Oil rubbed 'orses, a shameless plug

If your like me (then god help you) and love the look of this 'old school' technique and the great results that can come from it I highly recommend the Metal Mountain blog, there is a great tutorial on how to apply it, probably one of the best results I've seen with oil rubbing.

thanks for looking
Dave

Making and Using a wet Palette

This post has now been moved to the "How To" tab above.

Back to Some Shiny Figures

The Essex crossbowmen are coming along nicely and in between them and a Imagi-Nation commitment I eased a bit of paint onto a few figures for myself. Once again not much to say about them other than they are all from Eureka Miniatures, are painted using 'wash and glaze' and are finished in acrylic clear satin eurethane. What I need to do now is get a smooth undercoat for this painting, the gesso has worked OK so far for regular painting but the fine shark skin like texture probably wont work for this.

Anywho on to the pictures. 1st up Abraham Lincoln ;-) See more photo's on my personal wargames blog.

Laughing policeman from my 'Jolly Squad of Scottsmans Yard', Victorian Science Romance (or VSF to the kids) Project.

Artillerist of the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassoulet, read the Narrative and see more photo's here and have a poke around while your there, plenty to have a chuckle over.

thanks for looking
Dave

Essex Crossbowmen aWIP

I's Still hot hot hot in these parts definitely not painting weather, but I had ants in my pants last night so I did a bit of metallic/armour painting and blending on some old odds and sods lying about the place, here's the results. No commentary or sad words of wisdom just pics today (no cheering). Don't forget to click to enlarge and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

This chap didn't have any armour so I banged some paint on his surcot (?), white and light coloured paints and are awful to paint with when its hot it tends to clump or go grainy due to the white pigments (zinc or titanium oxides), so many, many thin white washes were used to build up some opacity and keep some smoothness.

regards
Dave

Gaming Magazines and Undercoat/Primer

What do they have in common? Not much I guess, other than that is what I'm musing about at the moment, ohh, and lil sodjers of course.  I'll start with magazines and keep it brief-ish.  So, I was doing my morning round of random blog gazing and fell upon Tank Girls (aka Helen) latest post relating to Warfare Soldiers and Strategy (WSS) issue 58 in which she has written a painting tutorial on WWII Japanese, well done that girl! This is something of a co-incidence as I placed my order for a subscription to WSS last week which very much to my relief is still being printed and very much to my surprise  is now published in the Netherlands and not Spain which has some sort of War of Spanish Succession (WSS) overtones, take that Sherlock.... My relief was to find that WSS (the magazine not the war) magazines disappearance from the news agents shelves a while back was not because of anything terminal but because of publishing decisions and then a change of publisher. Im not a fanatic when it comes to magazines, if they are there they are there and if I have missed my chance at the shops etc so be it but I did enjoy the several copies of WSS that I did buy and I did miss thumbing through the latest edition. Get a copy and see what you think.

Now moving on to undercoats and primers, I have just one word to say to you  just one word (no not plastics, your thinking of the film) GESSO. Now you have probably come across gesso undercoating and priming being discussed in the forums and on various blogs as have I, and ponder it you do (the Yoda in me). While shopping with my wife recently I came across some Jo Sonja products in a sale and bought a pot of gesso. Let me explain the what-for's, where-by's and how-to's of my purchase. I spent a lot of last year practising various painting techniques and styles etc. and among them was using white undercoat which I have come to appreciate but sometimes I think black, or indeed some other coloured undercoat, would be worth using.

Hind quarter with normal under coat, no primer

 I find most all acrylic blacks and the majority of enamel blacks have a satin finish which is a pain to paint over,  the under coat has no bite there is nothing for the paint to grip onto. Gesso on the other hand is designed to provide an undercoat with tooth for canvas, to provide a surface that paints will readily adhere to, reading the label on the pot I see that this gesso is acrylic based and I figure " hey if it's acrylic I should be able to tint it with acrylic paints or inks or even washes and have a undercoat of my choosing", horses for courses. So I'm trialling this brand of gesso to see if it makes and acceptable undercoat/primer, just plain white first and I'll follow up with some tints. Oh yeah, it doesn't stink as much as my mums did when I was wee.

Hind quarter with gesso undercoat, no primer

Click on the photos to enlarge and compare in the image viewer, what do you think?

No painting at Paint Pig Schlosse for a few days 41 C yesterday and similar today, time to freebag under the aircon in front of the telly or computer working on Hesse-Kassoulet Kronicles

thanks for looking
Dave

Musings on Painting and Blogging and Age

So while gazing at my navel and scaring the fishes I spent some time thinking about my blogs and trying to sort out in my mind how to better organise myself, my hobby and my personal wargaming collection. These fishy musings resulted in my resolve to rejuvenating and refocus the content of my fig v fig from bayonets to breach loaders blog and use it to store my own personal wargaming and miniature collection which for the most part covers the period generally know as the 'horse and musket' era or 'black powder' era. I have been known to collect outside of this period but very little, and only because wargamers are incapable of turning down the opportunity to buy shiny,  it's our collective weakness.

So what is going to happen to Ask Paint Pig, well not much will change really, hopefully the quality of posts will improve, more on paints and techniques that I have found work well or not and perhaps not as many but more rugular posts. The Ask Paint Pig blog will still remain my painting journal and painting commission's blog with WIP's and For Sale notices of my 'painted for eBay' figures.

Now your probably wondering where the painting and age part comes into it. I wrote a small post for the fig v fig blog which I should have posted here on Ask Paint Pig (my first mix up). Not wanting to go through the motions and re-write it here I will link you to it. Hope you enjoy my ramblings and if you have any ideas on the subject please leave comments.


Oh by the way

We caught a few chopper but this is the first one I've dragged in bigger than the ice box

thanks for looking

Moving into Naval

Gazing

.........and this little piggy went wee wee wee wee all the way to the boat ramp.

Gone Fish'n
Dave