Painted Faces on Parade

Painted all the skin tones with all the different flesh tones I had.

Painted all the leather with P3 Bootstrap Leather.

I'm calling this 60 miniatures.

Finished with the bases

 

Three coats of paint on the bases.

Dark Brown layer - The Army Painter Warpaints Oak Brown

Light Brown - The Army Painter Warpaints Monster Brown

Dry Brush - Master Series Paint Bones Desert Sand 09432

Now I get to change my progress bars to 40%!!

Finished base coat

Base coated with Valejo Black then a "zenith" of Game Air White and a couple of drops of the same black.  41 miniatures now need a little color!  (And I get to move their progress bars to 30%!)
 

Base Coats for Trenchers

Set up an overspray box for the airbrush.  It really needs some air flow but its big enough I can make it work.  

And the obligatory cleaning of the air brush.  More to come.

Assembly and Basing of Trenchers

 Messy desk picture!  I assembled all of the Trencher theme force box and a few others that will follow the same color scheme.  Tomorrow, I will be base coating these guys.  Pictured - 

Trencher Infantry x10

Trencher Infantry Grenadiers x3

Trencher Officer and Sniper x2

Trencher Commandos x10

Trencher Commandos Scatter Guns x3

Rangers x6

Cannon Crew x4

Trencher Master Gunner x1

Patrol Dog x1

Commander Anson Hitch x1

Trencher Theme Force

Dang end of year sales!!  I couldn't help myself.  The tiny soldiers needed a good home and they were 50% off.  No matter that I already have a full squad of Trencher Infantry.  No mater that I have been playing Trollbloods online.  At least it made me get out my mini's and start working on them again.

Inside the box and added to my collection:

10x Trencher Infantry

2x Officer and Sniper

3x Grenadier UAs

1x Trencher Master Gunner solo

1x Patrol Dog solo

1x Commander Anson Hitch solo

1x Trencher Cannon Unit (1 large and 2 small bases)

I also updated my sidebars with my progress and I hope to airbrush base coats this weekend.

Painting Notes for Cygnar Trenchers

These are the paints I used in painting my Cygnar Trencher unit.  I will eventually be painting a commando unit and I will want a similar effect.  Feel free to read along.  FA stands for Folk Art paints.

• Base coat black
• Overbrush base with FA Burnt Umber
• Drybrush model with FA Burnt Umber.  Avoid the chain mail and the gun barrel as possible
• Drybrush base and model with FA Honeycomb
• Drybrush base with FA Teddy Bear as needed.
• Block in the gun barrel and chain mail (and grenades if present) with black
• Drybrush the gun barrel with a 2:1 mix of FA Metallic Gunmetal Grey and FA Metallic Sequin Black
• Use the same mix of FA Metallic Gunmetal Grey and FA Metallic Sequin Black to paint the bracers, gun stock band, and details.
• Drybrush the chain mail with FA Metallic Gunmetal Grey
• Paint the shovel and the smoke grenades with FA Medium gray.  I am not entirely happy with this step, so feel free to find another level of shading on them.
• Block in the blue areas with FA Prussian Blue
• Dampen the shoulder pad with a wet brush, then highlight and blend with a mix of FA Cobalt Blue and FA Extender.
• Rank insignias were touched with a mix of FA Metallic Antique Gold and FA Metallic Sequin Black.
• Grenades were touched with FA Black Cherry, then tipped with FA Napthol Crimson
• Studs were tipped with FA Metallic Silver Sterling.
• The base was cleaned up with black around the ring.

I hate painting faces but I found a great tutorial for it.  Privateer Press' Escalation book uses the old MKI rules but the face painting tutorial makes it worth picking up.  Check out pages 120-121 whenever the need arises.  I also found that most Trenchers have no faces!  Woot!!!  They are covered up by a piece of cloth.  I only had to paint to faces of two officers and the Escalation guide was great.  It called for several basic colors like flesh, brown, and brown ink.  I used Delta Ceramcoat Dresden Flesh, FA Real Brown, and GW Citadel Brown Ink respectively.  When it called for red and brown mixed, I just used FA Black Cherry.

Progress

To the right of my blog, I have these great little progress bars.  I love changing something from 80% to 90%.  One of these days, several of these will tip over to the 100% mark.  The ones at 93% are waiting for a not so humid day to get their final matte coat and some tufts of static grass.  Oh well. 

This week, I was able to

• Clear Coat 3 gobber mechaniks, 
• Clear Coat 10 long gunners
• Clear Coat 2 LG officers and 2 LG Standard bearers
• Clear Coat DnD tiefling
• Base and Prime 6 Trenchers
• Base and Prime 3 Trencher grenade porters
• Base and Prime Trencher Officer and Sniper
• Base and Prime Firefly light 'jack
• Base and Prime 2 Stormsmith Storm Towers
• Base and Prime 2 Journeyman Warcasters

Okay, so it was mostly spray painting.  I know I painted a few layers on other things but nothing to really show.  On the painting table for this week is a mass of Trenchers.

The mass needing paint include 1 leader, 9 grunts, 3 grenade porters, the officer and snipers.  15 minis... we will see where this goes.

I Got New Minis!

 Recently, there was extra money in the family budget and I got to buy new minis!  I decided I wanted to buy the figs that would complete my trencher unit so I could paint them all in one go.  That means the Officer and Sniper along with three grenade porters.  It also means that a full kitted trencher unit has 15 minis.  That is a ton in Warmachine where often a unit is made of 6.

This is a shot of the other 10 trenchers ready for their buddies to join them in the painting cue.  You might also be able to pick out Eiryss, a unit of rangers, several casters, solos, and a random war wolf.

I also got to pick up 2 of the Stormsmith Storm Towers.  I really like the poses of these models.  I think they are great.  The only down side is that having two of them side by side shows how very similar they are.  I don't like repositioning arms and such but I might with these so they are a little varied.

This is the group based, following the steps I mentioned here.  It is tough not to get so excited you get the steps out of order!

On the Storm Towers, I used the cork for the interesting scenery bits.  Because of the cork and the space on the larger base, I glued the cork down first, then glued down the sand.  It just seems to blend the cork in better.

I did something a little different this time when I went back over the sand with my mix of glue/black paint/water.  I mixed it right in the glue bottle!  It was a little messy, as you can see from the top of the glue bottle, but overall, I liked the experience.  I did still have to spread it with a brush, as I perhaps didn't have enough room for water but it was fun.

I got the idea from scrolling through Mik's Minis, looking at his basing.  Three pics down is a picture of a plastic syringe he uses for the second layer of glue.  Check it out here. 

As you can see, the second coat doesn't have to cover like a base coat.  I just use it to make sure the sand is locked down and to get black into the crevices.  This will save me time when I am touching up after I spray the base coat.

Simple Green Outcome

I have mentioned my Trenchers before. I bought them cheap and cheaply painted. The problem is they sat on my shelf for 4 years before I decided I really wanted to strip them.

I dug through my photos and could not find a before pic of these Trenchers but you can sort of see the paint while they sit in the Simple Green. I let them sit for about a week (due to family stuff more than patience) and finally took a toothbrush to them. The Green did a great job. Everything was softened up and slid right off of flat surfaces. There are a number of crevices on these models that held the paint but I was able to get it out with an Exacto, though a toothpick probably would have been safer and easier on the models. There are still a few spots left but after 30 minutes of scrubbing and scraping, I decided it was good enough. The plastic bases were a little soft when I pulled them out but they seem fine today. They might have come off the mini's but the previous owner filled the bases with something like Milliput so they held.

Thanks for reading!

Assembling Cygnar

Stupid little pieces! I know they are going to pop off and yet there is no good way to pin them. Grrr... Now I remember why I had not assembled eStryker before. I also have eCaine but he has even more little pieces! I am probably a little spoiled by the ones who come as a single piece.

I picked up some Simple Green the other day and dropped 6 trenchers into a chipped coffee mug. They have been here for 48 hours and layers of paint are peeling off. It is my first time working with Simple Green but I have had these trenchers for 4+ years and they have never been fielded. I bought them already painted (and cheap) along with 4 primed black. I hope to get them cleaned up, buy a box of the new Trencher Commandos, and paint them all together.

Here are my recent purchases. I have the 6 Long Gunners, 2 Officers, and 2 Standard Bearers to fill out my Long Gunner Units. The new Warcaster Kara Sloan is also a new purchase. I already had eHaley, who finally got assembled, and the Squire, who was based along with the rest of them.

The next step will be to attach the washers and a coat of black spray primer to lock down the sand.

Painting Update

Well, I officially missed my November 30th deadline. Shoot! I was hoping to have the Gun Mages done. I will continue working on them. The last thing I want to do is come down too hard on myself and not ever work on them again. I hate painting flesh. That still needs cleaning up, there are details to pick out, and then the bases.


The upside is the Stormsmiths are getting painted with them.


In December, I was supposed to paint the Storm Blades. I believe they will get pushed to next year. At this point, my new goal is to have the Gun Mages and Stormsmiths finished by the end of the month and have my unit of trenchers stripped. I have never actually played my trenchers in a game because they are ugly (worse than bare metal). I bought them cheap this way and it is time for them to get cleaned up. I plan to save painting them for when the new set of Trencher Commandos comes out from Privateer Press.



From Privateer Press

Thanks for reading!