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Sunday, July 10, 2011

First pack of 'pirate civilians' painted up

Whilst I enjoy making terrain, it's nice to get back to painting miniatures sometimes. Especially when faced with a long slog of sticking on hundreds of roof tiles... So obviously with this renewed period interest I have been scouting around for suitable miniatures.
This first pack of Reaper miniatures arrived first, and has accordingly been painted up first.

Strumpet 

A wonderful strumpet. The first of a small group, I am just awaiting a replacement pack from Reaper for the others due to a miscast in the pack. She's a great figure, one that I first saw on Elhion's blog via the Lead Adventure forum, so that was a cool find! I have to say she was a serious change to the more usual battle ready wargames figures we use in gaming. After all, I don't often get to paint bright blues, yellows and pink! Plus I am always a little wary painting female figures as I find the skin shade and highlight needs to be done a little more subtly than male warrior types, otherwise the heavy brown base tone can wreck the look of the female figure. I am rather pleased the way she has turned out.
Also, you wouldn't believe the angst this has caused the Bowman household. My wife immediately took umbridge at the fact I painted her blonde.... Jeez, the green envy monster came out to play that day! How can you get so reactionary over a 1" metal figure? Go figure... ;-)
Anyway if she caused that much of a stir there, lets hope she distracts my male opponents suitably on the games table ;-)

[UPDATE:  this is my entry to the Air Supplies competition, Jan 2014, (http://www.airsupplies.co.uk/blog/competition-win-bambi-bb8-silent-air-compressor/) , check out the link for more :-) ]


The next figure is a beggar, down and out, tramp like figure. Bound to be a few of these hanging around the port.

Beggar 

And last a huge blacksmith. This guy is very large indeed. Reaper are slightly on the large side of '28mm' scale figures, so this guy is a giant compared to my poor Foundry pirates. Still, working that anvil and furnace all day is bound to make a big strong boy... not some wimpy looking blacksmith portrayed by dear Orlando. Interesting - he's been a blacksmith twice now, in PotC and Kingdom of Heaven.

Blacksmith

Final shot of today's montage, just messing about with my batch of jungle plants and a large hill I made some time ago, together make a nice jungle isle, although it could do with a sandy beach perhaps...

  
Jungle Isle

That's it for today, must press on with those roof tiles for the Governors mansion.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

More horticulture - bamboo

More horticultural work continued this week, and I have completed three copses of bamboo, along with more jungle flora clumps.

There's about enough now to cover a 2' x 4' area as you can see, and its used up about half the plants I bought.

I still am awaiting delivery of a whole bunch of plastic palm trees I bought for model railway use from a Chinese based ebay trader, so fingers crossed they arrive OK!





The bamboo, again was on 3mm mdf bases, which were covered in a layer of DAS sculpting clay. This gave some depth to insert the bamboo trees into. The bamboo was just wooden BBQ skewers painted green, and then woodlands-scenics clump foliage hot glue gunned on. Then bases were then flocked with the tea leaves and green static grass as before.

I'll wait till the palm trees arrive now before doing more.

I have now gone back to doing the governors mansion. I have added the cornice large brickwork and have added the front and rear arched doorways. If I get time today I'll add chimneys and start cladding roof.

Still awaiting some ships supplies from Games-of-War to finish fitting out my Brig, then that will be done as well.