Painting Options

As I have recently returned to 1/72 scale for armies in a number of solo periods the issue of painting them has come up again. While I paint 15mm and 28mm in a certain why, the beauty and attraction of 1/72 is being able to create and paint largish armies quite simply and quickly.

While my Napoleonic figures can be painted to some degree of detail my WW2, ACW, Fantasy and other armies don't need as much so I am going to experiment on them by using Army painter Quickshade.It has mixed reviews but recently I have seen several posts regarding it and the results look quite good.

After reading a few posts on blogs and forums I followed the recommended technique and applied it using a brush, dried and followed with a Matt Varnish. I then wanted to see what they looked like to decide if I need to highlight any colours.

I was suprised how shiny the quicktone made the figure but with varnish (applied properly) they looked quite good. So I tried a number of different periods and figures to see Quickshade fared.

 1. Italeri CSA Infantry (Good result)

 2. Esci Union Infantry (50/50 Result - Something about them nags at me)

 3. Esci Soviet Infantry (Good result)

 4. HAT\Airfix Napoloenic (Good result though I may highlight lighter colours as I like bright figures)

 5. A Italeri CSA cavalryman. (Great result).

 6. An Italeri Prussian Infantryman (Good result for an awful figure).

 So, I am quite pleased with the process. I was able to paint the these figures very quickly whcih was great, quicktone dry (1 day) and varnish dry (1 day). I am pretty confident I can finish the rest of the Napoleonic and ACW armies very quickly.

Then I can get back into my 300 or so 28mm Prussians I need to start.

Paper Terrain

Given my recent burst of motivation I have continued my painting and terrain building. I was pointed to Cardboard-Warriors, which is an excellent source of knowledge and resources as I still need to complete a few items I purchased.

So in order to practice and not make the same mistakes encountered in making the Waterloo kits I decided to practice on some designs by "grendelsmother64" of the Laketown Village.

These were printed on 100 gsm as its the only card my printer can support and I made them rather quickly (my biggest fault). But not bad for some quick themed terrain at short notice.