Romans

As promised here are some photos of where the Legion currently stands. They are all just temporarily based as I would like to base them all at once and their are a few more things I am looking for in terms of basing material.

 

Not much more to say. I am working on finishing another 6 repaint figures and 8 freshly painted figures. I also plan on doing some base coating this week(weather permitting). I would have done it last week, but I had to be out of town.

Under 28mm Eagles Update pt1

Here are a few quick shots of what the updated 28mm Napoleonics will look like when I am finished. I had to finish this lot before I could continue with the Imperial Romans as they were taking up space on my desk.
First some old photos for comparison.

This base has been redone.

This base has been redone.

I have only updated two of the large bases so far I still have one large base and two smaller bases to update for this command set.

Now for the improved and updated miniatures.

Sorry for the blur. I did not see it until now.

So what has been changed? I have reconfigured how I flock my bases, I have added highlights to the figures and then added a wash to give some tone and shadowing, I have updated the miniatures skin color, and I have added eyebrows to my figures. Yes I left those off. It really makes a difference when you add eyebrows to your figures.

Legionnaires Disease

No I am not sick. Though my desk is currently covered in Imperial Roman Legionaries. I got back from spring break a while ago and while I was at my parents house I remembered to grab my Imperial Roman Legionaries that I had left there. Subsequently I have been working these last few days to repair the painted figures and then begin to update their paint job, much in the same manner that I am working on my 28mm Napoleonics. I also went through and took stock of the number of figures I have and what all I could do with them. The following pictures are a few flights of fancy on that subject.

On a side note. I have a little bit of a funny story to go along with the title of this post. About a year ago I got an email from some group asking if they could use one of my old photos in a paper on Legionnaires Disease. I never answered because they wanted a photo quality that I could not obtain. Still it is rather funny.

As you can see I have a lot of prepaired figures and some that where painted to a rather bad standard(by my current standards anyway). The repair work is mainly focused on the water slide transfers as some of them have started to come off the shields as I did a pretty bad job at the time. Also there are a few figure that I may never use, as the poses that I set up are just awful. Oh to be a young and dumb miniature enthusiest.

Parting thoughts and shots. I have not done one of these in a while.
First up are some pictures of the two books that I use the most for painting Napoleonics. I was reading another persons blogs and happened to notice that he had recently been to a literary museum in France and they had a tone of figure plates on collection by this one French couple. I saw one of the plates and went "Hey now, I own a book of that stuff".

They are not worth more than about $25, so don't bother trying to hunt up where I live just to steal them. They are however, an excellent source for trying to figure out what colors to use for your figures.

The last thing I have on my mind is this idea of redoing paint jobs for my figures. I am dead set on doing this for my 28mm Napoleonics and Romans. The full realization that I was stifling my painting skill because I wanted a uniform look is quite startling. And as such I have been looking at my 6mm collection wondering if I should redo those figures as well. No firm plans as of yet besides a definite desire to redo all of the bases for my 6mm figures. In fact I plan on staying away from my 6mm stuff until I get one of these two current redo project over with.  

Shields!! Shields!!

As the title states I have finished a lot of Roman Legionary Shields. The process is not too involved thankfully and the results are pretty good. And since I got the shields all finished up I decided to finish up the few Romans that need shielding.

Optios

Cohort Command

The keen observer will note that the shields have some variance in the color even down to the water slide transfers. This is caused by a difference in the transfers themselves. I needed to get extras because the transfers I originally had came from the box sets that I had bought a long time ago. And when I purchased these figures, I bought them as separate spruces. So imagine my surprise when I get the extra transfers and they are way brighter than the ones you get in a box set. Solution? After the last bit of clear coat to keep the transfers down, I added a varying degree of black wash to darken the transfers.

Also I have fully assembled the Praetorian figures I got with my last order from Warlord Games. A few notes on them. Their sculpt quality is on par with the Romans Legionaries and the are some nice new addition to the spruces. Big complaint that I have had for a long time with these sets, is that there are far to few arms holding a Gladius. It is a small thing, but it is compounded when a spruce has four bodies that ares supposed to be holding a Gladius and Warlord only gives you two arms with swords per spruce.

These guys are currently ready to be base coated, but who would have guessed that it would start raining like none other here in the parched state of California?

Note on my Napoleonics. I spent Sunday removing about 60 figures from their old bases and started updating and improving the paint jobs. Look for an update on that later.

Also notes on the Blog. I am looking to change up how the posts appear. I am trying to get it so that the page is not bogged down by pictures. So keep an eye out for changes.

Just stop listening to me.

Recently I mentioned that I was looking at trying to figure out why I dropped my 28mm projects (other than money and space consumption being the issue). I have, in the last few days, been spending time looking over all of my old 28mm figures and I think I have it all figured out. For the 6mm range of figures there is no push or drive to increase the detail or quality of the figures as I paint them. I say this because I do not want to strain my eyes and I feel that the point of 6mm miniatures is being able to throw 5000 to 10000( or more) figures on the table and not even bat an eye. There is also that cost benefit as the price per figure for 6mm is very very small. It is also a way to tackle projects that I would never even be able to dream of affording or storing, such as the Eagles of Heresy project( masses of Titans and tanks is not something people can easily handle).

On the other hand, I look at 28mm figures and see the opportunity to add in lots of detail and to improve my painting skill. The Sons of the Emperor project ( still waiting for Kabuki to release the next figure that I am looking for) has kind of been a test bench for improving my painting skills. These results can be seen in the Lord of the Rings diorama that I made for my Dad last year. This has led to a revival of my Roman Legions and has such led to a revival of my 28mm Napoleonics.

Now this is not an all in revival, but it is a revival. I still plan on working quite heavily on the Romans and in the back ground begin the process of updating the paint job on my Napoleonics AND I am going to be redoing the bases for my Napoleonics. Thankfully in that respect I have been basing my miniatures with wood glue and all it takes to remove the figures from their bases is a few minutes of submersion of the base in water. With this new plan in mind I have gone through my 28mm Napoleonics, organized the storage of those figures, assessed what I have painted, what I have waiting to be painted, what I have yet to assemble, and what I need to close up some gaps in Battalions. This has led to some test paint jobs and to some test of the clean up process that will be taking place in the near future.

Big difference in paint job.

I will probably tackle the re-basing and repainting in a Battalion by Battalion process as I do not want to get in over my head. For the basing, I have been wanting to improve my basing technique for a while and I have purchased a lot of supplies to that extent. So look for lots of random stuff in the future.