A long. long time ago.. as the song goes.. I was at a place across town here, looking at a place that sold Dragon 1:6 scale figures. it must have been in the 1990’s. While I was there, I saw a 1:36 mortar emplacement set going cheap. Being who I am, I thought it could be turned into scenery, and so I picked it up to do so. Regular readers will know the story from that point, where I never got around to doing anything with it, then eventually started on it, you know the drill.
So a week or so ago, I finished it off. It’s maybe not the best I could have done, but given that it’s been doing nothing for the best part of two decades, having it finally completed isn’t exactly a bad thing…
I mean, it looked okay, as is. Except for the rise and indentation where the mortar’s baseplate stuck on. I had to both cut that piece off and then putty it over, to give a flat area where miniaturemans can stand.
So here we are. Nothing spectacular, certainly nothing Awesome, but another bit of terrain for the table, finished!
Some time ago, (bloody hell – a year ago!) I showed the completed Ruined Pillars from the Conan Boardgame Kickstarter. Pretty small and simple things, but then they’re tokens for a boardgame, and so they can’t be too large, as they need to allow for miniatures to also fit onto the segments. These trees follow very much the same cues. Hence their sizes are pretty small, though they’ll also work in a pinch on a wargame battlefield.
Once again, my plan for these trees was for an overall bleached, “dead tree” look, but unlike my previous attempts, where it just didn’t work using Contrast Paints, the detail on these ones was very much condusive to allowing me to achieve the dead and bleached effect I was after. I only used Contrast on the wood of the trees, though – bases were done in the traditional manner. The set came with six each of two sculpts of tree. I felt that the hunched over “C” trees allowed for more variation on their bases than the more upright ones (they’re a bit too small to be a proper Tree of Woe!) I haven’t shown all of each type here, because frankly, they’re not that interesting as individual pieces. And yes, that’s a glue line just above the base on both types of tree. That was one of the things that led to these being unpainted for literally more than six months.
Puttying over all those joins was something I’d planned to do, but the thought of doing so was (and still is) SO tedious that it put me off doing anything at all with them for the year that’s passed since I finished the pillars. I’ve got more than a dozen Wargs backed up for the same reason. In the end, what got them painted was a combination of another thing to trial the Contrast Paints with (along with the inherent promise of getting them done quickly) along with a willingness to finally just say “fuck it” to the idea of puttying all them joins. So quite literally – the time not spent on these is the time that has instead allowed me to complete those Slayers what I’ve been posting up here in the past few days, as I was working on both in an overlapping manner in July. Figure painting time is very much a zero-sum game. Now I just need to work out why I keep painting those Shadows of Brimstone models when I could be painting Stormcast or something – probably because it’s nice to have easy wins and not care too much from time to time…
I have noticed, as I write this post up and insert the photos – that I forgot to add the touch of weathering powder to their bases at the end. I guess I will have to go back and add it (since it comes after final varnish), but again – fuck it – I’m still counting these as July-completion models. Oh, and if you’re wondering what the story is with the duplicated photo from the top one – this one’s a scale reference if you look carefully!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 