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Progress on the RSM's but no photos just yet. . . Sigh.

Well, the new digital camera and lenses that my mother presented to me in March are a bit more complex than our little Cannon “point and shoot” camera with which I’ve taken photos for the blog until now. That little camera has been traveling with the Grand Duchess for the last couple of weeks, hence the attempts with the larger, more complicated gear.

At any rate, I managed to get in a decent amount of time on the RSM’s on both Saturday and Sunday. The figures now look pretty good. All green breeches, smallclothes, and facings are complete as are the white gaiters. In addition, I managed to paint 13 of the red coats. And all with a minimum of painting mistakes. It was a good weekend!

The one extremely time consuming part of this has to do with the color red. Since I use a black undercoat, it takes three coats of GW “Blood Red” to get a nice, even, rich color. However, the time and effort are worth it. I think you’ll agree when I have some worthy photos to post here. I’d be so bold as to say that these are some of the nicest red coats I’ve ever painted. Still lots to do, including 18 red coats, but I feel as though the back has been broken on this current project. Charge!

Comments

MiniWargamer said…
Have you thought of trying tan over the black and then the red? A number of times the extra pigment in the tan can make application of lighter paints easier.

(This works on house paint as well! We had a raspberry room we needed to paint in a beige/off white and put tan on as the first coat and were able to then cover the tan with one coat of paint.)
Bluebear Jeff said…
Stokes,

While it is obviously too late to try it with your current unit, you might want to play around with what I do ala priming.

I also use a black base coat . . . but then I do a white "damp brush" over it.

Damp brushing is heavier than "dry brushing", but the same sort of thing . . . but wetter and not overly careful.

The result is a figure that is partially white (raised areas and flat areas); and partially black (recessed areas).

Not only does this really bring out a figure's details, but it also means that when you use a particularly translucent paint like red, your get a naturally "shaded" look after a single coat of paint.

This might not suit your painting style, but it is worth trying at least once or twice on a few figures.


-- Jeff
Fitz-Badger said…
I tried the GW Foundation paint Mechrite Red. I like the color and it covers black well, but if you want to highlight up to brighter reds it still takes a few coats to get there.
The tan suggestion is a good one. I have used various light colors in a similar way. Seems like most anything that has a fair amount of white in it works for this (hmm, maybe I should try one of the other GW foundation shades...).
Maybe combine that with Jeff's wet-brush technique (use the tan or other light color in place of white?).
Looking forward to the pics :-)
Der Alte Fritz said…
This is why I hate painting troops with red coats. Red doesn't work very well with black undercoat. So I prime redcoated troops with grey primer, slosh on the red and then I have to paint all of the belts, packs and equipment black so that I can use my normal 2 or 3 color painting technique. Painting all of the belts black (before putting on the white or leather color) is extremely tedious. I can think of no other way to do it.

I guess I don't understand this damp brush method even though Jeff has described it many times. My brain doesn't compute in this instance.

The other method is to stay with black and put several coats of red on and then find a bright highlight color, otherwise the red looks very dark
MurdocK said…
Another technique, one that I shall start documenting on my own blog is to grey base (though black can still be done as I hope to also document) coat, followed by a very wet dark brown. This has the effect very similar to inks but with less of the flourescent qualities.

Then the 'higher areas' are painted pale blue (as though you were going to paint them white later). You can then highlight with white (or again very very pale blue) the very highest 'highlight' areas.

Allow all this to thouroughly dry, unless you KNOW that your paints will not bleed.

Once dry you then start applying reds, first a wet brick red, then a medium red and finally a tinted red-orange for the last highlights.

I tend to mix my brick red with red and magenta inks so that the flow takes it into he deepest crevaces and gives a dark color support.

If your paints do not mix well then this method will not work for you as you may 'lift' the pale blue/whites and end up with PINK instead of red uniforms.
Der Alte Fritz said…
Stokes: I'm in need of my daily Stollen fix. Please...write...something (and post pictures too).

Fritz in Withdrawal
Stokes - I'd go with Jeff's approach if you want the process to go quicker (and it's the same process I use), but your approach if you want the depth of colour...

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