I recently started following these boards and sought help on how to get started. The encouragement from the community was heartwarming and encouraging, so first off all, thank you.
I wanted to share my first painted units with you. I've come from painting Napoleonics (badly) and AWI (better, but not 'good'). This was my first opportunity to paint something with more subtle tones an hues. Although I feel like I'm getting better, I'm still a long way off some of the standards I've seen on these boards.
That said, I'm still pretty pleased with this lot.
First, I bought some early war Brits from Great War minis. I absolutely love them – great sculpting and a pleasure to paint. I also managed to bag a bit of a deal on eBay of a mixed bag of minis, so I stripped them back and started painting some figures which I believe are from Renegade. Here's my first attempt (Renegade left, TGW right):
If anyone's interested, the process for both sets was:
- Base with Humbrol Dark Green spray
- English Uniform for clothing
- Khaki for webbing
- usual for everything else: flat flesh, mahogany brown, German grey
- dab method with Army Painter Strong Tone (the horror!)
(all non-sprays are VMC)
I then used only drybrush highlighting from then on for everything except the brass – rifle wood, metallic finishes, flesh, all of it. I really liked the effect it gave. One key thing is that I lightened some khaki for the highlighting phase.
Some of the bases from the eBay batch were half-done and so I had to build them up with base rendered. After that, I basetexes and then drybrushed with Silvergrey. I may keep it as it is for a mud effect, or I may add some static grass. I was even considering some poppies from Javis for pathos.
Feeling pretty pleased at achieving the above in two evenings, I got cracking on my first set of TGW Germans (still need bases finishing):
And bloody hell, don't they take longer!
If anyone is genuinely interested in the full colour scheme and process, let me know, but it was a long, laborious process! They felt like Victorian relics with their detailed piping, fancy mustaches, Franco-Prussian War-style packs and a thousand different shades of brown and beige kit.
I wasn't as happy with the drybrushing effect with these, but they're growing on me. The slightly grainy finish and sepia effect of drybrushing reminds me of colourised photos from the era and I do like the stark contrast between what are essentially a Prussian-style continental mass army compared to the comparatively modern, practical, imperial uniforms of the BEF.
So, in all, quite pleased. I still have about 18 Brits on the workbench as well as Brit and German command groups due to arrive from Mutton Chop, tomorrow. looking forward to finally having a platoon for each side (with some support elements) to put Too Fat Lardies' rules into action!