AHPC XIII - 7th and 8th Submissions

 I decided to split my submissions over two posts this week.

Entry #7 - 15mm Gallic Cavalry

These are the ones that I didn't have time to do last week, so got carried over for submission this week.

Full post here

Entry #8 - '80s Drow

For the "Fantasy" studio, I decided to paint up some early 1980s (pre-slotta) Citadel Drow. They'd been sitting unpainted in my collection for about 40 years, so it was about time they got some love.

Full post here

I've got one more studio to do before plonking myself down in the Director's Chair and being given a fiendish task by the Show Lord; I suspect that task will be to crack on and paint the 28mm Type S scout Courier which was meant to be my main focus for this year's Challenge. As that job will take me several weeks, I will paint up a few odd figures each week, if only to have something to post.

Wednesday Workbench 01 February 2023

 

The Gallic cavalry are almost done, with just a quick drybrush and adding static grass left to finish the basing - a job for tomorrow morning.

While waiting for the basing steps to dry, I've made a start on a trio of figures for the Fantasy studio:

I've got the base colours down on all of them and will be finishing them off tomorrow.

The Stuff What I Did

Before I get onto the main bit of the post, the order I placed with GZG a few weeks ago arrived today:

There are two large mecha and two "crab" tanks for my Crusties, along with two packs of reinforcements for the infantry (one of the regular infantry squad support weapons and one of the armoured infantry). The remaining figure is a 25mm prisoner of war that I was planning to use as part of my risk takers entry, which was also to be Part 2 of "Revenge on Ray" - when I knew it wasn't going to arrive in time, I had to change tack. Now that the Challenge is over, I might still produce Part 2,,,possibly in time for people to have seen it before Salute!

OK, so onto the real business of this post - "The Stuff What I Did".

I got everything I'd painted for the Challenge out on my desk last night and took some pics. And here they are:

Everything

Half of my 6mm Rebs

The other half

15mm Choson Korean Righteous Army

15mm Crusties

Bonus round entries

Character figures

Salutesville civvies and prison officers

28mm cougars for Mexicagrave

Aztecs, ghouls and wolves for Mexicagrave

Pretty impressive I'd say!

My plan is to do individual posts for each group of submissions over the next couple of weeks.

Wednesday update

My right shoulder was much better today - no noticeable pain, so I was able to do some painting. I actually managed to finish the 6mm Union infantry:

I'm not basing these just yet. I've got two more line and two Zouave regiments to paint up. I'll base them all up in one go.

That's two items from my list done.

Once they were painted, I moved on to item 3 of the list I posted on Saturday - finishing off the prep on the 25mm GZG figures. Everything was going very nicely until I got onto the last few figures - the nuns, priest and drunk. One of the nuns had a lot of excess lead in the gap under her habit. To get it out I started drilling it with a pinvice. Skinny bit, slightly too much pressure - cue one snapped drill-bit and the stump skipping into my left thumb.

OOOUUUCCCHHH!!!

Lots of blood (well, it looked like lots, but probably wasn't that much really). the stump did go in about a quarter-inch and my thumb is a bit swollen and tender now. I did wash the wound thoroughly immediately after it happened, making sure to squeeze blood out to get rid of any crap that might have been carried in by the stump. Hopefully the swelling will have gone down by tomorrow.

Anyway, I did manage to finish the prep (with my thumb suitably covered with a pad of tissue to maintain pressure on the wound).

That's three items ticked off the list.

Of course, the fourth item on the list is...

...the road-sweeper!!

Fun time tomorrow! :)

Goodies Part 2

Well, I've had the identity of the two freebie figures I couldn't identify confirmed (thank you Mr Tuffley for the information!).

So, on with the pics of the unpacked figures. I'll start with the ones I had ordered.

SL1 Vehicle Crew

SL4 Colonial Security Team

SL11 Street Cops

SL12 News Team

SL23 Nuns and Drunk; SLS23 Priest*

SLS01 Adventurer/Character; SLS03 Male Crew/Pilot; SLS02 Engineer/Tech; SLS04 Female Crew/Colonel 

CR1A, CR2A, CR2B Senior Officers

CM02 Blonde Biker/Merc; CM05 VR Freedom Fighter; CM12 Warrior; CM22A Huntress

BB01, BB04, BB-B1, BB-B3 Biker Babes

Bike alongside a Hotwheels car

Alongside another car

The bikes don't scale too badly with the cars which is good, but the range of riders is a touch limited.

* the nuns, drunk and priest will actually be useful as citizens of Salutesville as well.


And now for the freebies:

SL13 Security Van Crew

SL15 Civilian Casualties

SL23 Evil Kultists

CM03 Treasure Hunter; CM09 Terminator Babe; BB03 Biker Babe

CR1B Senior Officer; CR3B Crew in EVA Suit with plasma cutter/welder

The two I couldn't identify yesterday**

** These two figures are actually from the Bubblegum Crisis range, but were never released as a figure pack, but were included with a car (no longer produced). It turns out that Jon includes them as freebies occasionally with orders.
They represent Inspector Leon McNichols and Detective Daley Wong.

Jon had also included these packs of 15mm figures:

M06 Mercenary Snipers/Marksmen; C25 Colonial Defence Force Mortar Crews

So, my freebie pack equates to about (probably just over in fact) 50% of the value of my actual order. Sweet!

I've now got plenty of figures for duelists, MONDOs, arena staff and general civvies/collateral damage. Oh and the start of a biker gang, although the outfits most of those babes are wearing don't seem very practical...

Of course, there are some other figures I'm going to want now - medics, firefighters, armed & armoured cops. And some spectators to populate the grandstand.

Sunday Update

The wind was not following today, so I haven't done anything on the gangsters (yet - I might get some work done later on). Luckily I did get a little bit done after my post last night, mostly the off-white midcoat on shirts etc.

I have done a couple of other bits though. I had promised myself that between every 2 or 3 sets of gangsters/cops/G-Men I'd paint up a "special". Given that I'm currently on my 3rd set, I'm going to need something to paint up when they're done. Like a lot of folks who have commented, I really want to see the Eureka jazz band painted up, so I've prepped them this afternoon. They are currently drying after being washed. I'll be taking some of the other "specials" packs with me to work this week, to prep during my lunch breaks. After painting the jazz band, I'd better get some of the scatter terrain done so I can do some gaming with the figures I've already got painted.

I also prepped and assembled a 25mm Gladius grav tank from Old Crow. My plan is to use this as a test piece for airbrushing. I need to get a couple of things first though - some Model Air paints, airbrush thinners and airbrush cleaner. And maybe one of those cleaning jars.

I've also placed an order with Sarissa for some more City Block buildings and some other bits. Just a small order of 12 City Block buildings, including a warehouse and 3 of the new corner stores. Plus the Town Hall from their Gaslamp Alley range, which I think will make a good inner city church. Once they are assembled and painted (a task for my new airbrush?) I should be able to do a good-sized layout for gaming.

Monday Update

Just a quick progress report as I didn't post yesterday.

Analogue Challenge

My "entry fee" has arrived safe and sound with Curt, and he's pleased as punch with it. Apparently only two of us have sent them in so far....


28mm Normans

I managed to prime them all on Saturday night, then dry-brushed them with Sky Grey yesterday morning to provide pre-highlighting. Thank goodness that's done!

I've started work on the knights. the horses have had their base colours applied and their washes. The riders have been dry-brushed with Oily Steel on the metal work (helmets, blades, chain mail, shield rims and bosses). The shield faces were then undercoated with Yellow Ochre and base coats applied (Dark Blue, Flat Green, Vermillion, Flat Yellow). I'm hoping to get backs of shields, spear/lance shafts and flesh done this evening for the riders and hopefully to get markings, hooves, tack and saddle cloths done for the horses as well.

The infantry will just have to wait until the knights are done!


15mm 30YW Cavalry (Harquebusiers/Reiters and Hakkapeliita)

Having left these in warm soapy water overnight, yesterday they were rinsed and left to dry. Since then I have glued horses onto painting sticks, attached the riders with superglue (and fitted a lance/flag-staff to one of the Hakkapeliita - I'd removed his sword and drilled out his hand during the prep) and primed them with gesso.

I'll probably paint one of these up between doing the Norman knights and the first half of the Norman infantry.

Analogue Painting Challenge: Ronin #46

(pre-written and scheduled to post on Boxing Day while I'm down in Sussex recovering from Tuesday's festival of gluttony!)

Well, here you go, my first entry to the 3rd Analogue Painting Challenge is my "entry fee", a lovingly painted 25/28mm Samurai figure which will shortly be wending it's way over the Atlantic to Curt.

The figure is a mid/lat 1980s Citadel Miniatures Samurai which I must have bought when I was still playing D&D. I never got round to painting it back then and found it last year after I'd got back into gaming.

Painting this figure was fun. After gluing the figure onto a 32mm washer I added basing gunk and a couple of small rocks. Once the gunk was dry, the figure received two thin coats of Vallejo white polyurethane primer and after the 2nd had dried a thin wash of black paint was applied to the whole figure. When the wash had dried, I dry-brushed with off-white. the idea was for the black to provide deep shading and the off-white to provide natural highlighting under the thinned down paints I would be using. The sword blade and chain mail sleeves were undercoated with black.

The metals were done by dry-brushing successively with Gunmetal Grey, Oily Steel and Silver. The guard-piece was dry-brushed with Old Gold. Painting was done using thinned down paints, getting progressively lighter and thicker. Guessing that the other participants would probably go for riotous colour schemes for their samurai, I opted to do something a bit different and went for a rich dark brown for the trousers and a golden-brown for the jacket/vest. I reserved bright colours for the sword hilt and scabbards.

The base was mainly done by dry-brushing after an initial thinned coat of Flat Earth, using Iraqi Sand and various greys. The rocks started out black, with successively lighter shades of grey being used to highlight it.

Once painting was complete, the figure was sealed and shaded with my usual Klear/ink mix, then sprayed with matt varnish. I then used brush-on satin varnish on the cloth and hair, and gloss on the sword blade and scabbards to make them "pop".

After varnishing, the base was given a final dry-brush to tone down the effects of the Klear/ink coat, then tufts and flock were added.

Anyway, that's more than enough verbiage to have made you read on Boxing Day, so here's the eye candy:

I'll be back home on Thursday, and will have to crack on with my first batch of figures for the Challenge - the Croat light horse. I'm hoping to get them finished before I have to go back to work on the 3rd.

Some Old Citadel Miniatures

I haven't done any painting this evening. After my post last night I got stuck into prepping the next batch of figures for painting. So far I've prepped 2 artillery pieces plus crews and bits; 24 horses for the cuirassiers and have started prepping the cuirassiers themselves. I'll also be prepping the 24 "Croat" light horse.

Anyway, onto the subject of this post.

Back at Salute in April, one of the bloggers at the meet-up mentioned that he was trying to get hold of Citadel dark elves from the 1980s. I said I thought I had some back at my Dad's house and would try to dig them out. Well, when I was down for my sister's birthday the other week I looked through the box and found them. I also dug out some orcs, a hobgoblin (I think), 2 ogres and some human characters.

The main problem is....

....I can't remember who the blogger was. If it was you, or you see this and know who it was, please let me know. And if anyone wants the orcs, hobgoblin and ogres please let me know. The humans I'll keep for myself for fun character painting as a break from my normal stuff.

Here are some pics of the figures. Some of them had been primed with white enamel back in the 80s, so I've been doing my best to get it all off - there's still a bit left on the figures, but not enough to obscure any details.

I' pretty sure the three shiny ones were dark elves, but could be wrong (the "slotta" says ELF)

Samurai, berserker, street thug and buccaneer - I should have fun painting these up

Two ugly bu***rs, errmm, incredibly handsome Ogres. 

Orcs and the suspected hobgoblin (on the right).