Tag Archives: Terrain

Airbrush trials

Bolt Action, ,

Well, I bought myself a cheap airbrush. Having never used or seen one before, it’s a real learning curve. The kit was pretty cheap, under £65 for 2 airbrushes, a pump and tank including all the pipes and attachments.

In a usually blokey manner, I couldn’t wait to get started and sprayed up a camo pattern on the Panzer III I’d built a few months ago. I used the exact same colour scheme as I had on the hand-painted Puma I’d done.

I used Halfords khaki basecoat spray, then painted on Vallejo Reflective Green and Vallejo Chocolate Brown for the camo pattern, then a liberal brush wash in Army Painter Strong Ink. A slight drybrush with a desert yellow to edge the armour panels followed by some weathering powders.

Very quick to paint. The difference between the handpainted Puma and the airbrushed Panzer III is enormous. Especially considering the exact same colours were used and I nearly copied the same patterns.

I’ve taken a few pics to compare. The Panzer III has the magnetised shurtzen I built in Playing with Magnets.

Compared to the old hand painted Puma…

And some scenery…

I found a pile of old model Hornby railway stuff in my Mum’s loft when clearing it out. I decided to paint up the track, glue it to boards and add a few wagons which I painted. It will make a nice piece of alternate scenery for games of Bolt Action. All in all I’ve done over 4 and a half foot of track and 4 wagons. That will at least go across a game board.

Where do I start?

Bolt Action, Deadzone, Frostgrave, ,

It’s been more than a month since I posted anything here… a rather close family bereavement with funerals to arrange (etc) kind of stops Blogs and real life in their tracks.

I have painted a few things during that time, mainly as it was taking my mind off the loss. Most are painted rather rapidly as well so not all my best works.

Here’s a quick photo compilation of things I’ve done.

 

Deadzone:

Firstly, a bunch of Asterians…

Overseer:

Sky Razor:

Cyphers:

Black Talon:

“Family Photo”:

Then there was some Forgefathers…

Forgeguard:

Iron Ancestor:

“Family Photo”:

And to finish Deadzone painting (for a while) there was a Plague Teraton:

Bolt Action:

I have managed to get a few Bolt Action items painted recently. First of all are some excellent resin scenery pieces from Ironclad Miniatures. They took a matter of 20 minutes each to paint. I’m going to get some more trench pieces when I’ve saved some money up.

I’ve also put together a resin M24 Chaffee – and of course magentised the turrent and HMG weapon – mainly so it can be removed when the vehicle is packed away in it’s case.

And to finish off with, I couldn’t resist getting this piece of scenery (from Games Workshop – argh) to use in Frostgrave.

Phew…

The end of summer

Bolt Action, Frostgrave,

Summer ended and a few projects I had planned are about finished. Now it’s back to work with less time to get any hobby things done.

Here’s the pics and a few notes on what I finished…

Bolt Action

I made a generic modellers field by using a £4 coir doormat cut into sections (I still have most of it left). I glued it to some plasticard then glued sand around the edges. A quick basing paint job and I have 2 fields. One is purely rectangular, the other was in an “L” shape.

I also managed to finish off a few Bolt Action figures laying around my desk. A couple of BAR equipped US troops to add to my squads – the plastic set didn’t quite come with enough imo. I also managed a US sniper team with sniper rifles and optional SMGs.

4 more German troops were finished off to add to one of my squads. Here’s all the pics…

Frostgrave

I built a few scenery pieces for this game.

First is the walls built with sponge bricks and lollypop/craft sticks. The sponge bricks were glued together onto the 6 inch craft stick bases. I coated the walls in a disgusting mix of sand/pva/black poster paint. A couple of shades of grey drybrushes later and they’re finished. The snow effect was just the large Army Painter snow tub glued on with pva.

Secondly is the freebie White Dwarf magazine Age of Sigmar model. I have no intention of playing that game (of scale creep and dumbing down of fantasy rules) but it seemed a waste to have a figure with no use. So, now it’s glued onto an old vitamin pill box with an mdf base and turned into a suitable statue for the centre of Frostgrave.