Thursday, June 14, 2012

Horses Progress #2 - A horse of a different color!

Now the undertone main colors go on.

These are primarily tan, brown, orange, red and yellow.  Yes you read those last three colors right.

The undertone colors will bring to life the surface of the horses hairs.

I have decided to do this force mostly in the latter three colors partly as a showcase of what can be done.


The horses will look very strange at this stage, do not fret, the inks will change all that in the next step.

This layer is about 80% of the time that the first layer took, mostly because I had to keep stopping to take pictures (and some of them did not turn out - so more pictures)




So much time used on the horses and pictures that I have yet to do a lot on the riders.  I decided to do the riders as part of a second stage so that I could paint the shabraques on the horses correctly and not have inks washing over them.


Time for this layer was 55 minutes, total to date 141 minutes or 3 minutes and 30 seconds per horse (not including drying time).  The reality is the more horses you do at one time with this method the less time, per horse, gets used up.  I did this same method on 104 horses in 2007 and got them all done in two weeks.

Next stage is inks.

We are also prepping for a new Garden Wars game or two this summer ... my eldest son is back into interest in exploring the game on the grass in our back yard.

2 comments:

VolleyFireWargames said...

not sure about the paint cards for the cavalry did you prime them on that as well.?

MurdocK said...

Yes.

I use a thinned out white glue to stick them on the folded cardboard - I use old cereal boxes cut into 2" wide strips, then folded over.

The first ones I did I used without the 'cut out' that the riders are sitting in, I found that by having the cut out cardboard hole I get the riders to sit better with far less glue (I only need a tiny drop) so when I remove the riders to put them on the horses typically I do not need to do much of any 'touch ups' to the riders.

I also get a good painting speed with the riders like this as I can turn and handle them quickly while keeping a brush charged with the correct color I am working on.

Not a method that I have used for high-quality paint work - I use this for the tabletop category 3-7.

For 8-9 I use only single mounts on purpose shaped cards.

For category 10 I use a pin mount on the rider's butt, the part that will never be seen on the horse saddle. Such work though takes a lot more preparation and most tabletop troops just do not need that level of work. It is best saved for the top generals or special diorama sets.