25mm Brigade Games Victorian Gangster with Pistol

Another entry in a growing collection of Victorian civilians for a Gothic Horror project ..

I probably should have gone a bit lighter on the final highlight for the base. "Go bold, or go home," HAS to be my mantra as I apply those final layers ... I always chicken out and err on the side of subtlety.

Thanks for looking! Questions, comments are welcome ...

25mm Old Glory Cossack Civilians Part 3/3

Sweeping up droppings in the snow? Yeah alright - I decided to maintain the theme of the others though the setting for these I imagine is in a snow-free barn of some kind. I thought about adding stray straw but now can't be bothered.

Gotta re-edge the bases but this lot is official done.

These are the very last of all the Cossack civilians for this project - great figs from Old Glory - I'm pretty happy with the overall results of these ...

Trying to figure out colors is a great deal of the appeal of this hobby for me - some work, some don't - mostly these were good.

The red on the gal at left is the one I'll use for British Scarlet from here on out.: Base coat: Vallejo Burnt Cadmium Red for shade color. Main coat: Game Color Gory Red. Final highlights: Game Color Bloody Red. The color is slightly off on these pics ...

I love these - same body, three different heads at different angles.

The red/dark brown scheme seen on the figure on the far right will feature prominently in the next set of semi-uniformed partisans that harried retreating French forces. Civilians, again, are great places to try out color combinations.

Thanks for looking! Comments, questions, suggestions are welcome and encouraged ...

25mm West Wind The Librarian

This was the other Red experiment. The base color being Vallejo's Black Red - one of the miracle products from Vallejo - one coat over black - lovely foundation for deep reds. Vallejo's Burnt Cadmium Red goes right over this as the base colorand can then be highlighted very easily. In this case I believe I used Vallejo Game Color Blood Red. No mixing - just the three colors straight out of the bottle.

The eyes are, to me, a mess on this sculpt as they are hidden behind glasses and under bulky eyebrows. "Do your best," I told myself ...

I based this one in a way similar to the Victorian Horror thing I'm doing. Meh ...The painting part is easier but the most effective results comes in the building up the base part so there's no awful slopes or steps. The goal here is high quality GAMING miniatures so I'll let the modeling slide at times ...

Micron pen inexpertly applied. There's a chance I didn't highlight the page edges! Would you have noticed?

Thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome!

25mm Ravenloft - Ivana Boritsi

This and the West Wind Librarian were test models I started when looking for killer Red recipes - the bane of black under-coaters everywhere!

I came across two suggestions for the foundation - both luckily enough from Vallejo. Ironically, Citadel's Foundation Mechrite Red is too light, It covers perfectly but then has to be shaded down to get shade levels done - that's a step I'd rather not do. I prefer a simple dark-to-light build.

On to the paint: This was the lighter of the two options for shade levels: Burnt Cadmium Red. In this case I highlighted with Citadel Game Color Blood Red to which I added increasing amounts of something that I now forget ...=/ It was an orange or yellow of some kind.

However, on this model the details are so delicate I ended up dry brushing the whole thing with many subtle layers. It should be clear to most observers that this was FAR TOO subtle and the figure doesn't pop at all. I regard this one as a failed experiment.

Botched basing too - I'm not particularly happy with many of the choices I made with this one. Still - nice character, lessons learned ...

Thanks for looking! Questions, comments and followers are welcome.

25mm Old Glory Cossack Civilians Part 2/3

I don't have a whole lot to say about these that I haven't said in the first post in this series but I do enjoy painting civilian figures - light on equipment and no uniform so they are fun to experiment with.

Clearly I'm still struggling with photograph lighting. No matter what i do they require a lot of post-manipulation. I try something new at every sessions and can't seem to get it right ...

I remember failing on the eyes so profoundly when I started these I allowed myself to consider them "good enough" given my deteriorating vision ...

In the Errors You Would Never Notice category is my failure to paint the bands keeping the pony tail together. Would you accept that they just knotted their hair? No? ok.

This is a terrific pack from Old Glory - great characters!

Difficult to tell the difference but I did many different methods of black here. One recipe was simply black and white in increasing levels. Another was black brought up with Shadow Gray, another with black brought up with khaki - so many options that work. I hope you can discern the differences here in some way.

The far right figure has the skin of a VERY large wolf. I'd do it differently were I to do it again.

Thanks all for looking - Questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged!

25mm Old Glory Cossack Civilians Part 1/3

This is the first part of three Cossack civilian sets for the 1812 skirmish campaign.

Lots of Cossack costuming on the web but none of it matches what's on the sculpts so I went "peasant-y" with reds and blues to give a little color.

I muddied up the base of the dresses and legs to represent splashed mud.

With civilians I take the opportunity to use them for experiments and try out color schemes for other projects. Some are good - others not so much. The hood on the gal on the left is a classic fail in execution - but I rarely fix that kind of thing - they're peasants after all ...

The children ... I think in retrospect I should have paired up a few mother-with-child-vignettes but too late now

. 

Parts 2 and 3 coming up soon ...

And as always, questions and comments are welcome and encouraged ... Thanks for looking!

25mm Old Glory French Battalion Guns

Battalion guns in action in the Peninsula - or on a white piece of paper depending on the strength of your imagination.

That's it for French artillery in this game - enough to keep guerrillas at bay ...? These were completed a couple years before I saw tufts. I can't help but think they, if applied sparingly, could improve the overall appearance of these ...

Questions, comments are welcome ...

25mm Old Glory French Voltigeurs Redux

These command figures were painted a very long time ago for Peninsula skirmish. I'm posting from a lap top and the light corrections I did may be off.

Voltigeur casualties ...

These, if I recall correctly, were painted back in the 20th Century for a game that is very far from being complete. 1812 Russian Retreat is where the energies are being poured nowadays. I'll get back to this after a while though I expect - if the vision holds out.

For the French, all that's done is 20 Voltigeurs, the three line command at top, three casualty figs and the two battalion guns with crew. No Brits or allies - all purchased, many primed but none painted.

Only 80 more rank and file to go  ...

As always, questions and comments are welcome and encouraged!

25mm Reaper Miniatures: Dark Lord Logar

Just finished this one - a stray in amongst the ongoing Cossack project. I generally try to "respect" the miniature by painting it in the expected colors -in this case mostly black. Instead I went progressively darker as I went up the figure keeping just the hood in black. So he's part-time in that he only has the hood. I have several far more intimidating executioners - this one's the junior apprentice I guess ...

And I still see some gloss I see in the crevasses ... which has just been fixed on the miniature but not the pic. Camera, handy tool ...

Moving Hell Part 1?

First the good news: all the single 25mm figs I've ever done fit in these army cases from GW. I've had them a few years and they always do a good job.

To save them from the moving apes I had to put them in 2 different boxes almost perfectly designed to fit them by U-Haul. I have two different Army Transport Cases holding 15mm and other painted stuff that were packed similarly. No outside damage was apparent, so I consider these "safe". The most problematic to pack were the recently posted Dervish I had just finished: http://flashman14.blogspot.com/search/label/Dervish

 I keep around old, but well cleaned, britches and mismatched socks to use as both painting rags and as stuffing for boxes just like these. Here, I'm optimistically unveiling them ...

And here's what I found: 

As I said on TMP, if you didn't pack for upside down you didn't pack them.

That's a magnetic sheet on the bottom there. The big fear here is figures broken off at the ankle. That is just simply un-repairable in 15mm. Broken spears I can replace but luckily neither occurred; there were bent spears but that was about it when I untangled this mess.

Unexpectedly and almost at the last minute I learned I did get to drive a personal car during the move and was able to convey the rest of my un-packable and large 15mm collection myself which naturally arrived unharmed. Remember this before & after shot?

I found layer cake separators (sheets of thin but sturdy cardboard) at Walmart and placed them between each of the drawers finally putting them in a close fitting box. I padded the sides and they arrived in the car ok after three days on the road.

You might ask, why not put the Dervish in those too? Well, the drawers were all full of Dark Ages, ACW, and Napoleonics - there was simply no more room. Circumstances, historically with me, have not favored Arab tribesmen one bit it seems ...


I reserve the right to post again if I find more damage but the painted stuff is, of course, my main concern. Thanks for looking! Questions, comments and followers are welcome!