Saturday Workbench

Gosh! Three weeks without posting. Sorry for leaving you bereft of my inane verbiosity for so long. The fact is that until today I didn't have anything to post about. Well, that's not strictly true - if I'd downloaded pics from my camera, I could have done an AAR of a game of Full Thrust. But I haven't actually done any painting over the past few weeks as I first of all got a bug to watch the whole of Babylon 5 again (including the films and "Crusade") and this past week I've been a bit wiped out in the evenings.

Anyhoos, I'm back in the swing of things now and have started work on the scatter terrain pieces that I primed a few weeks ago. At the moment I'm doing the stacks of sacks - they've had basecoats and a shading wash so far; the next step is to paint the integral bases that some of them have. I'll do that tomorrow and then switch to some of the other pieces, probably the crates and tea-chests.

WIP pics:

I used 3 different basecoats - Ivory, Pale Sand and White Grey - before a thin sepia wash

During the week I have been prepping the GZG figures I bought at Colours. I'll be sticking them on bases during the week while paint dries on the terrain. I expect that I'll just prime them for now, ready for painting during this year's Challenge.

Scatter Terrain Primed

Soooo....I haven't done anything on finishing off the Sarissa warehouse and corner store that I started a long time ago. I have, however, been beavering away prepping and priming some resin scatter terrain from Ainsty. I started the priming last night, but my airbrush was playing up a bit so I stopped and gave it a thorough clean - it definitely needed it. I decided to give my other airbrush a good cleaning too (it also needed it, but not quite as badly!). That was definitely a job worth doing - they are bother working so much better today.

I'll be painting these up in batches over the next few evenings. Then I'll finish the two buildings. Honest!

Anyway, on Saturday I'm planning to make a trip to Newbury Racecourse for Colours. I haven't been for a couple of years and there are a few things I want to pick up.

Broadside Loot and Finished Gangsters

Today saw me take a trip out of The Smoke down to Sittingbourne for Broadside. The hall was crowded and rather warm (now that's an understatement). A quick whizz around the first aisle and I was at the Rejects' table to say hello to the boys and to hand over the gangster figures to Fran and Postie. You've already seen pics of the figures, but here is a pic of them packed up (obviously I've cropped and pasted from two pics for this):

I did a tour of the games to take pics (I'll post those on Tuesday) before doing my shopping. Well, the first round of shopping. On my second round of the hall I found the black Vallejo surface primer I was after, which I'd missed before. On my third (or maybe fourth) round I discovered that Colonel Bill's had a tub of 4Ground furniture, so I bought some of those. At the end of my first tour I had picked up my pre-order from Ainsty.

So, the loots:

  

Stacks of sacks

Barrels and assorted piles of sacks and bales

Tea crates

A skylight - I guess I'll do the panes from OHP film

Stacked timber

 .

Rifle cases and boxes of produce

Various sizes of crates

A pigeon loft

Finished Gangsters

I got back early enough to varnish the figures. They all got sprayed with matt varnish, then some bits got coats of brush-on satin or gloss varnish.

For the guy in the leather coat I tried to "highlight" with gloss, but it didn't work right. I think the gloss had got too tacky. I've since gone back over it with satin and it looks OK now.

I'm really pleased with how this chap turned out. But what has he got in that violin case? Guesses in the comments please!

Now these wise guys are done, I'll move onto doing the "Named Gangsters". I won't be starting on them until Tuesday though as I'm playing Saga tomorrow at the club.