November Army - 11/14 Progress

I managed to paint at lunch today:

Of course, I cheated and brought the more interesting portions of the army to paint, i.e. the command squad and the attached grenadier squad.

I keep saying "army" but really I am painting a rifle platoon, plus three sentinels, and an attached grenadier squad, seconded from the battalion.  The rifle platoon has a command squad, 4 rifle squads, and a heavy machine gun squad for a total of 51 effectives.

I am also in the process of converting a few company level assets, such as a heavy mortar squad and it occurred to me that maybe I could build and paint a full company.  Mostly because I have more conversion ideas... Yes, I am crazy.

November Army - Painting Progress

This might not look like four hours of work, but it is... painted pants, bedrolls, canteens, and a few other things for the 50+ figures.  I also completed a test figure for the Storm Troopers.

Under the Ott Light, you can see the difference between rattle can flat black and airbrushed Reaper Nightmare Black.  One of them is extremely blue.

November Army - Primed

Well, that did not go as planned.  As I mentioned last night (this morning?) I was going to prime all my figures with the airbrush.  Did not work out.  I have not used the thing for 8 years, and only once before that, so I probably should have scheduled in some time for troubleshooting.  And I ran out of black paint.  And the Reaper "Nightmare Black" paint that I got as a Halloween freebie... is actually very dark blue.

So I stopped at Home Depot after my nephew's soccer game this morning, picked up a rattle can of flat black, and had everything primed in 15 minutes.

I still want to use that darn airbrush, but I will have to take some more time to practice first.

November Army -Basing

Just finished the basing of my little army project... now on to airbrush priming.

You can see the majority of the figures to be painted here

 I may have gone a bit overboard with basing, as I built a destroyed sash window, a wooden floor, fence, and a few other crazy things, using time that would have been better spent painting.

Lots of people use sprue for bricks, but how many use a chopper to make them all the same size?

Pre-sanding

Sculpting at work

Similar to my earlier post about painting at work, I have been sculpting at work lately.  mostly this is gap filling and the like for my various Inq28 figures, but I have added straps, fur, pistol holsters and a few more ambitious items.

The box is one of those old Games Workshop bitz boxes that I seem to have a few of, and it suffices for this use.  I carry a file, a needle pointer, a spearhead sculpting tool, and a custom made "lifter" tool I made from some sprue.  I use Apoxie sculpt exclusively these days, partly because it is water soluble (meaning easy cleanup) and partly because it is in the little plastic containers and thus has not dried up.  A bottom of a water bottle holds a bit of water for me to dip my tools in, piece of tape to hold figures and bitz during transit, and we are done.

Today I finished these three Steel Legionaries, two of whom have been converted to carry flamers, and one who has a single shot anti tank missile strapped to his back (for use in SGII battles).

The reason I have been converting these fine fellows?  The family is out of town, and like last year, I plan to get some serious army painting in...

Plastic Landsknechts - IndieGoGo

Pro Gloria's Indiegogo campaign

€24 gets you a box of figures, including 20 regular pikemen on two sprues, and four command figures on two command sprues. Enough arms to equip with halberds, spears, or pikes, and more than two heads per figure so you can have plenty of variety. Shipped worldwide, some time in mid 2015, although it may be longer...

Higher level rewards and add-ons are of course available. As of this writing the campaign is at ~15% of its goal, but I think it will make it, if not here, than later, since the figures are already sculpted.

I do not think I am going to be taking part in this, since I have plenty of pikemen currently, but I hope that this comes to fruition sooner or later... because I will eventually need more, and they look great.