Gettysburg And Some Updates

Life and work has been a bit hectic, which is why not many posts of any significance lately. After 90+ days in the hospital, my dad finally came home last week. My wife and Jeremy are flying up to PA on Wednesday and coming home on Sunday. I'm staying home to work and maybe go to Hurricon this weekend. I'm still debating because I always like going with Jeremy. I'll have to see how I feel later in the week. Below are some quick updates. I'll save my internal debate on starting 28mm WWII versus finishing my 15mm WWII figures for a later date!

Blue Moon Pirates
It's been a couple of weeks since I last worked on my Blue Moon pirates, finishing the shadow and base coats of flesh on both packs. Next is to paint the highlights. Painting the flesh similar to 25mm figures has been paying off. Many of the figures are bare chested, taking a lot of work. My goal is to work on these later this week. I've been doing some research into painting and detailing the pirate ships.

Western
Last week, I finished another West Wind Western figure, a preacher with Bible and revolver. This was an experiment in painting brown hair and beard and it turned out great. I'll snap some photos later. Got a box of Pegasus Cactus to work on as well. Old Glory will be using my photo of the bearskin rug on their website! Finally, I need some time to finish my article on printing and making signs.

Comics
Always buying more back issues than I can read. I'm on an old Justice Society and Captain America kick, getting some nice deals. Last week, Jeremy bought the entire run of Superman titles from 1997-1999 just for some fun reading. Though I have SuperSystem 1st Edition, I'm looking into Superhero rules as well.

Gettysburg Photos
Here are the last few photos from Gettysburg.  Jeremy shot all of them as we drove down from Little Round Top and around the battlefield. Bushman Farm is the middle photo, with Little Round Top in the background. Not sure about the names of the other buildings. Seeing them just now, he said he has no idea how the photos came out so well. (Just a little modest!) It was a great trip.

Blue Moon Pirates: Part 1 - Base & Shadow Flesh

Today, I finished the first coat of flesh on two packs of Blue Moon 15mm pirates seen below. I use P3 paints for flesh. Since these figures are more detailed and will be individually based, I'm treating them more like 25mm figures than 18mm figures.

The first three photos below show the first coat of paint, which is P3 Khardic Flesh. I apply it rather sloppily to get in all the nooks and crannies. I do this because people notice flesh and faces more than clothing. Later, I will trim away all the excess flesh paint using black and then paint the rest of the figure.


I used P3 Idrian Flesh as the base for the African fellows below. There is only one figure in the pack that looks African, which is a bit disappointing. I would have liked a couple others as well for variety. This guy looks suitably tough!


With all the bare chests and legs in each pack, these figures took a lot longer to paint than I expected! With the Khardic flesh done, I set out to paint in the shadow colors. Using a 00 brush, I painted P3 Idrian Flesh into the muscle shadows such as this fellow's six-pack and biceps. I also paint the eyes, the shadow under the cheek bone, under the nose, and under the chin and neck area. When done, I go back and touch that up with Khardic again to make everything neat. You don't want thick lines of Idrian slapped on the figure!

You can see the finished result below. The figure to the right has the Idrian painted in the shadows. The fellow on the left is just the base Khardic. The difference under normal light a couple feet away is dramatic.


Even though painting the flesh has been been an experiment, I am liking the results so far. It is taking longer than normal 15mm figures and is a bit trickier than painting 25mm figures because these pirates are smaller. But I am not done yet.

Next step will be to highlight the muscles using P3 Midlund Flesh. I am thinking of mixing 50/50 Midlund/Khardic but might go straight Midlund for a more dramatic effect with these smaller figures. Then maybe some extreme highlights here and there using P3 Ryn Flesh if I feel it looks good. I think it will be worth the effort. Then I have to return to my Splintered Light hares, which is turning out to be an eternal project due to the drybrushing method I started. Always something to work on in our hobby!

Gettysburg: Little Round Top

Instead of rambling on about my lack of free time and how I hate Microsoft for changing PowerPoint 10 so some things in the 07 don't work the same and rambling how my college gave us new computers with PP10 over the summer, sending out an email letting us know of the change when most of the faculty including myself was off for summer vacation just so we couldn't save our old files.

Instead of rambling about that, here are a few photos from Gettysburg's Little Round Top. This is a spot that always brings chills to me. It moves many people.

Jeremy shot all these photos. He did a nice job I think. He doesn't take many photos, so it's always nice when he wants to try his hand. The photos are sized for 1680x1080 wallpaper.