Sassanids vs Rome - quick report

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Fri May 02, 2008 7:57 am

Mac wrote:At the risk of sounding flippant - just slop the paint on. I undercoat in white, paint the mid-tones over the whole figure and then varnish. Then I slop wet paint into the shaded areas, and dry brush the highlights. Varnish again and then go over the metal bits.

Why the first varnish stage?

pyruse · Post by **pyruse** » Fri May 02, 2008 3:20 pm

The key to painting at a reasonable speed is to remember you are painting an army.
Washes and dry brushes get good effects with minimal effort. The figures look fantastic from a couple of feet away.
If you start doing all that multi-layered stuff and highlighting you will never finish the army.
Put som effort into shields (because they are what catches the eye) and bases (because they are qhat you see most of from above).
That's certainly how I managed to finish 6 large and 3 small ancient 25mm armies in a reasonable time.
Now there are some nice 25mm plastics coming out, they won't even be quite so heavy to transport.

flameberge · Post by **flameberge** » Sat May 03, 2008 4:38 am

Mac wrote:4 hours is about right for a good quality figure though. I think it would take that long to paint each of my 1715 Hanoverians. See http://www.tmk.com.au/WGImages/Whiteman ... _foote.jpg

The paint job on those Hanoverians is superb!

flameberge · Post by **flameberge** » Sat May 03, 2008 4:45 am

rbodleyscott wrote:
Mac wrote:At the risk of sounding flippant - just slop the paint on. I undercoat in white, paint the mid-tones over the whole figure and then varnish. Then I slop wet paint into the shaded areas, and dry brush the highlights. Varnish again and then go over the metal bits.
Why the first varnish stage?

The varnish probably allows the wash to flow better on the figure and probably helps keep the wash from ruining the base color but I have very little experience using washes so maybe I'm wrong.

Mac · Post by **Mac** » Sat May 03, 2008 5:32 am

Once I have painted all the mid tones I varnish with Dull-Coat.

Two reasons. Firstly, it protects the figures from rough handling in the next stage and it gives me an even surface to dry and wet brush onto. This is important because I mid-tone the whole unit in one go (because I can't wait to see how it is going to look) and then do the more detailed work on batches of six figures.

Secondly, I have found that (for some reason) a varnish mid-stage and a varnish at the end make the figures more resilient, and the colours brighter than two varnishes at the end.

My next experiment is to undercoat the figures black, and then dry brush white BEFORE I paint the mid tones. This may do a lot of the shading work for me.

It may also gain me notoriety as the Southern Hemisphere's laziest painter.

flameberge · Post by **flameberge** » Sat May 03, 2008 6:01 pm

Mac wrote:It may also gain me notoriety as the Southern Hemisphere's laziest painter.

Maybe, but the figures still look good, especially the elephants.

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Sat May 03, 2008 7:10 pm

Mac wrote:My next experiment is to undercoat the figures black, and then dry brush white BEFORE I paint the mid tones. This may do a lot of the shading work for me.

Interesting. I was thinking of trying undercoating white then doing a wash of black before painting in the colours - to hopefully get a similar effect (with even less effort).