Posts, articles and links mostly concerning the painting of miniatures. Lead Painters League posts, links to resources and inspiration elsewhere, and such.
Right at the ragged end of the year, one last blog update!
Been getting a bunch of painting done this month, including the hatted bug guy seen in the last post. There’s also some Footsore Trolls mostly done and a scattering of other stuff on the painting bench!
The workbench at the very end of 2024. A small crew of WIP science fiction figures, three lovely Footsore trolls mostly finished, a whole batch of 3d printed barrels, and a scattering of other random stuff being gradually worked on.
They’re not great pictures, but here’s a couple of closeups of the most recent finished-except-for-the-base figure. This is some sort of Games Workshop Chaos Beastperson minotaur, I think, snagged earlier in 2024 as GW’s free in-store figure of the month. They had a silly spiked club/mace thing that I chopped off and converted into a big choppy sword, but are otherwise stock.
Captain Spacecow front view.Captain Spacecow rear view.
I’m trying to push my highlighting and edges more than I usually do, and have also been trying to add texture with paint more. It’s most obvious on Captain Spacecow’s horns and the blue piece of cloth/armour/whatever on their back, but there’s also fur texture on the torso and lower legs that isn’t really obvious in either of these photos.
The painted fur texture was directly inspired by this video from Vince Venturella. His entire YouTube channel is worth a look, he’s got loads of great videos that I’ve been watching a bunch of the last month or two.
Happy New Year and Happy Holidays. Hope 2025 is good for you and yours!
A while ago our local GW store was giving away a single Tyranid bug-warrior figure for free. Of course I snagged one, who doesn’t want free stuff? I’m never going to bother playing 40k, but a random free figure? Sure!
I glued the critter together (GW makes some… interesting engineering choices in how their figures fit together, some of the parts are weird AF…) and then it lurked on the corner of my painting bench for months and months.
Then I realized that in Corey’s in-development Under Alien Suns rules you could run damn near anything as a crew, so I kitbashed together half a dozen figures a couple months ago and decided, for the hell of it, to grab a hat with big feathers on it from my 17th Century plastic stash and glued it to bug-guy’s head.
Then in the doldrums of the year I finally primered the whole motley crew and starting painting them. Bug-guy caught my attention and he got finished today, right from primer to done (barring some cleanup on the base) just today.
Not-a-Tyranid. That’s Specialist Ghar under a dashing hat (they never explain the hat) loping through the scruffy weird universe of Under Alien Suns, or whatever other oddball SF skirmish we get up to!
I went purple for the exoskeletal bits, dark red/black for the flesh bits, and bright green for the rifle that may or may not be grown right out of bug-guy. I’m really pleased with the highlighting, especially of the purple and the gun.
Specialist Ghar’s other side. Click, as usual, for larger.
I’ll be getting paint on the rest of his crewmates in the next few days; I don’t go back to work until Jan 6 of 2025 so probably have time to finish all of them!
PaintRack is an Android & iOS phone/tablet app I discovered a few years ago ago, used a little bit, then during a reorganization of my chaotic painting bench remembered the existence of. This little review has sat in my Drafts folder for a couple of years, but it’s worth hitting publish on because the app continues to be really solid and useful!
The core of PaintRack is a paint library/inventory system to help you track which paints you own. It comes pre-loaded with a huge library from dozens of manufacturers, and can use your device’s onboard camera to scan the barcodes on your paint bottles to make creating your inventory as painless as possible. The free version will only scan one bottle at a time, but the paid version has a feature called RapidScan that lets you do a whole batch of scanning then update your inventory all at once. The paid version is only a few bucks, I highly recommend the purchase!
My inventory screen, with Reaper selected as that’s my main paint supplier.The RapidScan barcode scanner in action.Sets – the painting notes utility. Mostly used for WW1/WW2 stuff that has to be vaguely uniform in my case, apparently…Color Tools, figuring out which random Vallejo colour I don’t own is close to something I do own.Part of the Setting page – the app has a “backup to our website” option just in case you bork your phone. Have used that at least once…
PaintRack is actively working with various paint manufacturers to get their lines into the app, so if you’re Kickstarting the latest celebrity painter’s private line of paints the app probably already has their stuff available.
It isn’t just wargaming or model paints like Vallejo, GW, or Reaper in the onboard inventory, there’s art supply companies like Windsor & Newton and craft paints like Deco and Apple Barrel listed too, which means it can be useful for scenery painting or for those of us who branch out beyond just the game store paints.
There’s a Sets tool that’s basically a notepad for painting schemes that links into your inventory, and a set of Color Tools for developing colour schemes and picking paints for your inventory that are close matches to paints you don’t own (very useful for trying to follow other people’s painting tutorials!).
PaintRack also has a Wishlist shopping list feature, potentially very useful if you’re standing in front of a massive wall of paint at your favourite local hobby store trying desperately to remember which weirdly named colour it was you were missing at home! I think it’ll also tie into your Amazon account for online purchases, but I don’t give Noted Sociopath Jeff Bezos money if at all possible so I haven’t explored that part of the app.
The Queen is the largest Gaslands vehicle I’ve done so far and by far the most complex conversion I’ve done for the game!
She started life as a city busy of some sort, sourced I think from Ali Express by Corey, sat around in his stash for a while, then became mine when I volunteered to make something cool to terrorize our Gaslands games with! She’s true-scale to Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars, so very close to six inches long now that I’ve finished a full post-apoc war bus conversion job.
Planning the Queen. Bus chassic, truck cab, tanker truck parts, and the engine from the dragster.Dremelled the truck apart, first step of construction!The massive front ram taking shape.Flamethrower deck.Armour. Very important.Test fitting some crew, first glimpse of the rear fighting platform.The ram from the front.The tail of the beast.Primed and painting started.Pink? Why not?Weathered, crew installed, other details installed on both fighting platforms.The Queen rolls out! Her first in-game appearance.
Been doing gaming fairly regularly, had a good weekend at Trumpter Salute 2024 in Vancouver early in March, but apparently haven’t managed to blog a thing in ages.
Here, have a chill painting video in lieu of original content.
Bunch of stuff in progress including a gloriously over the top Gaslands war-bus based on a city busy chassis, which I have been taking a bunch of progress photos of and will try to assemble into a gallery here to show off sometime soon.
Speaking of Gaslands, and somewhat time-sensitive as the Kickstarter closes in 3 days, Fogou Models are running a KS for various Gaslands-scale scenery items. These aren’t STLs but actually physical cast resin pieces. Rad Trax Toy Car Scale Terrain on Kickstarter. The items will likely be available on Fogou’s webstore post-KS, useful for those of us who (say) just had to cough up a home insurance deductible after a plumbing leak and are a bit short on cash…
A quick look at the workbench right at the ragged end of the year! After not really painting anything for most of the second half of 2023 I rediscovered painting energy in November and have been plowing through a whole bunch of stuff.
The workbench at the end of 2023. Click for larger.
The anklyosaur person is from Fenris Games and is massive – that’s a 60mm base and they hang over every edge. The baggage ogre and little robot are Reaper, as are most of the random humans over on the back left. The sea serpent and big frog are Footsore Miniatures.
Overhead closeup of the current entertainment. Click for larger.
I’ve shown off some WIP photos of the anklyo-person over on BlueSky but they were early, no weapons mounted and painting not quite finished. I’ve got a whole bunch of WIP photos of this figure and will also be taking some good closeups after I finish painting and basing, because I’m really, really pleased with how they’re turning out!
The baggage ogre is just a fun figure, much more interesting than yet another horse and wagon if you need a baggage element for a fantasy game!
Rear view of the anklyo and ogre. Really, really pleased with how the shell of the anklyo turned out! Click for larger.
Hope everyone had good holiday season, and an excellent 2024 as we roll into the New Year!
We played a lot of Gaslands in 2020/2021 when COVID restrictions meant we couldn’t game in person, because Gaslands is fairly simple to organize overwebcam, and we kind of burned out on it.
Then we took Gaslands to Trumpeter Salute 2023 back in April, because it’s also really easy to set up pickup games for, and our pair of great chaotic games re-ignited our interest!
I’ve cranked through a trio of new cars since Salute, and then moved onto a new set of three cars. Two of the first set had been partially converted back in 2020/2021 and then neglected (and apparently I took no photos of them…) and the ’34 Ford hotrod was a new purchase while we were in Vancouver for Trumpeter.
’34 Ford hotrod being Gaslanded.Spikes!Yellow basecoat – paint was Reaper’s Hearth Fire with FW Acrylic Ink Indian Yellow over that.Weathering – mostly FW Acrylic Ink Sepia.Rad symbol wet transfer on the door, just for fun.The right hand side of the critter.’34 Ford conversion.
The second trio of cars include another sports car all spiked up, a rally car up-armoured, and a Jaguar D-type converted into a monster truck. The Jag was the most complex conversion I’ve done for Gaslands yet, and started with a set of 3d printed monster truck wheels.
Conversion finished on the rocket rally car and spiked sports car.Underside of the Jag D Type monster truck.Monster truck suspension under the D Type.The D Type in progress.Assembled, just missing the armoured panels on the sides.Paint started!The second batch – spiked sports car, rocket rally car, and the Monster D-type.
The basecoats are coming along nicely. The Jag is starting as British Racing Green, the spiked sports car is a gloriously weird yellow/green that Reaper calls Dungeon Slime, and the rocket rally car seems to have gotten trans pride colours, because why the hell not? Lots of weathering to do still, of course!
These three done will give me eight or so cars, a buggy, and three bikes for Gaslands just in my own collection. I have ideas for a heavy truck conversion starting with mashing together two big American 60s/70s Yank tanks, but I think I’ll switch gears slightly after this trio is done.
Way back at the very end of 2020 I contacted Misc Minis about decals suitable for 1/1200 ship and aircraft miniatures. After a couple of rounds of email, Kevin sent me a PDF proof sheet with a mix of 1mm and 1.5mm insignia for the Luftwaffe, RAF, and USAAF, as well as some hull numbers as used by the Royal Navy. He’d started with the smallest size of decals for his standard 1/600 ranges, done some tests, and figured out what would work (and what wouldn’t!) when taken down that tiny.
I mentioned the decals in passing in an April 2021 post here, then tucked them away in the dreaded ‘safe place’ and did absolutely nothing with them until this Easter long weekend, two full years later!
With the various Luftwaffe aircraft seen on my last Workbench post based and painted, I sat down with the tiny 4″x2.5″ decal sheet, carefully cut out even tinier individual crosses, and began putting them on the wings of the Me110 heavy fighters and Ju88 Stuka divebombers.
The full decal sheet, with finished Stukas behind and Me109s still waiting for their turn. Click for larger.
The bulk of the Luftwaffe crosses on the sheet are the black outline/white fill style; there’s also a row of pure white crosses as used (I think?) primarily on night fighters. The lower left has no fewer than six different RAF roundel variants, upper right has a bunch of US Army Air Force winged star roundels, and the lower right has RN hull numbers in both white and black. There aren’t any pure black outline Luftwaffe crosses, but honestly I’m OK with that as the black/white ones stand out a bit better and help ID these tiny, tiny airplanes more clearly!
The best closeup I could manage with my cell phone camera. That’s a Stuka with one wing done and the other waiting to be done. Keep in mind that wingtip to wingtip, that entire airplane is about 12mm across! Click for larger.
The Misc Mini decal sheet is full-film so each roundel needs to be cut fairly close to the printed outline. I worked with fine-tip tweezers, a sewing pin, and MicroSet decal solution to get each cross in place. They’ll get MicroSol decal conforming solution next and then matt spray varnish to seal everything in place.
Two Me110 heavy fighters with their roundels in place. Not sure if I’m going to bother doing the insignia on the sides of the fuslage or not – I might just do them with a fine-tip paintbrush as on the Ju88s I painted a couple of years ago for this project. Click for larger.
If you’re in need of tiny decals for tiny aircraft, drop Kevin at Misc Minis a note and ask! This little sheet was thoroughly reasonable for a custom one-off print run (under $10 including shipping) and will last a good long time at the rate I’m using it up. Misc is an American outfit but regular envelope mail for decal sheets is still cheap over the border to Canada at this point!
The workbench this week… is up and running in our new condo! We had an offer accepted at the beginning of February, got the keys ten days ago in mid-March, and are largely settled, set up, and getting on with things.
Set up in my new office/hobby lair but still looking fairly familiar. New larger cutting mat, though.
Gradually getting the painting and hobby stuff sorted and functional; the new room isn’t as large as the one at our rented place but forcing me to organize and stay de-cluttered is not actually a bad thing…
Tiny Messerschmidts for some fokkers to fly around in. (credit for that joke apparently goes to Douglas Bader…)
Decided to work through the stash of 1/1200 WW2 aircraft I got from Last Square a few months ago, starting with a trio of Bf110s and five Bf109s for the Luftwaffe to cause trouble in.
Always the random Reaper figures. Need to add some details to one or both treasure piles so they aren’t so obviously identical, but they’re neat sculpts!
I’ll be at Trumpeter Salute 2023 in Vancouver in about three weeks running a 1/1200 naval game of some sort, probably KM Schnellboote attacking an RN-defended British coastal convoy this time. This’ll be the first Trumpeter Salute since 2019 (a smaller event happened in 2022 but I didn’t get to it) so it’ll be fantastic to be back!
After doing the detailing of the JMS 3d printed ships, I pulled out the rest of my 1/1200 WW2 ships, all pewter from Figurehead, and added masts to all of those ships that needed them. Most of these came with pewter cast masts that I had deliberately left off while assembling and painting these ships over the last few years as they’re incredibly fragile and my slightly ad-hoc (ie, bad) storage and transportation solution would have destroyed pewter masts in short order.
Masts all over, still needing paint. Various Figurehead pewter coastal vessels in the foreground, the JMS/Antics 3d printed larger ships background.Stern-on view of the mast-installing session’s end. Very pleased with the masts and booms on the large coastal freighter on the right there.
Nothing special about the techniques here, just a tiny drillbit, fine tweezers, bits of plastic broom bristle, and superglue. Oh, and patience and a certain amount of bad language… The various coastal freighters all have booms alongside their masts as needed.
Overhead view. You can see the masts & booms on the two rear coastal freighters nicely here. Just for scale, the eight vessels in the center block there are all on 20mm by 40mm plexi bases. I still need to base up the JMS/Antics ships to match…
Finally, just for something else to do, I’ve got some more impossibly tiny airplanes based up! In this case, that scourge of surface targets including shipping, the Luftwaffe’s dreaded Ju87 Stuka, five of them all on 25mm wide plexi hexes, more broom bristle for their flying stands. Primer and paint on them in the next week or so, hopefully.
Stuka! Wee tiny little Stuka, anyway. A 1/1200 scale Stuka has a wingspan somewhere around 12mm across.
We are moving in the second half of March, however, so there might be a temporary slowdown of production and posting as our lives get packed up and moved across town to our new condo!
