"Bluemoon French in campaign dress and greatcoats" Topic

Hi all,

I have my latest miniatures on my blog.

miniaturesblog.wordpress.com

The question for me now is should I continue to use the quickshade or not?

Simon

I think the Quickshade looks fine. You might like to try a gloss varnish over your block painting, then Quickshade. It stops the Quickshade" muddying" the colours, but still gives shading in the moulded creases and hollows.
Personally, I have moved away from Quickshade and now use home made " MagicWash"; it's a lot cheaper, brushes clean up with water, it's not as smelly and I can mix up up different shades for different uniform colours.

steaming (I gotta larf here and you know it Dave;) is onehundered% right in his assessment. Now what,s all your recipes?
My magic wash is a mix of liquid shoe polish black brown mixed with a drop or two of dish washing liquid I the cut this with acrylic vanishes or extenders put into a little container I mix dark mid and off grey. I still experiment though. The biggest new thing though is the quick blast of gloss from a can (I spray from slightly further away than norm just to give a surface for my dips) and then when dry highlights here and there. Customers are happy so must be an OK technique.
Cheers all happy painting

Hi Zargon,
I use the Future floor polish as my base. It's basically an acrylic varnish. Use acrylic inks or paints as source. Big if a "try it and see approach", but it works for me.

As for my screen name, glad it gave you a laugh. Had it for years, ties in with my love of old railway engines as well as my tendency to blow of steam when something p***** me off!

I use a pint of stout,a dash of washing up liquid and two teaspoons of lighter fuel. Works a treat.

It looks quite ok for the greatcoats but not for the white trousers

I use future mix per other posts. Either way you probably need to highlight still to clean them up.

@Ned … I assume you are talking about dipping and not drinking!

A tip to get your best whites and it not from DAZ either . Unless you are from the UK you just won't get that opening statement;)

Any way. my method is below.

After all your painting is done then coat the miniature with at least 1 coat ( better with 2) coats of Johnsons Kleer or equivalent. You will probably get the similar effects with a gloss varnish but not tried it with the latter.

This is the key bit. Don't use strong tone dip . Brown IMO is not what we are looking for here . I don't like the Soft Tone either as it makes white a dirt nicotine colour .

Instead use the Dark Tone which is a black pigmented and don't dunk ( bad manners:) ) . Instead place some of the dip into a receptacle. I use old Mouthwash bottle caps for this purpose . Then thin with ordourless white spirit until you get near an ink consistency.

Apply SPARINGLY with a brush onto the model. Leave for around 15 minutes and then clean up with a moistened brush ( white spirit)

Leave for around 24 Hours. Because of the White Spirit dilution it takes longer for the figure to dry.

Then apply a good matt varnish and await to dry.

Reapply if any glossy areas are still showing.

Then gently and carefully reapply white paint to top surfaces like creases in the trousers and repaint all white belts to make them pop.

You should end up with a decent looking model that's whiter than white .

If I had facilities I would show the pictures of my new fledgling Austrian Army. I think its looking quite good and tend to be my own worst ctitic.