fix it for future volumes as I think they are developing into a valuable resource for wargamers.

The book is available now direct from Pen And Sword HERE.

Book Review: Painting Wargaming Figures - Early Imperial Romans by Andy Singleton

I have always had a hankering to put together an Early Imperial Roman army, let's face it when someone says Romans these guys are what most people think of, and I still have fond memories of playing with my old Airfix 1/72 plastic Romans and Ancient Britons back in the 1970s.

So when Pen and Sword Books offered me a review copy of Painting Wargaming Figures - Early Imperial Romans by Andy Singleton I could hardly refuse, could I...

The book is an excellent primer for anyone wishing to start an Early Imperial Roman collection, although probably better suited to for the beginner than the more experienced painter.

With chapters covering basic preparation and painting techniques and then moving on to separate guides on painting weapons and armour, shields, clothing, skin tones, horses and then basing, it does cover all the essentials. However, an experienced painter will probably find that they end up skipping large sections as there is quite a lot of repetition. The guidance on colours to use is fine, although, personally I would have prefered to have seen some illustrations such as those found in the Osprey Publishing Men at Arms and Elites series.

Personally, I think most readers following a painting guide get more from the photos and illustrations than they do from the actual text. This is where this book is somewhat of a letdown. There certainly are plenty of photos throughout the book, however, the photos are quite small and most feature the clamp holding the figure taking up even more page space than the actual figure (see above). This means that on many of the pages it is almost impossible to tell what has changed between one photo and the next, especially when it comes to some of the subtler painting techniques.

I feel that the photos could have been improved a lot by "zooming in" on the actual part of the figure being painted. To illustrate this I have mocked up a couple of pages from the book below. On the left, we have the actual page and on the right, we have my mock-up with better-scaled photos. As I simply took smartphone photos of the pages the improvement is not really visible, but I think you should get the point. Larger photos (or more "zoomed-in" photos) would show more detail and illustrate the painting process far better than the photos in this book.

   

As you can see from these two photos just removing the clamp from the photos is enough to increase the size of the figure to allow a better view.

    

However, personally, I think that it would be even clearer if the photo was focused on the part of the figure that was actually being painted, as in this mockup.

This should not detract from the book too much, there is a wealth of information in there for the novice painter and some nice inspiration for the more experienced as well. I have just made these observations in the hope that Pen and Sword will up there game a little in forthcoming volumes...

Book Review: Painting Wargaming Figures - WWII In The Desert by Andy Singleton

My last book review was quite critical, so I am pleased to say that I am a lot happier with this one.

WWII in the Desert by Andy Singleton appears to be the first in a new series of books from Pen and Sword called Painting Wargaming Figures.

The subject of the book should need little explanation, covering the four major forces in the desert campaign of World War Two. British and Commonwealth (including Canadian, Australian, Indian, South African, as well as Poles, some French and others), Italian, United States, and German.

The layout of the book has been well thought through. The book is split into two sections, Basics, and the actual Painting Guides. The Basics section covers the various tools, paints and varnishes that will be needed and then goes on to explain how to prepare and assemble figures before the painting begins. This covers metal, plastic and resin miniatures and so all bases have been covered (well actually, basing the figures is covered at the end of the painting guides, but you know what I mean...).

The painting guides themselves are well laid out with a brief introduction and history of the various forces and their involvement in the campaign. This is a nice touch, as it would have been very easy to skip this and dive straight into the guides, but as the book is probably going to be read by wargamers just getting into this period it gives that extra level of information that will help build a wargames army. In each guide, Andy takes us through the painting process at three different levels. A simple basic paint scheme, a more advanced scheme that will give a good tabletop standard, and then the truly advanced scheme, which would probably be best kept purely for command figures or special characters.

Each guide shows the full process of painting the same figure at each level. Although there are four different factions, there are five guides as the fifth guide shows the painting of camouflage for the later part of the Desert campaign, when the German paratroopers arrived in theatre. Now, clearly, there is a fair bit of repetition as you read through each of the painting guides, if not exactly in colour, but in the technique used. However, the reader is likely to be following only one of the guides and is unlikely to be painting all the forces, at all the different levels in quick succession, so the repetition only gets boring for a reviewer reading the entire book, without actually using it to paint their army.

The author also points out that a lot of the uniforms faded in the dust and sun of the desert campaign and many of the soldiers chopped and changed items of uniform so it would be rare to have a standard scheme across an entire squad, let alone larger forces. Therefore, the painting guides are just that, guides, they can be mixed and matched, within reason, to achieve a more realistic look.

After the painting guides, there is a nice guide to basing figures in desert schemes. It goes into quite a bit of detail and is far from simply glueing sand onto the bases ( although it does involve a bit of this).

The final pages of the book are given over to a reasonably thorough list of manufacturers who produce ranges of wargames figures for the Desert Campaign, at various scales.

It would have been nice to see more than one figure for each force, as clearly the uniforms varied a lot over the campaign, and we just get one (except the Germans who also get the camouflage scheme). It would also have been good to have seen one or two reference pictures for each of the uniforms, whether that be illustrations like those found in the Osprey Men At Arms series of books or photos of re-enactors etc. Also, obviously these guides are all written by one (very capable) author and, as any experienced painters knows, there are endless numbers of different ways to paint a figure, so it might be nice to see a book like this written by several different painters, offering different ways to paint similar figures.

Still, these are minor quibbles and overall, I would highly recommend this book.

So, in conclusion, this is an excellent beginners guide to painting figures for the Desert Campaign. It covers everything that someone just venturing into this area would need to get going with a new army.

You can check out the book for yourself HERE.

Warbears and Stagriders - Painting a couple of new Minis (Part 06) - Finished!

Part 01, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Finishing off the two Warbears and Stag Riders Kickstarter figures.

To finish off the basing of the two figures I wanted to add some interesting scenic work.

At the base of the rocks on the Stag Riders base I felt it would add a nice bit of depth to have some pools of water. suggesting either a stream or melted snow.

The first step was to paint the areas a very dark green. I also glued some tall grass at the pool edges.

The grass I used was Woodland Scenics, Field Grass, Light green.  Why this colour, this is the only colour I have at the moment.

Once that had set I applied some Z-Poxy epoxy adhesive. This dries clear (at least if you have fresh bottles - see my Frostgrave scenery post for the consequences of using old epoxy), and is a nice fast alternative for such small pools...

Once the epoxy had set (5 minutes) I move on to the plant life. In these photos you can see the different scatter materials that I used. For most of the bases I covered them with a dark scatter from Gale Force Nine. I used a slightly different one for the area in front of the pools on the Stag Rider's base, as I wanted it to look a little swampy there. The Woodland Scenics bushes were used to break up the flat ground a little. The pot of orange coloured scatter (Gale Force Nine) was used to add  a bit of variety to the bushes, aswas the grey colour, which I hoped would give a hint of dying foliage or even frost.

In these two photos, the effect is starting to come together.

To add some dead leaves I resorted to the kitchen herb rack. I find that a nice dead leaf effect can be achieved with some old marjoram.

At this stage I wanted to add some areas of soft, melting, snow. I was fairly pleased with the effect on the bases so far so I went at this stage with some trepidation. Adding big blobs of white modelling paste to the bases could have ruined the whole thing...

I used the modelling paste as I planned to use Woodland Scenics Soft Flake Snow and I have found in previous projects that it needs a white mass underneath it to add depth and bring out the snow effect.

The final task was to add some gloss varnish to the area in front of the water pools. this soaked into the scatter material and gave a nice swampy effect.

Following are some photos of the finished pieces. My photography is not perfect, but I hope they give an idea of the final look of the figures...

Warbears and Stagriders - Painting a couple of new Minis (Part 05)

Part 01, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

I have finished painting the stag rider now.

I have added some tonal work across the figure and tidied up a few little slips.

I have painted the cork on the base. Dry brushing a mid grey.The rest of the base got a coat of the same brown as that used on the base of the warbear.

I will be working on the bases a lot more over the next week.

Warbears and Stagriders - Painting a couple of new Minis (Part 04)

Part 01, Part 2, Part 3

More detailing work on the two Warbears and Stag Riders Kickstarter figures.

Starting with the Stag rider, I like the pennant on the spear, but I felt that it looked a little plain with just the black colour. I was tempted to do each piece a different colour (black and purple), but decided to do a purple stripe down each one instead. This was certainly not the easy option, as maintaining a steady line along the two wavy legs was not easy. I had to break out a new Kolinsky sable brush especially for this job...

I also worked in some more detail on the figure, tidying things up and getting a bit of contrast to bring out the detail.

The skin tones on the rider also got a lot more detail and tonal work. Once I have finished these figures, I will get some better photos that don't bleach the paler colours.

I am happy with the finish on the warbear now. The colour scheme on the rider is simple, but the tonal work brings it out quite well.

Now that the figure is finished I have moved on to detailing the base. I painted the earth a darker shade and have also dry brushed the slate to bring out some of the detail.