Squiggles 'n' Blops on a Lazy Saturday. . .

The title of an over-sized Jackson Pollock study in color and texture? Noooooo! Just a description of the piece of palette paper on which I've been thinning and mixing my alkyd oil paints for a couple of evenings as I apply the colors to my Prussian and British officers and horses. The addition of London Yellow this morning -- to approximate the yellow of an officer of Prussia's 2nd Kuirassiere -- just seemed to pull everything together. It's funny the things that cross your mind as you paint. And as I thinned the blob of yellow with several drops of Original Liquin earlier today, it occurred to me that the mix of puddles of various colors had a pleasing effect. At least to my eyes. Hence the reason behind, and the title of, this post.

Now, lots of wargamers and figure painters state that they have always avoided using oils because of, among other things, the perception that it takes a long time for the paints to dry, preferring the convenience of acrylic hobby paints of one brand or another. Fair enough. Especially if you are using old-fashioned oils thinned with something like Linseed Oil, which can take weeks to dry out.

But, alkyd oil colors, like those produced by Winsor-Newton, dry to the touch overnight, and the Liquin thinner itself also speeds up drying times appreciably. Using the two together mean that it's safe to begin the next painting step on a batch of figures within 24 hours and sometimes even sooner. So, if you're after something slightly different with your miniatures painting, I urge you to give oils a try. They can produce some really nice effects applied over a white undercoat.

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It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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