So it has been a quiet weekend for me ( and an even quieter week ).. but the first ( of unfortunately many ) units for my Parliament English Civil Wars army is ready.. finally! I normally am not so down on the painting, and quite enjoy it, but for some reason this unit took me far more effort to get completed than I thought humanly possible.
I believe it to be a combination of the sculpts and the lack of knowledge in the period to throw me off in the end. But I did in the end begin to organise a method for painting them up quickly. So hopefully future units will not take as much time.
The way in which they hold the pikes differs from model to model, so have to plan that out much better next time around.. ugh.. learning curves suck!
I also do not like that they are in batches of 4 for basing, which made me have to go about a different route for getting them painted before bringing them on here. As I do want them to be a bit nicer.
Also, before others mention it.. I am aware that I had painted some of the armor sections blue instead of metal. My reasoning is that they colored it for this unit, but future units were more lazy and left them silver ( maybe ).
The biggest pain of the unit of course is the pikes themselves though. Something that I had to have a think on how to paint them up. In the end, you can see that I used a larger socket, blutac'd them on, and went to town on them with sprays and airbrush work. Before coating them, and the figures, in multiple coats of gloss, and then matte varnish for protection.
Smaller batches moving forward for this lot will be required, and some better thinking on how to attach them prior to painting will also help.
In between cursing this lot of infantry though, I did manage to paint up a small gang for Arkham City skirmish. Penguin and 5 of his goons for one of the local players. A lot more fun than I thought, and I also got to have a bit more freedom in how I did it. Although I did copy the boxart for a majority of it, I did get to choose how to get there in the end.
There will be a few more of these coming soon, and if I can figure out how it works, I might even go and get in a game of it!
So all in, I got a total of 46 models painted up in the 28mm scale. I am not sure what else I will have for next week as there is a bolt action tournament coming up which I will get to use some of the rangers and American vehicles in.. but also means less painting time. Curious what I might get done, and in what scale. Have one project that is in 1:1 scale! :D
ByronM: Good stuff here Kyle! I am completely with you on painting block infantry they always seem to be a slog for me as well. Others around this site seem to bang them off with no issue, but I don't know the secret either, so maybe someone will share and we can learn something? Unless the answer is skip details, then that's a no go (for me at least).
You ECW guys look really good though, despite your issues. I like the subtle things, like the pants being a slightly different shade of blue to make them appear separate yet still part of the whole (if that makes an sense). All the details are nice and clean as well. Pikes are always a pain for everyone though, so welcome to the club! As for basing and painting, while it takes a bit more effort to be careful, what I do is paint them all on sticks, then fit them all together after so that you don't need to deal with painting around other figures. It sounds (and I could be wrong) that you based them then painted them, that makes it a lot more difficult, although many do it that way.
I would have liked to see some more pics of your Penguin gang as they look awesome. I really like the shading you did on the "white" parkas. You went far darker in the shades than I would have thought possible, far starker contrast lines, yet they still instantly look white. I really like the effect.