Painted Dwarf Cannon and Some Photographing Notes

The proud dwarfs of Karak Azul now have a cannon to help stem the tide of greenskins that threaten to seize their mountain home. I finished this earlier in the week, when I decided one morning before work to quickly dip the crew and the dwarf lord figure that came with the Skull Pass boxed set. A word of advice, don't try and dip figures before work whilst on the phone, you will drop your dwarf lord into the pot of quickshade. And then you will try to dab the excess quickshade off with a brush loaded with dirty water, and then you will end up with a horrid looking model with greyish muck patches. Sigh. Needless to say the dwarf lord will need some clean up before he is ready for photographing. 

Some notes of the photos. First off, I finally got around to building a lightbox. Nothing fancy, just a box with white paper sides and three lamps to bombard them with. I bought a lamp yesterday which produces a nice white light, but the other two are quick yellowy and feeble. However, as the photos show the shadows are eliminated and the light is pretty decent. I would like to invest more into my lampage, but at the moment I simply don't have the space to devote to the hobby. Hopefully as I clear out the house I will claw back some room to store lamps etc. I also don't have a tripod, which is an oversight on my part. It's going to be a tight month monetarily, so I'll have to hold back on the spending majorly. A tripod would make the camera steadier and allow for longer exposure times without the risk of blur. 

Now, in all honesty, I really don't like these miniatures, but they are what I have. At the moment, the mighty army of Karak Azul consists of 25 Warriors, 9 Thunderers, 8 Miners, and 1 Cannon. I haven't got a Dwarf army book, so I can't work out the points value for this little force. However, I think I might be approaching a point where I can start playing small sized battles to familiarise myself with the new rules. 

That is all.

Dwarf Miners, Celtic Test Models and a Ploughed Field

As the twitter feed shows, the first battalion of the French Old Guard Grenadiers are now almost complete, the Colonel just needs to be done, and he shouldn't take too long given the painting method I am using. However, in the meantime, here is a completed unit of Dwarf Miners. I don't think the unit is legal, but frankly at this point it doesn't really matter too much. Even the smallest detachment of little men needs a big man to lead them into battle, so the next chap to grace the painting table is a Thane to lead the Karak Azul Militia into battle, at the same time I am going to get their trusty cannon done for a little added firepower. Hopefully, once these are done I can goad friend Taff into doing battle with his Khorne army. 

Without further ado, here are some pictures:

I'll be honest, I am not the biggest fan of these figures, but they do a credible job, and being single piece figures they paint up pretty swiftly. I still don't have the Dwarf army book, but I did take the plunge yesterday and bought the Island of Blood starter box, for the rulebook. I am not sure if I will do much with the figures, especially the Elves, but the Skaven Rat Ogres and characters will be good for Mordheim at least. I am looking to perhaps start a small Mordheim campaign as a means of getting some gaming done with an irregular schedule. 

In addition to the Dwarfs and French, I have been doing other bits and pieces, such as Battlefleet Gothic Imperial cruisers, which are so simple to slot in between waiting for paint to dry they don't detract too much from the main effort. Again, Gothic is a game I really enjoy far more than Warhamer or 40k, and requires far less on the table to have an enjoyable game. These bits and pieces appear on the twitter feed as they do not warrant a blog post, yet. I have also been painting some Foundry Celts for the Northern Frontiers project, at this stage I am still toying with painting techniques. 

Here are two elements of Celts. I stuck to relatively simple clothing patterns as barbarian filler isn't worth the effort of painting checks, something which I don't feel comfortable doing anyway. The element on the left has been painted using a three stage shade, base, highlight method; the element on the right the dip method. Honestly, I think that the dipped figures are good enough, as well as being swifter. That said, the paint jobs are compatible, so there is no harm in perhaps lavishing more time on the nobles and dipping the rank-and-file. Thoughts?

Here is also a picture of the lot together, including the ploughed field I made:

More to come. Be sure to follow the blog on Twitter at twitter.com/ZenMiniPainting for little updates and random pictures.

Dwarf Thunderers

The end of July is rapid closing, and I finally have a day off. I have managed to get a small unit of nine Dwarf Thunderers done this month, whilst continuing to repaint my Vikings. Here are some pictures of those retouch jobs, these chaps have been based and varnished and are ready for action. 

Since the weather was nice, I took these outside in some natural light which does the figures more justice than yellow internal light. These are Foundry figures, quite large and on the heroic side, when I was originally putting my Norwegian Viking army together for WAB using the Shieldwall supplement, I had planned to use these guys as Jomsvikings as they seem the adventuring sort. They will fulfil the same role in Saga. 

Here are some pictures of the newly completed Dwarf Thunderers, this unit is missing a musician, I simply cannot find him anywhere, hopefully one day he will turn up. Not quite a legal unit yet, but who's counting. The first picture was taken indoors with yellow light, the others outdoors in natural light.

I am quite pleased with the way these guys have turned out, they were pretty quick to do and look pretty smart for rank-and-file chaps. So I am now up to three units, though they are rather tiny units and not much use yet, but things are taking shape and soon Karak Azul will have a small defence force for some low point games, though I need an eighth edition rulebook before I can get gaming.

I am currently basing up some more Vikings and three companies of Old Guard Grenadiers, I'll try and get some pictures up by tomorrow, so let's hope the weather is nice again so they can be taken outdoors.

Workbench Update, End of May

May is almost over, and the end of the month is a good opportunity to gauge painting progress this month. The Confederate infantry are almost finished, I am still trying to get my standard grey perfected, as the paints I used made the last batch quite light. The good news is that the variance adds to the overall character of the Confederate army which I am consciously trying to model as irregular in opposition to my planned Yankees. I need to order some Fire & Fury sized bases from Warbases to finish them. I also happened upon a few Confederate cavalry whilst during some rummaging which was a nice find, but I am in no hurry to get them painted up quickly given that cavalry was largely falling out of use, but I will need them eventually.

On the Eastern front, the Russians are almost done, the rifle teams are all complete, the officers are done, and the bunker diorama thing is done too. Now there are just a few mortars and a heavy machine gun to go, as well as six would be deserters who were caught lurking in a bits box and were swiftly dragged back to the frontline to be painted. Then the lot needs basing, which I will do following the method from my earlier post. Here is the completed test base for the delectation of the gentle reader. I have opted for a simple mud and flock look with a little autumn thrown in. I picked up Scale Scenics autumn flock yesterday and will mix it in to give the bases a more colourful look to try and bring beautiful Karelia to them.

Meanwhile, in a fantasy realm, far far away, two units of Dwarf warriors are reporting for duty to defend the mountain hold of Karak Vol, or Blue Mountain. These fellows are finely dressed in the livery of their mountain home, which is famed for Lapis Lazuli, the lifeblood of the economy. On the left is the bigger of the two units. I am pleased by the final result of the Army Painter anti-shine and the overall process, which was quick, hassle-free and didn't cut into painting time for more important projects. The next unit to be called up will be Thunderers.

It has been a productive week, though the fine weather has kept me from painting more. In addition to the ACW, Russians and Dwarves I have also been doing little bits and pieces like dusting off my old 15mm DBA armies and refurbishing my 28mm Early Imperial Romans who were quite badly battered. Hopefully I will get an opportunity to write up my first game of Field of Glory which Taff and I played this week and share my thoughts on the rules.

Update from the Workbench

A rather "muddy" looking base, good result thus far.

It has been a hectic week, but amongst the smoke and general disorder I have managed to get some painting done. The Russians are now all but done, only the mortars and leader figures to go, and the Strelkovy Battalion will be ready for basing. I haven't based any Flames of War minatures before, and given that the figures stand on mighty pedestals that need levelling off, I thought I would follow the nifty tutorial on the Battlefront website that show how to use Polyfilla as a basing material. I got myself a tube of the ready mix quick dry stuff that you can squeeze straight out and use, and here is my first test base. I am going to let this set for a day before trying to paint it, I know the Polyfilla claims to be quickdry, but there is no harm in leaving it for a little longer.

Whilst having a general tidy up, and taking stock of all my lead, I came across a drawer of 15mm ACW Confederates which were almost done, so I started to complete the last 21 Rebs of that set. The American Civil War is amongst my favourite historical periods and I enjoy reading about what was certainly a more complicated conflict than one "about slavery." It certainly helps that there are many films and books set in the period which provide ample inspiration for us wargamers. On Wednesday evening my father, a Civil War fiend, and I watched Gods and Generals, a very long film at around three and a half hours, which covers the story of General 'Stonewall' Jackson and is the prequel to Gettysburg. I had been reading about Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign and I was thinking about starting 15mm ACW anew with forces for both sides. The relatively small sizes of both armies involved in the Valley Campaign, with Confederate forces peaking at around 16,000 at Winchester, and Union forces 11,500 at Cross Keys, make modelling the armies an eminently doable prospect. So for the moment the 21 Rebs are back on the workbench and I am enjoying painting them immensely, the irregular look of the Confederate infantry is a pleasure to paint when one gets tired of painting homogenous bodies of men. I also found a bag of Confederate cavalry which I shall be painting up as well, I am no position to be buying miniatures at the moment, so I will rather paint what I have.

Also on the workbench is the combined dwarven hosts from two Warhammer Skull Pass starter sets which I had bought many years ago. I don't really play Warhammer Fantasy, but given that it is the most popular thing out there, it isn't a bad idea to have an army on hand should the opportunity to play a game arise. With that in mind, as I am not massively invested in the project on a personal level, the painting and modelling of these miniatures is not subject to the usual focus and attention to detail. This is however an opportunity to explore ways in which to get larger bodies painted really quickly and to that end I am going to try and use the dip method. So I bought a tin of Army Painter Strong Tone Quickshade from Warlord Games and a few days later it was here.

Proud Dwarven warriors almost ready to settle some grudges.

Luckily, The Army Painter has a set of tutorial videos on their website that shows a novice "dipper" how it is done. I favoured the "splash" method, by which you paint the varnish on and the results aren't bad at all. These thirteen dwarves took almost no time to paint, I just blocked in the basecoat colours and painted on the shader. With hindsight I wish I had started basing them at the same time as painting them, but that is a lesson for the next set. Once I have a method down I will post a step-by-step for those who might find it useful. I think most will agree that the results are quite good actually considering the lack of effort on my part, the tabletop view of them is quite impressive. I still need to apply the matt varnish to get rid of that "wet" look, but these are table ready as of now by my reckoning.

It is very tempting to use this method for "hoard" armies, like Picts and Celts, but perhaps with a highlight thrown in after the shading. This is something I will definitely consider going forward.