Relaxing Saturday!

France 4 - Argentina 3....What a game!

Anyway, that's what I was watching while doing some relaxing painting. But, I was equally excited about the new set of Posca Ultra-Fine Paint Pens I recieved this afternoon...

Quite a nice set of colours (including some metalics), though at £28 it should be. My only complaint - and I didn't notice this until they arrived - is that there isn't a nice brown. This is a pity as a chestnut or mud brown would have been really useful for the figure I'm working on...

The pens will be great for outlining and drawing in small detail on my figures. I seem to find it easier to draw on straight lines and dots with a pen rather than a brush.

My figure is one of the set of D&D adventurers that I making for my role playing group. It's a druid of Native American or Inuit influence and stylistically is - again - modelled on those on the Wooden Warriors blog.

It's a bit of a departure and a little more detailed than my usual peg figures. The player I am making this figure for wanted me to highlight that the character was wearing furs, so that was a something a bit different...

Well, it not perhaps the most convincing fur, but overall I was faily please with how the figure turned out. The big question now is, will the Posca details stand up to glossing?  Yeah, I know I have already done a test, but as this is a actual live model you do tend to worry!

We shall see.

Anyway, the other small job I got done today - between cheering on France - was making the wheels for my little peg racers...

Thursday Update - D&D and Racers.

The soldiers are on the back burner at the moment while I fiddle about with a few practise models. I'm still learning about the best techniques for painting on wood and stylising the designs. So, I'm not giving these little diversions their own specific post, just these updates...

D&D Adventurers
These are a fun little side-line, they are for my D&D group. Just a little something so that we can visualise our characters a little better. The figures are a barbarian warrior (me), a druid and a fireball throwing wizard!

With these I tried out 'Green Stuff' putty for the first time (instead of my usual Milliput). It's a little easier to mould than Milliput - which is a little softer until it starts hardening - and easier to mix in the right proportion (like Lilliput, it's a two-part putty)...

Unlike my other peg figures I added a few more accessories and created some items using the Green Stuff. It seemed appropriate to customise the figures to look more like the player's characters.

I'm sticking to grey primer - rather than white - though there isn't really any great advantage as far as I can tell. I just prefer it - though it is a little easier to photograph.

The next stage will be for me to sketch in the clothing and features ready for painting.

Peg Racers
The other little job I'm tinkering with is my little set of 1930's style toy racing cars. Just a bit of fun, but also a useful learning experience. I'm interested to see what I can make from wood.

I'm keeping the construction and painting very simple.

Well, that's it for now - I'm sorting out my backlog of soldiers to see what I should finish off first. All this practise if building up my confidence.

Production Post - Paint Pens

I didn't know there was such a thing as 'paint pens', but there is!

Why this is of relevance to me and my figure painting is that you may remember the problems I had when I tried out 'permanent markers' for drawing on fine detail. The issue seemed to be the type of varnish I prefer to use for glossing my soldiers, it's an aerosol spray which I believe contains a propellant which contains some form of spirit...The result was that my pen ink lines bled! :(

The result of using 'permanent' ink pens in combination
with my usual spray on gloss lacquer.

Anyway, I happened to be talking to a fellow 'creative' (who also paints on wood) and she used a brand of pen called Posca and suggested that I give them a try. I was skeptical, but painting on fine lines on my peg figures by brush is such a pain - especially as I'm getting older and my line painting is getting wobbly - that I thought it was worth a punt.

The slight downside is that the Posca pens are a wee bit expensive (£2.99 a pop) but in for a penny in for a pound, so I painted up a test piece of wood...

I managed to afford two 'extra-fine' nibbed pens (a black and a white) and a 'fine' white as well. White is quite important for contrast outlining on dark colours, but pens are also great for doing dots!

For a test, I just scribbled some lines and squiggles (and dots) on the board...

And now the tense bit...The varnishing.

I should explain, I do like using aerosol lacquer as it give a nice smooth thin and even coat. However, there is a downside - apart from this pen problem - and that is spraying is a little wasteful as about half your spray doesn't hit your model and ends up in the back of your spray booth.

There is a forthcoming test using some brush on varnish, but liquid varnish has it's own drawbacks. We shall see.

But, in the meantime, my spray test had me holding my breath as I sprayed...

No bleed! Very good news.

Were I picky (and I am) I would say that the lines aren't quite as opaque as using normal acrylic paint with a brush - the black looks a little faded - but this is a minor point compared to the convenience of drawing lines with a pen.

Now, I think I should try out a these pens on a live project and I think I have the ideal model for trying them out on!

Peg Saxon (or D&D) Warrior

Managed to knock one off my cue of unfinished models this morning! This is the prototype peg model I did to explore how I would go about creating fantasy D&D figures.

However, I am more of a fan of Tolkien's vision of a fantasy world than I am of the normal Heroic Sword & Sorcery ideal. I like Tolkien's (and Jackson's interpretation in his movies) use of Anglo-Saxon mythology and social history rather than a completely fanciful 'look'. Giving a fantasy world the semblance of some real historical background - to my mind - makes that world more believable.

Anyway, so my little D&D warrior turned out very Saxon looking...Though it is very stylistic...

Aside from the Saxon influence for the clothing and equipment I took a lot of my design cues from Graymouser65 over at the Wooden Warriors blog. Indeed, this is where I got the idea to try out a fantasy peg figure in the first place.

As mentioned in my previous post, I will be following this idea up with a small series of figures representing my D&D group.

A Slow Weekend

Not much to report this weekend, between the World Cup, shopping and dog sitting I've been otherwise occupied. I still managed to get my next peg figure project underway, though.

I've just started playing Dungeons & Dragons and although I've only a couple of games under my belt I have been bitten and thought it would be great to do a set of peg figures representing our little group of adventures. Here's the start of the first three (of five)...

These will end up being a Barbarian (me), a Druid and a Wizard. I've perhaps gone to town on my barbarian's headgear, but I was so pleased to have dispatched a lion in our last session that I thought I would award myself this trophy headdress!

Aside from this new set of figures I only managed to get some of my peg racing cars primed...

So, not a very productive weekend, but I hope to get a bit more knocked out next week. (Part of the problem being that I have a small, but growing, cue of projects all needing finishing off!)