A bit of catching up

Whoop, I sort of forgot to post my progress over the past weekends... I messed up my back a bit, putting a bit of a damper on several activities, including the hobby. Luckily I'm on the mend, but the involuntary hiatus has caused a bit of a lack of focus. So, hobby-wise I'm all over the place at the moment.

The last thing I could do with the airbrush (at least until I get an indoor setup organised) before the weather turned to autumn, was to do a quick test of concept/practice run for the hairspray and salt weathering I intend to do on my Necromunda scenery:

 Lessons learned from this: I need to get/make a more varied and smaller mix of salt grains, as these chips are rather large and thus crude. Plus I will need to find a way to wash off the brine without damaging the non-waterproof parts of the terrain (the Pringles can and plaster are the ones I'm most worried about....). But all in all, a good test run.

 I also received some things. First is what may be the oddest thing I've ever bought for wargaming:

Three sets of animated LED fake eyelashes. Got them for a song out of China. The intent is to integrate them into some scenery for lighting effects as they're cheaper than most model lighting sets, and quite compact, making them easy to integrate. I have two sets of blue LEDs to use for a generator wall I've been wanting to build for my Space Hulk terrain for a long time.
The other one is a yellow light that should be ideal for Necromunda.

The second is Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago:

Haven't read it properly yet, just leafed through it, but it promises to be as much fun as it's predecessor!

So, where is the lack of focus, you ask?
Well, alongside building a tank for my DAK, I spontaneously started assembling/basing miniatures for IKRPG. None of them for characters I'm ever likely to play...

As I was down the IKRPG rabbit hole anyway, I might as well finish of some long-suffering WIP mini's. The leftmost and rightmost are official IKRPG miniatures, the central one in the steam armour is from Hasslefree Miniatures. Barely past the primer stage, these were the project for this weekend:

I'm happy with the progress I've made on these. All that's left to do is finish the metals and bases, eyes and gauges, as well as the hair on the two bareheaded ones (the central one will be redheaded, the right one a dark blonde). Hopefully I can finish them next weekend.

See you next time!

On the road to Tobruk

Once, a long time ago, I had plans to build a 20mm DAK army. Sadly this petered out, as it was just two of us interested in WWII gaming and we both had full plates. Then, a few months ago, a few friends got back into wargaming, initially just Gaslands, but soon WWII and the Battlegroup rules came up in conversation.  Now one friend is building a Russian Army, the second a British/Commonwealth army (I think) and Johan will attempt to build OPFOR for all of us. Which is only right, as he dragged us into this whole thing! :D (Plus he is mates with the maker of the game and the Plastic Soldier Company, who distribute it, as well as a load of kit for it.)

I have dug out my DAK stockpile as well. On the Dutch Battlegroup Facebook group, Johan has been running a monthly(ish) painting Challenge. In August this started with "Recce": Take two choices from the Recce section of your chosen Battlegroup theatre book and finish them before the end of the month.
Guess what I just finished? Only a month and a day late, for me that is making good time.
Last month's challenge, that has been extended for October as well is "Defences", I'll see if I can figure something out to make before the end of the month and maybe I'll get caught up with the challenges.

My recce choices were two SdKfz 222s, partly because I rather like the look of these little armoured cars, but also because I had these already built from when I last was active on my DAK...

Here they are:

I added in a Kubelwagen, as I already had it built, and used them as a test for my airbrush, to see how indercoating WWII vehicles would go with it. The final drybrush is a bit heavier that I would like, but I'm not complaining.
Here's some more piccies, as well as a shot including the other recon car I have painted:

Next in line are a couple of defences (still to decide which) and ofcourse the whole Necromunda project. I had to stop working on the scenery for that a bit, as I hurt my back last weekend and have to take a rest from larger/heavier items and working outside in the cold (where, at the moment, I need to do my airbrushing...). Hopefully I can pick that project up again soon.

See you next time!

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 5

Well, the final two hills have been finished.
I had some colour matching issues. As I said in a previous post my basecoat paint had run out. I couldn't find a replacement so I found a close match. I had also forgotten that I had added a fair bit of yellow to the mix last time. So these hills came out a bit more ruddy on the mid tones as well as a bit more chalky on the highlights.


I'm not too bothered as it still falls within the same natural range of colours.
Here they are, along with a dune and rocky outcrop I had done earlier for comparison:

I now have a core Gaslands/DAK terrain set, I just need to build specific items for both games/settings. But that is for a later date, I think, right now my mind is on Necromunda, and I think I'll be building terrain for that the coming weeks....

See you next time!

Weekend good, monday bad...

This weekend has been a busy one!

Replaced my son's bed. He had a creaky, wobbly metal loft bed and that has been disassembled and brought to the skip. He now has a nice and sturdy wooden bed, again loft model so he can have his desk underneath.

I also made some nice progress on the two rocky hills for Gaslands/WWII Afrika. I fixed the damage/thin spots on the filler layer and glued on the rocks and sand:

After that I sealed and primed them with two coats of a slightly watered down mix of PVA and black paint:

And at that point I ran into some problems:
My brown paint for this terrain has almost run out.  I couldn't finish basecoating the hills this sunday. And it's a bottle of craft paint I bought nearly a decade ago (2009) and I have no idea if the local arts and crafts store(s) still sell it! Now I may need to find a similarly tinted alternative. Sadly the local arts and craft shops are only open when I'm at work. If that hiccup hadn't occurred I might have gotten these hills painted. Oh well, no deadline, no worries. Though I would have liked to have them available for our game this Thursday.

As a diversion during drying time for the paint layers, I dug out my boxes of scenery materials with the intent of going through them to find materials and ideas for Necromunda, as I'm getting psyched to build terrain for that. This is my stash, minus specialist materials like XPS, foamboard, mdf and plaster and filler and such:

Sadly, piling this stack from the garage to the living room was I got to do this weekend. The problems with the paint for the terrain (exacerbated by my overthinning the paint in attempt to stretch it to at least finish these hills) cost me more time than I thought. As wel as my back and shoulders being knackered and sore from stress and poor seating at work (which luckily will soon be a past thing), meant I had to opt for having the occasional lie down on the couch, instead of maniacally rummaging through these boxes.
Oh, well, there is always next weekend, or the weekend after that. Necromunda won't return until November.

Speaking of work related aches, todat the boss dropped a little bomb: Originally the project I'm currently working in was supposed to last until October 1st, with maybe the chance of another extension. Today we got the news that the project will terminate sooner, to be precise: coming friday! As of  Monday, my job will cease to exist. Some choice words were quietly muttered, naturally. Of course this didn't help the aforementioned back aches.... It means I spent most of the evening applying for unemployment benefits (hoping I don't need them, but better safe than sorry) and frantically sending out more job applications. It also meant that today me and my teammates were repeatedly encountering the following error:

So, my goal for the coming week is ride out the work week with my head and professionalism held high, try and not let the dour mood at work infect my current hobby drive and good mood at home and find a new job as fast as I can. Wish me luck!

See you next time!

Catching up

As I said, I haven't been able to access my full hobby toolkit these past few weeks. That doesn't mean I've been idle. I packed my painting kit to take along with me. And with it I managed to paint the seven Plague Marines from the Dark Imperium kit:

This is the first time I managed to paint and complete miniatures from a 40K starter set in the same year as I purchased it! Shocking, isn't it?
I've chosen colours close to the original Death Guard scheme, but all icky and gross. :D
Now all that's left to for this is the three characters, the Foetid Bloat Drone...oh, and 20 Plaguewalkers! After that, no more Death Guard, a nice, tidy, open and close project. No pressure, no demands, just the enjoyment of painting them.

While I was away I visited a local thriftstore and claimed these two for Gaslands:

Great, aren't they? I think the pickup in the front will become a so-called Claw Car, armed with a harpoon and a plow/claw, meant to  drag other vehicles to a standstill ( Like the cars that shoot harpoons into the War Rig towards the end of Fury Road...). The other one will, no doubt, join my cavalcade of rat rods. I also found a VW van derived truck/trailer set that may become a second War Rig as well as a close to scale train set that will become terrain pieces.

I also managed to sneak away to my workshop for an afternoon and made a little progress on the rocky hills:

Once the filler has been sanded smooth, I can start adding sand and rocks, after that paint (sadly all outdoor jobs, and the weather is threatening to be abysmal this weekend...).

Plus, when I returned home yesterday, a new toy had been delivered and was waiting for me:

Which means I now have a syphon feed basecoater and workhorse for terrain and a dual action airbrush for more controlled excercises! It's an off-brand cheapo one, so I'll have to try it and find out how well it works. Nevertheless, I'm excited to have it.

And ofcourse, GW dropped a bombshell this past week:

I loved Necromunda back in the day, and can't wait to get started again! I hope the game will live up to the expectations, but if not, it's new miniatures and old rules all the way... So I'm not too worried.
Several folks in the newly emerging gaming group (all old buddies who found each other and wargaming again after several years) have also expressed interest/enthusiasm, which gives good prospects to have some games and or a campaign or two. Happy days ahead!
What makes this a very fortuitous coincidence is that I've been dreaming and stockpiling materials to build Necromunda terrain for quite a while, and between the foamcutter and the airbrushes I finally have the tools to do a proper job of it.

I've been taking stock of what's on my plate hobbywise for the coming period and, with the recent revelation from GW, it breaks down to this:
-Gaslands: Build more cars and terrain. (The core set of this terrain can also do duty for WWII Afrika, which is good because:)
-Battlegroup: Follow along in Johan's painting challenge with my DAK (this does mean I have to complete two Recce choices before the end of August, I need to hurry!) and build some terrain, which again, will also serve for Gaslands.
-Warhammer 8th edition: I had planned to have a serious go of getting my Howling Griffons up and running, but that may get superceded by the imminent arrival of Necromunda (see below). If I need a palate cleanser from other projects, I can do some more work on the Death Guard part of the Dark Imperium set (the Primaris will be absorbed by my Howling Griffons).
-Necromunda!!! I intend to finish painting my Escher miniatures and build a nice, atmosperic set of terrain. Hopefully before/at the November release.

All this will be in addition to finding a new job (as my current project is about to end soon) and spending time on woodworking again, plus all the usual day to day stuff. This means you shouldn't expect lightning progress from me and I will need to find ways to use my hobby time more effectively. A.k.a. streamlining and de-cluttering things!

So, the coming months I've got plenty to do, hobby-wise! For the coming weekend the plans are to, if the weather permits, make some more progress on the Gaslands terrain and/or try out the new airbrush. If the weather is non-cooperative, I will be cleaning up and re-arranging the hobby den for all the construction and painting that lies ahead of me... If any time is left, I should get cracking on those Recce choices for Battlegroup before the deadline expires.

See you next time!

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 4

This week has been marked by experimentation...

First I received the crackle gel I had ordered.  After a false start I had a first result I was happy with. Experiment number 1.
Second, I received the couplers I needed to finally hook up my old airbrush to the compressor (the whole airbrush-experiment had stalled years ago out of frustration with compressed air canisters and lack of a compressor).  Experiment number 2.
One plus one led to a piece of cracked earth rough terrain that needed a basecoat:

The airbrush performed well, though a few things have become obvious:
-The coupling between airbrush and hose needs some o-rings as it leaks air.
-The compressor hose and coupling are on the heavy side, I'd like to be able to use the original hose for the brush, but I'd need a coupling piece for that.
-My current airbrush is definitely a basecoat and terrain brush, maybe in time I'd like to ad a second airbrush to the roster for finer work (my current one is a single-action syphon feeder, the addition would be a dual-action grav-feeder).

Naturally terrain piede it still needs highlighting and such, but that will be done with traditional methods (a.k.a. sponging and drybrushing. But so far, I'm calling this a succesfull experiment.
I may be switching gears for a bit, as I'll be having limited acces to my hobby space and gear the next couple of weeks/weekends, so I'll limit myself to a small self-contained project; the Nurgle part of my Dark Imperium box. After that, it should be Gaslands firing on all cylinders again!

UPDATE:
This is the crackle gel I used for the above terrain piece, I slathered it on in about 1mm thickness. I think a little thinner would have been better, as that would give finer crackling:

And as a bonus, a pic of my jury rigged airbrushing set up:

What I'd like to improve about it is to find a way to link up the original hose to the airbrush, as it's much lighter and more manageable than the compressor one. And I'd like to either take the top off the box or put some vent holes at the rear, as I get a lot of mist drifting back into my face. Maybe a white sheet on the inside to give some better light would be nice too. Making it indoor-proof would be completely awesome, ofcourse...

See you next time! (Which may be a bit longer, as the next three weekends are booked full...)

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 3

Well, today has been a productive day, the morning was spent painting the dunes and rock pillars:

After the sealant coats with thinned PVA (mixed with paint) I painted the basecoat with a paint gun (as in: the big thing that came with the compressor, not an airbrush...). Which, after some double sided tape/hot glue to fix the terrain pieces in place, worked acceptably.
Drybrushing followed after that. While the dunes ended up a bit darker than planned, I'm pleased with the result. The rock technique has been declared a succes, so I proceeded to start on one of the larger hills:

Hopefully I can get some more progress on this piece tomorrow.

See you next time!

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 2

No progress on the dunes yet, mucking with filler is reserved for the weekend. But as  I needed something to keep my mind and hands occupied as I recovered from an unexpected migraine attack, I decided to test the technique I plan to use for the rocky outcroppings/hills. So I made a pair of small(ish) rock formations:

My usual foamed pvc base, one or more layers of roughly shaped XPS (with a combination of Thermocut and good old breakaway knife, this new machine makes everything foam related more fast and more fun, I love it!). Then I slashed the heck out of them to create the striations in the rock. This technique is an adapation/combination of the way Rob Hawkins and JimBibbly make the rock faces for several of their awesome terrain pieces. If ya gotta steal, steal from the best, I say.. ;)

They're based with several grades of cork, grit and sand (which reminded me I need to visit a model train store soon, my basing stock is running dangerously low!). Tomorrow I hope to base them with a mix of PVA and paint  And hopefully I can paint them during the weekend, alongside fillering and sanding the dunes.
If this technique gives satisfactory results, it's on to the rocky dunes!

Note to myself for the next time: If I do make rocky formations of more than one XPS layer, make sure to add several places for infantry models to stand... Good for arty observers and snipers!

See you next time!

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 1

So, this weekend, once the Thermocut guides from Geboom were assembled, I had a play around with the machine  (nothing worth showing, I just made variously shaped foam confetti to get a feel for the machine.)
After that, it was on to serious business: Making a start on my Mad Max inspired terrain for Gaslands.
This will be a project in two parts, as I will also be able to use the generic desert parts of this terrain for my DAK, once I return to that project.
I decided to start on the generic part first. Saturday I cut the bases for three sand dunes and two rocky hills/outcroppings. I used my shiny new thermocut to cut out the XPS-foam plugs that will form the bodies of the hills and dunes:

After that, I got out my trusty old handheld foamcutter and profiled the dunes:

After this step, the dunes were sanded to smooth them out and fade away the cutting lines.

In between I also carved up a loose chunk of foam, and gave it a paint wash to test a technique for striated desert rock structure. I'm still undecided, but I thing I'll just have to go off the deep end and try it on the full sized hills.

Hopefully I can cover the dunes in filler and sand the next weekend and maybe get a start on the rocky hills as well. Then I need to add some rocky outcroppings, loose rocks and patches of rough/broken ground and the core set should be complete.
Then it's on to the Gaslands/Wasteland specific stuff: Crude Oil/tar ponds, jury-rigged nodding donkeys and scrapyards shanties and barriers. Some car wrecks to scatter about. I'm looking forward to making that stuff! With some luck, I'll manage to make parts of it scale-neutral enough to also serve for Necromunda and Gorkamorka... In the least it'll be a good exercise for when I start on terrain for that.

See you next time!

And now, for something completely different...

Well, so far you've seen mainly fantasy and sci-fi miniatures from me. Oh, and zombies*. All in 28mm.
Not this time...
Yesterday, the third day of Christmas (a.k.a. the Thank-Cthulhu-it's-finally-over-Day) I painted a batch of 20mm Deutsches Afrika Korps. They're a project I haven't worked on for nearly a decade, but my recent introduction to the PC game War Thunder has rekindled my interest. Plus they form a nice breather for my (currently main project) fantasy stuff, as they paint up quickly. This whole batch was done in a single day (including drying time for washes and sleeping in a bit), where I take at least two days, or more, for a batch of fantasy figures a quarter this number.

Here they are:

In case you're wondering, the minis without bases, and the one on the big, untextured base are parts of LMG teams. I've kept them apart to acces all the nooks and crannies while painting. Once all members of a team are done, I'll glue them to their base and texture + paint it. The metal on the guns is left flat grey for now, once the whole platoon is done, I'll rub them with some graphite (in other words, pencil) to give them a metallic sheen.
They're on the piece of paper to keep them organised, as I'm painting the basic infantry of the platoon and its command group combined over several batches. Each figure needs to go back to it's own squad after painting!
The reason I'm doing mixed batches like this, instead of a whole squad at a time, is because I custom mix several colours and highlights each time. As a result I get a natural variance in the exact tone of colour in each batch. By spreading the batches among all infantry, I use what would otherwise be a hindrance to replicate the effect of all uniforms bleaching at different rates and in different manners, making the units as a whole seem more realistic. :)

Here's a close up of one of the command group members checking either his tactical map, or the assembly guide for his Ikea flat-pack summoning circle:

(The mini is based on a 20mm washer, for size reference. So the above picture is several times life-sized, depending on your monitor size and resolution.)

What are my plans for this? Well, I have this platoon of infantry to paint, plus assemble and paint their Protze transports. And there is the rest of the box I've collected nearly a decade ago, which includes the remaining vehicles of a small recce group (consisting of a Sd.Kfz. 232 (8rad) Funkenwagen, two Sd.Kfz. 222s and a looted Humber), some PaKs and 8.8s plus tows and some Blitzes to haul supplies. A leichte and mittlere Panzerzug (I already have the Panzer I to function as the command vehicle for the leichte Panzerzug) are on the wishlist to add sometime, as well as a Diane or two.
And I want to add some Weird War war eventually as well ([Edit: Some text here has been removed, due to reasons. ] I have a 1/72 Maus that I can add a turret or two to, making it a "Panzerlandschiff".) But that is still far away, I'll need to get the basics done first. Hopefully it'll take less than 10 years....

See you next time!

*: Which could be classed as modern, post-modern, sci-fi or post-apocalyptic/peri-apocalyptic. ;P

They dwell beneath...

Over the last couple of days, as a counterpoint to the ever increasing Christmas Frenzy and Enforced Cheer, I've been taking little breaks to paint a bunch of goblins from GW's the Hobbit range.
I won't be using them as goblins, though, but rather as degenerate deep-cave dwellers, á la Morlocks or the creatures in the Descent movie. They'll also double as degenerate navite mutants in games of Inquisimunda or similar.
To reflect the role I have chosen for them, they've been painted in a sickly, greyish skintone:

As I needed to get 18 done before Christmas, and they're meant to use in hordes anyway, they got a quick, serviceable paintjob.

As a test, I've photographed them against my Frostgrave wall markers, but it ended up a bit monochrome as a result. In a way, they're a bit too well adapted to their surroundings...

A few mates have also tempted me into giving the PC game War Thunder a shot, and I've been enjoying myself plonking around in wee little tankies (and generally getting shot to bits). Which, in turn, has reminded me of my small(ish) collection of 20mm Afrika Korps that have languished in Mons Plumbum for near to a decade. When I originally worked on them, I stalled out on the painting the platoon of infantry I had, after having painted only one tank, two armoured recce cars and maybe 6 infantry (and a converted Weird War walker)... Not the most auspicious start.
Rooting round the stash, I found I also had an M3 Grant for some reason. So I quickly assembled that one, with an eye on maybe playing some quick tank duels with the Panzer IV I had already finished. So that one is now on the pile of minis ready for primer.

Anyway, that's all for today, have to go do seasonal stuff.
Merry Christmas everyone!