RIP Ott Lamp

Last Thursday night, as I was in the process of finishing up some Cobblestone Castings 15mm Picts, my Ott desk lamb blew up! It didn't really blow up, more like a big belch and then death. The previous two nights it was doing odd power surge things. The light would brighten then dim, then go back to normal. Thursday it continued, then there was a big BURP! sound that came from the power switch box, then nothing. I don't think it was the bulb. That looked fine. I had to finish up the Picts in rather dim light.

I've always had problems painting large areas of exposed skin. I am never really happy with the results. This time, I used a sort of Dallimore method of painting, which I am not too crazy about. To me, they always look like a color-by-numbers painting where the shadows and highlights do not blend much. My guess it that at a certain distance, the eye is tricked into blending the shades together.  Here is the results of my experiment:

The Fury of the Picts!

What I used:

Skin
Base coat: 1 part Army Painter Barbarian Flesh : 1 part Michaels Craftsmart Brown
Middle coat: Army Painter Barbarian Flesh
Highlights: 2 parts AP Barbarian Flesh : 1 part Vallejo Basic Skin tone

Hair
Black, highlighted gray
Very light gray with a black wash

Weapons
Wooden shafts and handles: Burnt Umber
Leather straps: various leather paints that I have
Chert spear points and axe heads: various colors of turquoise, red, and gray. Then either a dry brush highlight and/or black wash, depending on the size and amount of relief on the stone.

Fur Loincloth
Orange-brown craft paint and then black wash

Skulls
Some of them were carrying a skull at their sides. Maybe a bonus for excellence in savagery? Parchment White craft paint and then black wash

Unlike other figures, I was deliberately skimpy on the black wash. I restricted it to the above. I thought about washing them with a final coat of skin tone shade or a mixture of burnt sienna and clear floor wax to make them more tanned. But I decided against it.

Its too bad that Cobblestone didn't do more of his line of Barbarica 15mm figures. I wish he had put out a command pack for these Picts. It would have been nice to have some chieftains and shamans to spur the tribes on.

Bovatopian Mig-21 Fighters

I painted these Tumbling Dice MIG-21 fighters awhile ago and used them to test some air combat rules. Yesterday, I inducted them into the Bovatopian Air Force.

There was no way I was going to manage making the roundels the way I do for my 1/300 scale aircraft, so I took a very fine point drawing marker, made the best circle I could and then filled it in with paint. Its a hit-or-miss method, but it works for me.

Remote-Controlled Air Defense Artillery, Part 2

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

If your remember from last time, I built an MANPADS that was a behemoth and way out of proportion. I decided to give it another go. I used the ASRAD short-ranged missile launcher that is on the German Weisel 2 as a basis:

Source: http://armoredphotos.blogspot.sg/2011/09/leflasys_02.html

This time I very consciously tried to make the weapon system as small as possible to have size exaggeration.

Here is the result:



I made the missile tubes by cutting the styrene rods and then heating up a metal base with a candle. I then lightly pushed the ends against the hot plate. It widen them to look like the ends flare out. I made about eight of them and then picked the best four.

It is still a little bigger than I wanted, but not too bad. My main beef is that the launcher tubes are too far apart from each other on either side. I think that is what makes it look large. I also built a radar vehicle. Here are some shots of them painted.

It was a nice day, so after I had sprayed them a flat clear, I thought I'd take the pictures outside. Pictures show the radar dish as gray.

The missiles are deliberately generic. They can be pretty much any MANPAD.