Tag Archives: photography

Inspiration, Painting

Fancy Photo Setup (or not…)

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After I was done taking photos of my Lead Painters League Round Five entry, I figured the setup I use might be of interest to others. So here’s a photo of the highly sophisticated setup I used for this week’s Russian Civil War-based entry!

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Fancy photo studio… click for full size.

Some leftover 3mm MDF balanced across a couple of junk chairs a roommate pulled out of the basement for some reason, on a porch that badly needs repainting! My little tabletop tripod at lower left is balanced on top of one of the banker’s boxes I used to store and transport scenery. The ground is a square of craft felt I sprayed with brown ink a few years ago; the colour backdrop is one of the ones I have available here on the Warbard for anyone to print.

The building is of course my scratch-built Russian onion-domed church; the wagon, hedge and tree should all be familiar to regular readers. The Russian Orthodox cemetery is the most recent addition, with it’s laser-cut crosses.

Lighting was provided by that convenient nearby fusion reaction (eight and a half light-minutes away is nearby by cosmic standards…) and agreeable meteorology.

A home-made lightbox has been on my to-do list for… about a decade now. When the weather allows, an outdoor setup works nearly as well.

There are a number of great photo-taking tutorials aimed at wargamers out there; check Google or YouTube for more details. One of these days I should do a links post to my favourites!

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Pulp, Terrain

Half-Timber Barn WiP

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Something for the English Civil War/Thirty Years War table, as well as for pulp games set in the quainter parts of the UK or Europe! All those crops gathered from my fields have to be stored somewhere, after all.

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A stone-and-halftimber barn, work in progress. Click, as usual, for larger.

The whole thing is highly inspired by Warlord Game’s rather nice 16th Century Barn. Actually, scrub “highly inspired”, I’m outright copying the building, as a learning piece! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, isn’t it?

The basic structure is foamcore. The stonework is soft foam salvaged from a takeout food container; I’m going to have to swing by our local (awesome) plastic supplier to see if they have something similar in sheets, as one takeout container at a time is a rather slow way to accumulate building materials! I scribed/carved the stones with a sharp pencil, and quite like how they’ve turned out.

The timbering is 1/8th x 1/16th inch balsa strip from the Stockpile’o’Doom. I have about six lengths of it, and it is entirely possible it’s leftovers from our family model railroading setup in the early/mid-1990s when I was in junior high. I think I’ve carried that balsa around long enough — time to put it to use, right?

Doors, additional timbering at the corners of the building, and a base are still to do. The inside will get a bit of plastering just for texture, and probably a lot of straw strewn around and such — details to add interest without getting much in the way, ideally.

The roof will be towel thatching over a styrene base.

I’ve heard the suggestion that you try one new-to-you technique per project; I’m afraid this simple-looking building breaks that “rule” good and proper! Foam stonework is new to me; likewise half-timbered building construction, and I’ve never actually used the towel-as-thatch technique before either! Wish me luck!

Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 10: Gunga Din (1939)

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The final round of LAF’s Lead Painters League 5 was another bonus round, this one “A Scene From The Movies”, with bonus points for two teams and a vehicle or scenery piece representing a scene from a well-known movie.

I thought about doing The Sand Pebbles with American sailors and Chinese mobs, but didn’t get around to ordering Chinese figures in time (I already have appropriate American sailors in the lead mountain), then Bob Murch of Pulp Figures showed up at Trumpeter Salute back at the beginning of April with some unreleased Thugee strangler figures, and I knew I had to do Gunga Din, an old black and white movie I’ve see a few times and enjoyed!

Even better, I planned on painting up another few WW1/Interwar British riflemen and running them as opponents; the actual movie is set in the late 1800s but I figured I could get away with using slightly later pulp-era Brits!

In the event, both the opponents and the new bonus scenery piece never got done, but I did get the very nice Thugee stranglers painted and shown, and they quite handily won their Round 10 outing against some Roman gladiators inspired by the movie Maximus.

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My Lead Painters League 5 Round 10 entry, inspired by the 1939 movie Gunga Din. Figures by Pulp Figures. As always, click for full size.

I have to wonder how much sheer novelty factor added to my vote count — there are a grand total, to my knowledge, of perhaps 4 packs of these Thugee stranglers out in the wild, and Pulp Figures is a well-known enough company that most of the time Mr. Murch’s figures are ubiquitous. Being able to show off brand-new figures that have literally never been seen elsewhere (not even the Pulp Figures website has the full set of 5!) has to have been worth a few votes!

The original Gunga Din theatrical trailer from 1939 is up on Youtube:

Round 10 brings LPL5 to an end! I managed 8 new teams over 10 rounds, 3 wins, and a final placing of 55th out of 72nd, which is roughly where I figured I’d end up and roughly where I placed compared to the overall field back in LPL3 last time I entered. More importantly, I have a whole bunch of freshly painted figures crowding the edges of my painting desk now, quite a few more than I’d have had without the prodding of LPL5 driving my brush!

I’ll do a proper LPL5 wrapup gallery post later this week.

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Painting

LPL5 Week 9: The Horse Again, I’m Afraid

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Week 9? There was no Week 9. Well, OK, there was, but it involved me running my ECW Parliamentarian Horse again, and them getting beaten. Again.

However, I still like the models and the paintjob I managed on them, so here they are again for everyone to admire:

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For God And Parliament! 28mm English Civil War horse charge down a country lane. As always, click for full size.

In better news, LPL5’s final, ultimate round, Round 10, with the bonus theme of “A Scene from the Movies” is running right now. All sorts of great stuff, including a bonus-worthy set of miniatures from me that I really like, and that other people do too, judging by the voting!

Painting, Pulp

A Few Bolshies!

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These guys started out as a Lead Painters League entry, but didn’t get finished in time, and besides, I’d already run too many groups of riflemen in khaki to want to run another in LPL5!

They’re a mix of Brigade and Copplestone Red Russians and Red Partisans; I’m not actually sure which figure is from which company as I bought them in a mixed batch from a fellow Lead Adventure Forum member who lives over in Vancouver. There’s a standard bearer and another dozen riflemen still to be painted, making these the nucleus of a decent little Red Russian skirmish unit.

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Red Russian riflemen with an officer and Commisar. 28mm figures by Brigade and Copplestone.

In website news, you might have noticed the black menu bar along the top here changing a bit. Always a challenge trying to fit everything in, make it findable and sensible without being too complex!

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Painting

LPL5 Week 8: For God And Parliament!

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For the 5th Lead Painters League’s 8th Round, something entirely new from me: 28mm English Civil War/Thirty Years War cavalry!

These are Warlord plastic horse, nominally ECW Parliamentarian horse but really destined for our gaming group’s quasi-historical nominally-Thirty Years War games. They’re also the first 28mm cavalry I’ve ever done, the first plastic wargaming figures I’ve ever done, and the first non-20th C historicals I’ve ever done. All at once!

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For God And Parliament! 28mm English Civil War horse charge down a country lane. As always, click for full size.

Unfortunately they got beaten soundly by a nicely presented and very characterful set of 28mm Middle Eastern figures.

Still, I’m pleased with how the paintjobs turned out. I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit this Games Workshop article on painting horses with making the horse painting and the resulting horses both more interesting! (I’ve just said something nice about GW, in public… this might just be a sign of the End Times…)

(I also just noticed that this is post number 100 on The Warbard! Now, that includes a lot of old website material brought over as posts, but it’s still been a busy 4-and-a-bit months here! Many more to come! — Brian)

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 7: The Lewis Gun

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“Whatever happens, we have got/the Lewis gun, and they do not”

— with apologies to Mr. Kipling, of course.

My LPL5 Week 7 entry was more Brigade 28mm British, this time a Lewis gun team and supporting riflemen. The Lewis gun team are very nice sculpts, slightly more detailed than the riflemen from the same range. They got matched up with a rather nice set of pirates, including a great pirate ghost, and defeated, though.

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The Lewis Gun, my Round 7 LPL5 entry. As always, click for full size.

LPL5 Week 8 is on now!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 6: White Russians!

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No, not the (very tasty!) drink, but White Russian Rifles from sometime in the Russian Civil War; the figures are 28mm from Brigade Games and very nice.

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White Russian Rifles, my Round 6 entry for LPL5. As always, click for full size.

My Whites will, by the time you read this, have been fairly comprehensively beaten by an Irish medieval/Dark Ages warband with very, very nicely painted freehand shield designs, and Round Seven will be underway!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 5: Hunting von Lettow-Vorbek

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Week Five of the LAF’s Lead Painters League having just ended, here’s my entry. This was one of the bonus theme weeks; the bonus theme this time was “Africa”, with extra bonus points for producing an opposing team as well as your basic 5-figure entry.

I completely forgot about the extra bonus points for an opposing team, but that wouldn’t have mattered as I’ve no suitable figures anyway. I did manage to shoehorn the tropical British I’ve been painting in, as British and British Empire troops spent the entire length of the Great War chasing Paul von Lettow-Vorbek around various East African territories. They never caught him, he surrended shortly after the November 11 Armistice undefeated in the field.

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Hunting von Lettow-Vorbek, Tanganika 1917 (Click for a full-size version, as always)

Unfortunately my British riflemen got done for by a group of zombie nomads on zombie camels, but I’m still pleased with the paintjob on them and the photograph.

The larger base they’re on, incidentially, is a CD covered in sand and fine gravel, then painted to mostly match the bases of the British and some of the other figures I’ve been doing lately.

LPL5 Round 6 launched Sunday, go check out all the great entries!

Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 4: No new entry, sorry!

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With getting ready for Trumpeter Salute taking up almost all of my gaming time the week before the convention, I didn’t manage to get a new entry finished for Round 4 of the Lead Painters League.

I re-ran Lord M Hosts A Weekend instead, and watched my fancy toffs perish under relentless Imperial bombardment – they got paired up with a rather nice (and new!) entry featuring Star Wars Imperial spaceships, including the Death Star itself, and a great disturbance in the Force was felt.

I’ve got a new entry in Round 5, live this week, though, and Rounds 6 & 7 already finished, photographed & submitted, so I have a bit of breathing room for the last three rounds, including the blowout Round 10 Movie scene bonus round!