Detailing and Cautious Speed Paint Experiments. . .

 

My usual trusty placeholder until today's later Kodak Moment.  Be sure to check back later!

Not much progress to report during the last seven days.  But after a busy week, it was back to the painting desk for a couple of three (my late grandfather's expression) sessions in the chair.  Time to finish the visible hair, queues, and mustache or two.

For these, I decided to try a couple of the six or seven Army Painter Speed Paints I ordered back in January following the Christmas holidays.  We can blame Rudy at the Culloden Painting Studio, who uses quite a few of these and has really impressive results.  But then he is a professional with younger eyes than yours truly at this point.

Anyway, I went with the Ruddy Fur for the hair on all of the figures and the Grim Black, both applied at full strength, for the queues, both applied with a #1 Cottman round that still has its good point.  These water color brushes also work well for miniature painting I think although the fine points start to go after a large unit or two.  For the more reasonable collectors and painters out there, opting for saner-sized units of 30, 24, 20, or less perhaps, these brushes will of course last a bit longer.

The old, worn out and larger threes, fours, and sixes remain great for base coats and larger areas of color like basic horse coats, gun carriages, and wagons where you don't have to paint as precisely.  At least before the smaller details. 

Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog might recall that I splurged on a couple of Winsor&Newton Series 7 sables a year or two back, but the blasted things simply would not hold a point contrary to all expectations based on what I've heard and read over the years.  Grrr.  So, back to the Cottman brushes, which give decent results for those of us aiming to paint our figures to a neat tabletop standard, aka "Looks good at three feet or so if you squint a bit."  ;-)

So, how'd it go with the speedpaints then?

Well, I was reasonably pleased with the results of the Saturday sessions, which did indeed seem to go a wee bit speedier given the thin consistency of the high pigment colors.  These settled nicely into the recesses and thinned a bit on the raised areas for almost instant highlights and low-lights.  Especially the Ruddy Fur.  Now, I won't be replacing everything in the painting arsenal with these, of course, but for the odd small details they seem to work pretty well.  So, I'll keep these few bottles around and use the odd drop or two as needed.

Great Stokes, but?

Since you ask, there were naturally a few mistakes where the paint went where I did not intend it to go.  Fast wicking with a clean, damp brush removed some of that, but not all.  The Speed Paints seem to set very quickly in comparison to normal hobby and craft acrylics, so I'll need to retouch a few areas later today (Sunday) before moving onto the next task: brass fixtures on the muskets, scabbard tips, flagpole finials, and cords.  Completion of these items will get the figures ever closer to completion.  Huzzah!

At the halfway point of March now, so it's time to hustle and get these done, tackle the Anhalt-Zerbst flags, get the entire regiment based permanently, and look ahead to the 55- to 60-figure and horses (!!!) Warasdiner Grenz Hussars (Austria).  We might need to stick me in a home for the criminally deranged since I imagine I'll resemble victims of the fabled Russian Sleep Experiment urban myth after that heap of horses, troopers, musicians, and officers are all said and done.  I try not to think about it too much at this point lest I psyche myself out before even beginning. 

I know, I know. What doesn't destroy me. . . and all of that.

That said, here are a couple of illustrations on which I'll base the forthcoming brushwork , gleaned from the Project Seven Years War website of course:

I'm thinking just a basic red atop the usual light gray base coat, followed by the Army Painter red wash, and then retouching with the original red (scarlet for the officers) before getting into the multitudinous details.  But that's putting the cart before the horse as I like to say.  Let's get the Anhalt-Zerbst boys finished first, shall we?

-- Stokes