Verlinden Carabinier General Bust

I've been working fairly consistently on the Verlinden Carabinier General bust that I posted about in my last wntry. There's actually a number of reasons I haven't yet posted a progress update for a few reasons, and none of them have to do with me not painting - quite the opposite!

1. Although (near as I can tell) the masking off of the painted areas in preparation for airbrushing went excellently - as in, the Tamiya thin yellow masking tape was neatly applied and any remaining gaps covered over with tiny amounts of UHU Tac - I decided not to airbrush the metallics and just tore all the masking stuff off. The reason being that I figgered any "texture" which accidentally showed up as a result of brush painting the helmet would make any weathering all the more believable/easier.
2. Getting the colors "right" took a while. I started painting the non-steel-colored areas of the helmet a nice copper color, which sounded good based on a respectable color guide I found online - the problem is that I didn't read the guide quite carefully enough, and his helmet was "supposed" to be a "yellow copper" (i.e., brass?) instead of a thorough red-based copper with verdigris and all. I also had to come up with a copper paint recipe, since I conveniently don't have any copper paint and I was too cheap to go buy some. Turns out I found a great color mixture for copper in combining GW Dwarf Bronze and OOP GW Shining Gold... the upside to all this color tomfoolery is that his breastplate is supposed to be plated in copper as a Carabinier officer, and I figgered out the right color glazes to turn copper into more of a brass/bronze (yellow ink, sepia, GW Swooping Hawk Turquoise, GW Devlan Mud, and a bunch of other stuff I played by ear highlight-wise).
3. I didn't want to post pictures until both sides were done. After I converted the whole helmet over to a more brassy color, I went and grunged up half of it as a test. It now looks like what I'm told is bronze, but in comparing it to samples online I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say it's rilly rilly rilly dirty brass. Whatever. When I went back to get the right side of his helmet to match the left, I didn't have the color quite right - I think I've fixed that now. Oh, and I wanted to add trompe l'oeil denting and scratch effects to his helmet, which at this scale were a little more involved than what I'm used to in painting 25mm and 28mm figs.

*deep breath*

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! The remaining (obvious) metal details of the helmet will be done as steel, but I'm going slowly so as to keep pace with the rest of the MHMC guys. I was about 2-3 months behind, caught up in the space of a week of frantic painting, and now I think I'm slightly ahead. I think I'm done with the face and eyes, though...

Recent Painting Stuff

 Firstly, I'd like to thank Brandt of Toadkiller Miniatures for support and encouragement recently. We met through the Michigan Historical Miniatures Club at Michigan Toy Soldier Co., and while it took me quite a while to catch up to the rest of the Club, spending some time hanging out and painting with Brandt has been very motivational.

 Secondly, I'd like to thank Dave Youngquist of Michigan Toy Soldier Co. He has been unfailingly professional, patient, and knowledgeable in answering my questions, offering critique and suggestions regarding my recent work, and just in general being a helluva painter and overall resource in terms of historical miniatures and display painting - he also organizes the MHMC.

 Third, I'd like to offer up some of my own painting! The figure that the aforementioned Club is painting is a 200mm Verlinden figure - a Napoleonic Carabinier General bust. What's nice is that it's a good mix of materials and detail; a reasonably realistic-looking face, both smooth and decorative metal areas, and several different types of fabrics. I've not worked on anything at this scale before, so my plan is to paint it up as accurately as possible and just have fun with it.

What I've done so far (out of potentially something sorta resembling the "official" paintjob and assembly here):

 It was sort of an off-the-cuff suggestion that I paint him to resemble a "zombie," but that struck my fancy as a great idea, and so that's what I'm going to run with. I don't really want to convert up my first larger-scale bust to a great extent so I'm not planning on doing any major resculpting or anything to make him more "dead"-looking. I'd also like to keep him within the bounds of what an actual French Carabinier of the Napoleonic period would've worn in terms of the color scheme, but I'm going to try and push the paintjob, the overall coloration, and the weathering effects in the direction of an "undead" theme.

Return of the Son of Odds 'n' Ends, Mk. VIII

 You may have noticed the lack of regular updates in the past several months - this is due to a number of things that I really don't need to get into in detail (my health, family life, unemployment, starting a new contract job, etc.) - sufficent to say, though, I've not had nearly as much time and motivation to post regular updates on painting and such... because there hasn't been much going on in the way of painting and such!


1) I'm wondering if slightly tweaking things in terms of site layout or blog formatting or what-have-you might be the way to go? It was suggested (thanks, IntereoVivo!) that maybe I could/should take suggestions as to the topics and content I put up. Dunno why I hadn't thought of this before, but I think that might be an excellent way of keeping things alive and fresh. I've got a ton of projects (or potential projects) that I could use for "demonstration" purposes here - on-sprue minis, drawers full of 20+-year-old lead fantasy and sci-fi figures, stuck-together-but-not-glued gaming figures, many figures that would easily make for good display-quality pieces, and even scenery or "display base" odds 'n' ends that I could be posting about. Assuming the trend of limited time continues, short posting on my part of stuff like "This is how I'm pinning the 54mm resin soldier" or "Here's a few approaches in painting black I'm taking that could give you different 'finishes' as an end result" would probably be much easier (and less demoralizing) than having a whole blog to fill and very few finished things of late to post.

 To that end, I think a "Contact Me" box or a "Make Suggestions Here" blurb highly visible on the site would be good. Any ideas on how best to approach the layout of the site? Maybe email me! This ties in with...


2) I've been using a newly-bought-and-self-assembled computer for several months now after some technical difficulties in operation and finally have things reinstalled again to the point where I can make worthwhile updates - for a good month there, the computer was in the shop and/or empty for all my web editing software, and with all my site images and templates and such backed up on a spare HD. That being said, I also moved to a format here not so long ago with the main Painting by Tinweasel site serving as sort of a stripped-down framework with all kinds of added content, and the Painting by Tinweasel Blog serving as sort of a central hub and news/update feed. The blog is self-sufficient, but the full website needs a lot of layout changes and behind-the-scenes tweaking now. Since I have to do that anyways to get everything looking neat and tidy and non-redundant (double header bars, etc. Yuck!), is there anything that people would like up on there?

What, if anything, might people like to see? Or, better yet, how could I get the most use out of a supporting website that statistically gets only about 1/3rd of the views of my Blog despite having a Gallery of painted figures, a section on painting Tips and Techniques, and even some (slightly older) Tutorials?


3) I've joined the local Michigan Historical Miniatures & Model Club at a store not too far from me here - The Michigan Toy Soldier Co. Essentially, the store encourages all sorts of figure painting (like my Games Workshop Chaos Space Marine army and my Golden Demon Competition pieces, some of my stuff being in their display case currently!) and even stocks a fair amount of tabletop gaming stuff at a great discount - their main focus, though, is historical miniatures and models, painting and modeling supplies, and toy soldiers and collectible figures. I'd highly recommend the store to any miniature painters, and the staff are all great! The Club I signed up for is kinda an informal thing meeting one night a month, and we've all decided to go in on a "club figure" that we can all paint, pose, convert, or whatever, with the end result being a group display at a show (or two).

 The club figure is a 54mm Private of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment, 1870, put out by Michael Roberts, Ltd. - an excellent resin piece with very few mold problems (some bubbles on the base, a little bit of flash, and minor mold lines here and there) and a high level of accurate and realistic detailing. (Not that I know squat about post-Revolutionary War regimental troops, but still!) I haven't started prepping it and have virtually no experience painting historically accurate miniatures at all - but I'm really looking forwards to this, especially the opportunity to learn from some veteran painters in a "new" field. I'll be posting my progress... I'm also open to any and all suggestions at this point, as this is "a brave new world" I'm venturing into, so to speak.