Television is rather a frightening business. But I get all the relaxation I want from my collection of model soldiers.
Peter Cushing

Friday 3 October 2014

Slopping a bit of colour about

This is my first attempt at posting to blogger from a tablet so we'll see if it works or not. Some things never leave you. Drybrushing, for example: it doesn't matter how long it's been since your last session, once you've got it, you've got it. It annoys me that you have to learn brush control all over again; it's like the fine motor control has slipped out of your muscle memory. Anyway, my first bit of painting since the birth of the eldest nearly three years ago went... Well, as well as could be expected, really. I got the base colours blocked on to the valiant chaps of the Prince of Wales Own Volunteers and practiced some shading, blending and Drybrushing on Barney. The main scenic element has been primed as well. So, here are the boys, the boys to entertain you: Untitled And here is Barney - awful lighting, but hopefully you can see the texture work. Untitled For anyone that's interested, Barney is in fact a 50p dinosaur from our local pound emporium. Don't ask me why he was 50p, I have no idea. About the only place you can really tell is the poor sculpt around the teeth and claws; otherwise the level of detail was very pleasing - although I did have to remove the enormous 'Made In China' mark on his chest (although this has given me a great idea for a Yellow Peril/Fu Manchu vignette somewhere down the line). If my confidence was back to full levels I'd touch up the claws and teeth with green stuff but again, I want to actually get something finished before I do anything more complex. Tomorrow - my first paint table Saturday, how exciting - I'll do the detail work on the chaps and block in the faces. Then we're in to the first round of shading and highlighting. Annoyingly, I've lost my painting notebook and can't actually remember which way round I liked to do the first lot. Oh, and I have to mark a couple of sets of exams and source exercises, but I'm sure it'll all work out somehow!

2 comments:

  1. Fabulous! Are these the Warlord/Empress plastics? How well do they go together? Barney was a bit of find too - it's all really taking shape. Good luck with the marking, we had an open morning today, so feeling a bit robbed on the painting time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aye, a box of Warlord. They slot together very easily but I'm not sure how much variation of posing you'd get from each sprue of four without surgery. The quality of the sculpt is generally very good and I've only found one area of soft detail on one of the bodies where the satchel meets the coat bottom - but nothing that can't be fixed in painting.

      Overall very impressed and the price is rather agreeable.

      Got all my Year 7 sources marking done this afternoon, just some Film Studies mock exams to do tomorrow. So more painting tonight!

      Delete