Russian Snipers by Black Tree Design

Back to trying to catch up with the painting done during the Challenge. Towards the end I was finding less and less time to both paint and post hence the ten day gap between posts. Given I was on holiday last week and found I had even less time kind of is ironic.

Black Tree produce some really nice figures with most of their WWII living up to this reputation. I have painted these figures up before so knew what I would be getting. They tend to be fairly good regards flash and clean up with mould lines easy to remove. 

The snow smocks being white need more attention than you might think. I did a base spray of white but then used ivory, off white and normal white to shade them and give them some depth of colour. The flesh and equipment just received the one colour before adding a wash to all none white parts.

The last four are a big contrast to the previous eight with the snow really making them stand out. I use Scenic Snow by Deluxe Materials and have tried a slightly different approach this time and like the finish better. Showing more of the ground work kind of improves the overall look for me.

Black Tree tend to add a lot of detail to their figures than some other companies leave off. It does add to the time to paint but the end result is far more satisfying and looks the part.

I have about twenty more figures left to paint for my Sniper Reminders and once these are done probably won't do any more.

I have changed the tufts to a winter look as well after Curt's recommendations from last year and he is 100% right these do look better.

So the Challenge is at a close and I finished 31st after spending quite a bit of time in the lower twenties. Slightly disappointing as I thought I had a chance of finishing in the top 25% but given that I finished of 1019 points and doubled my original goal I am overall very happy.

Indeed I enjoyed this years challenge more than any of the previous challengers, possibly as I was not sticking to any one theme over much but the addition of a Minion to run each days submissions was a great idea and saved Curt's sanity. It meant that each day a fresh adjudicator would jump in after a seven day rest and each of the five brought a great deal of humour and style to their days entries. I had Peter who really got into the swing with his intro's, so a big thanks to Peter and would love to be teamed up again next year.

Partisan Sniper Reminder

I have had this figure for two or more years and even though I knew what I wanted to do with it I had not got round to painting it. I had started pre-challenge but did not like the coat so had to take it back to metal and start all over again.

It's an Artizan figure from it's WWII eastern front Partisan packs but I felt it would be better served as a French lady with attitude. I did my usual trick of using a stone wall made with my Linka mould as a pavement. To cover up the obvious placement of the base I added a poster I had downloaded from the internet scaled down to act as a poster she had ripped off the wall.

I cut away a section of the poster so it looked ripped and also painted the rear so it was not an offensive paper white finish. I originally had the coat a almost black but felt it made the figure dull dull DULL!! so in the end went to the opposite end of the spectrum.

So what if she is not practical, she had better be a good shot instead. The figure was sent off to a mate for no better reason than just because, ended up arriving on his half birthday so perfect timing in the end. I still have a load of male Partisans to paint up so maybe these will get done in the next month? Maybe.

Bonus Round German's - It's Cold Outside

Another Painting Challenge so more Sniper Reminders. In this case twelve German's that were submitted for the Cold bonus round. I decided that I would only enter figures in the bonus rounds if I had something for it rather than get something in or divert from other goals. Last year I found I was painting a lot less of what I really aimed to paint and as such it kind of lost it's main drive.

Not really happy with the images, this was the third attempt, first buggering a memory card, second my camera and then the third with Cath's camera but the good idea of capturing the frost turned out to be a bad idea causing the camera to be fooled.

All twelve are Black Tree Miniatures and whilst I am a big fan of BTM I feel these are the worst sculptured of all the figures I have worked on from them. Not that they are bad but they are not good nor of the standard of other Black Tree sculpts especially the other WWII Germans and it's possibly why they have sat waiting a turn for many months.

Having said all that their is a few nice touches such as scarf's wrapped around faces and one figure has a bandage wrapped around his hand.

I used the snow effects I received from Cath for last Christmas and having more experience I think it came off better this time. The clumps of snow and the grass and tufts sticking through have the look of the thaw setting in.

Here we have me pouring on the Scenic Snowflakes from Deluxe Materials for £15.99 and you get a lot. It is best added post varnishing though.

It's essential to use a dust mask as the pack contains some REALLY fine powder which hangs around for quit some time. 

Present for a Mate Finally Finished

All the figures were actually painted during the Painting Challenge and even based, just the German base needed finishing as I did not have the stones to do it. It became THAT PROJECT, you know the one that sit's just off the desk out of site for months unloved , untouched and almost forgotten. Well I sent the kids on a mission and they did me proud.

These are 28mm Africa Korps by Black Tree Miniatures and my friend is a big fan of ASL played in the desert. I wanted to add something that was very much in keeping with ASL. He has quite a collection of my Sniper Reminders so I thought I would go deluxe (bigger base). The difficulty in digging foxholes had to be solved by building walls out of piles of stones or Sangar as they were called. In reality these are rather large to be correct but I do like the look of them.

These were also more often than not built to cover all directions but obviously not always. The stones start life grey in colour and I have just drybrushed them in the two yellows that I add to the brown of the base. I reason that the stones would not be the same colour as the ground but would have a fine coating of sand given the way the stuff got everywhere.

Good old PVA holds the whole lot together and as I drybrushed after the sticking no tell tail signs are left. You have to love PVA, far to good to give to the kids.

I still think the standing guy is too wooden, also if he fires that rifle from that stance I am thinking he will be lucky not to end up on his back. I think he is probably new to all this war thing as his stance is poor, his rifle is not tucked into the shoulder and worst of all is stupid enough to stand up making more of a target of himself.

All in all I am happy with it, hope he likes the finished article.

This one I am more pleased about and it's the look I had in mind from the start. The idea was infantry charging through a mixed defence of wire and mines and I bought the wire about two years ago but never got round to buying the figures until about nine months ago.

To get the correct effect I had to attack one of my mine counters from ASL and make a sign, this is perfect as it says Mine in German. Given that I have two sets of basic counters for ASL I think I could spare a counter for the cause. 

I really like the way I finally did the wire with the breaks for the troops to rush through, it's one of those were everything you thought of comes together perfectly.

I was at the local library when I saw pictures in a book of wire strung on poles, not curled but criss-crossed. This was a strange idea for me as I assumed all wire was curled. As the book was just images of the Desert War I could not resist using it.

So I will be giving my mate these later today when I see him. I should get a game in as well so hopefully he will be distracted enough for me to take the win.

Last Stand Final Bonus Round

I had great plans for the final bonus round but with the end of the challenge coinciding with my taking a new job (whilst still doing the old one) and being ill and my birthday and.... Well you get the picture.

So in the end I went totally the other way and have painted up just one figure, this being a rather special figure to me as I know the sculptor. None other than our own blogger Panzer Kaput and what a fine figure it is.

The figure was given away as a door prize at a Partizan a couple of years ago but at that time I had no use for it but I recognised a good looking figure. The figure is of a Kelham Hall Monk for the Very British Civil War but I later thought I could use it for a Createn Monk who joined in the fight against the invading German Paratroopers and I hope the helmet will pass as a Greek soldiers taken up by the Monk.

The robe is great and allowed a lot of playing with shading but he also has loads of kit to make him more interesting. I really like the mix of equipment as it really adds to the idea that he has just thrown himself into the action.

So in the end the figure went from Lead Pile Blues to inspired choice and changed my unhappiness of the final round to feeling really good about what I could submit.

Snipers of Stalingrad ASL Style

As you already know, I had some Snow Effects for Christmas and wanted to have another go with them and had promised a fellow ASL player a set of Stalingrad Deluxe Snipers, that was well over a year ago but I have finally started work on them and this is the result of the Russian.

This is not the base I showed the start of a few weeks ago, that is for the bonus round in the painting challenge. Timing has never been my strong suit so here you find me spending hours on just the one figure rather than getting the lead out but I don't mind at all as I have been having a blast and indeed I can feel my painting batteries recharging as I go.

The power lines and pole are all fully scratch built. The pole being two paintbrush handles with balsa added to one pole with brass pin heads pushed in. Fuse wire then makes up the cables painted Black Grey with bits showing through silver. The walls and pavement are Linka again with Model Display Product clay bricks added for the loose bricks, often broken into pieces to keep to scale with the undersized Linka.

To sink the base of the figure into something I made a door (see the door knob?) cutting out a section and then later covering with snow allowing it to escape easy detection. This was pinned to a stack of bricks and also gives the needed height. I used an old business card to add wallpaper and hide all the joins in the wall pieces.

I draped a loose power cable into the building to give the impression that a fair sized part of the roof and upper floors were missing to help explain the snow in the room. I like how the wall has come out looking really dirty without looking over worked, one of the few times I stepped away from a process without wishing I had done it sooner.

On standard Sniper Reminders, the figure is the main attraction but on these they tend to take second place to the scene you are trying to set. So far I have only done a total of four of these and right from the start I planned never to repeat a scene so these are certainly one off's. I may use the downed power line again but never in the same way. 

The window is from a pack provided by Warbases and is in fact two separate windows. One I have cut most of the window sections out and the other I have shaved the corner off one third of the second window and stuck in to give the imprecision of an open window that fits the frame. 

Again I have used snow effects to cover up joints and help set the scene, I really like the snow effects and will be getting a lot of use out of them when the Baker Company Kickstarter items start to arrive.

Hopefully the customer will like him and it will bring him luck when he play's, well unless I ever get to play opposite him LOL.

So all in all a very fun distraction that was more of a modelling exercise than paint up. I have another one for Stalingrad to do, this being the German and one in France in the Bocage both of which have the figures almost finished and I know what I plan to do for the bases so it's just putting them into reality.

28mm Sniper Reminders - The New Batch

It's been about a week since these were shown on Curt's blog so I guess it's safe to show them now  ;-) I have to admit that I am struggling with time to blog, paint and do the normal stuff. My working day has me in near constant contact with China, especially the morning when I am either on Skype or traditional phone trying to get information or more often items in my mitts. Right now it's crazy daft as The Chinese New Year looms (31st January) and that means no new shiny for six weeks so it's very hectic and lots of working late or more often very early starts (China is eight hours ahead) meaning I am busted for the evening. Worse still I have a trade show coming up in the UK where I am away for five nights then it's off to Frankfurt the following day for four days so I am guessing I won't be doing much painting, oh um.

But I have managed to turn out some figures at least. these are all Black Tree Miniatures unless I say otherwise. I have to admit to being very happy with the quality of their figures and the level of detail they add to their figures. I am planning on salting away money every month till they have another 50% discount and then I am going to order big as they so rarely disappoint on quality.

As you can see, you often get a lot of kit to paint, no basic sculpting job here. However they have a few niggles. With a lot of the figures you get a mixed selection so often it includes lying down figures and with the Russian's a mix of summer and winter uniforms. I don't know about the mixed uniform but I asked for no lying down in my last order and was rewarded with standing and kneeling only so it's quite possible you would get the same level of service with uniform. Certainly I would have no qualms ordering the army deal with a few requests in an attempt to get what I required.

These paint up reasonably fast and the paint flows well allowing the folds of the uniform to come to light. The guy on the right looks a right slow burner, the body language and expression on his face really make you think he is having real trouble reloading that rifle, maybe he was the one who had to pick up the rifle?

Again just lovely looking figures and plenty to get your teeth into. The range is reasonably large so you can get a lot of figures without worrying about too many repeats.

The stars on the caps are soft enough that you can ignore them, or simply file the detail off but here I painted it on. The figure on the left is my favourite of this batch and I am tempted to keep him. I am looking forward to seeing how the Baker Company early Russians size up in case I can mix some of the Blacktree into them if required.

The tufts are all the Tajima1 ones I blogged about around a week ago but I have mixed up the sizes and I am as happy with these as I was with the earlier ones I have used on the 6 and 15mm figures.

Here we have the one Artizan figure (I think) on the left and I have had a go with the Scenic Snow by Deluxe Materials that I blogged about just after Christmas. I am planning on doing the Winter War miniatures with a similar amount of snow on the base as these as it looks more interesting than full snow and looks better for it as well I think.

Just the one on the right has winter clothes with the other having to mate do with a fur hat, at least he has better kit than the poor Germans.

The last three are all in snow smocks and so I added more snow effects to their bases but I don't think it carries as well. I enjoyed doing various white tones to the smocks and in real life you can see the different shades that bit better.

The true winter figures were actually Sniper sets and not in the normal mix and I have painted some of these with the brown sniper outfit in the past so they work both ways anyway.

Base Work

Well in the middle of the painting challenge and suddenly slowed right down as I build a rather large base for a sniper reminder. This one will be set in Stalingrad and it has me testing a few ideas as well as expanding a few methods I learnt about a year ago.

Using my old favourite Linka I am building pavements and walls. In the foreground is the floorboards, at this point just a sheet of balsa.

The window was originally a Warbases full window but I like to smash them up a bit as you can see. These are surprisingly strong but reward the effort with realistic damage when attacked with scalpel and pliers.

I also added some of the Model Display Products (MDP) bricks to the base, though I was to add more at stage two. The bricks are oversized when used with Linka but most of them were reduced in size before being added.

The balsa in place to check the fitting. You can see from the cut out where the figure will be seated, saves cutting him off the base.

Something that really made me happy was that I was able to use the vice my Dad had made in this project. Sometimes I really miss him such as these as I never got to show him that I have become something of a model maker like he used to be and so little pleasures like this have to be taken when possible.

Basic painting job and some more landscaping to follow, and hopefully before the weekend some more figures entered into the Challenge.