Painting Ronin Day 15

I was thinking about the last post and how I paint compared to others and I concluded that this is one of the things that make our hobby so good, their is no right or wrong way to paint your figures (I agree that there are wrong colors to paint them )

the postman brought me some flags I have been waiting for today, I ordered 2 for the Black Watch std's I buy my flags from Maverick Models as I only wanted 2 I went the whole hog and bought the self adheasive ones, I am happy with them I have been careful not to show the figures as these will be photographed and sent off to Curt this weekend.

on the painting table I am enjoying doing regular units at the moment and made good progress on the French and American's. the French just have the brass bits done then it's time for a dip.

Painting Ronin Day 14

Been for a trip to the Dr today, I took a hockey ball to the side of the knee on the 8th Dec and its still giving me trouble, good news is no ligament damage just some very deep bruising at the base of the ligament and bone. This means no training for another 2 or 3 weeks and probably back playing in Feb. One plus from this is more painting time on the Saturdays, the negative is I have to watch carefully my food intake so I do not put on the weight I lost.
Enough real life more about painting, Dean expressed shock to see that I paint my figures already based. This is something I have done for a long time now I do this for a few reasons, first I am a lazy painter I do not like doing things twice so if I am sticking figures to something to paint them I will stick them to the base's they have to be on, second I am painting wargame's figures these are to look good on a table top so if I can not get to a bit with a thin paintbrush no one will see that bit on a table top. Below are some Celts I painted in a very short time.

if you want to see how the army turned out check out this old blog post, http://exilespainting.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/wab-gt-tomorrow-did-i-do-it.html.
But before you rush out and try this you need to know a few things, you can not be a perfectionist as there will always be some bits of the figures you can not reach. This is not a problem if you have taken the time to make sure your black undercoat is fully covering the figures. Also this is wargame's painting do not expect them to look ace up close.
I have been carrying on with my current WIP, 6 American regulars a unit of SYW french and the SYW Hussars and I have started on another cav unit 12 Scots ECW lancers

My efforts to do a water base have been partially successful, I have had to top up with the water effect and given them another 24 hours, so watch this space. I have another lot of figures to photo and send off to Curt so I am well on target to hit my average 1000 pts per month. Below are a few pictures of that last lot of figures I entered.

Wow a long post from me today, keep those brush's warm guys and I will check in with you tomorrow
Peace James

Painting Ronin Day 13

So today I return to work (boo hiss), this means I will be going back to bed at 16:30 for 3-4 hours sleep before work so I lose a little painting time. I have been painting a lot of irregular units (mainly for FIW) these take longer to paint due to changing paint all the time. As way of a rest I have dug out the French infantry for the SYW and completed the base's, as you can see below I have undercoated them in black then over in white only from above this gives them a bit of pre-shading.

The next thing to do is paint the hat and various other bits back to black, while painting the base's I took the time to work the next unit of Hussars base's

I finished the two canoes today so I wanted to try some thing I have wanted to do for a while, make a water base. I put tape all round the base to form a seal and have poured in the water effect I bought years ago (I wonder if it goes off) I now have to wait 24 hours to see if it works.

So all in all I had a productive first day of the new year, I cant get away with painting at work but can just about get away with a bit of prep work so I think I will fill my work bag with french and sneak a bit in tonight. A couple of last shots first the current crop on the painting table, and I have been letting myself down with my photos of finished figures so I dug out my light tent my desk lamp will swing in from the right to give a second light and hopefully this should improve the end product (cant be worse).