Mid-Summer Madness – Session 5

Today’s session saw the completion of all of the base coats. Tomorrow will focus on highlights and last details.

The first hour was spent painting all of the wood and leather bits. Spear shafts and the banner pole were painted with Vallejo Flat Brown and all of the leather was painted with a mixture of Reaper Leather Brown and Vallejo Flat Brown. I think the Reaper Leather Brown is too light, too much of a “buff” color, for equipment that has seen some use. The fix for this is to add some darker brown to the paint or to apply a strong brown wash afterward.

The second hour was used to paint the purplish “bruised” skin tone I have chosen for my dark elves. I start with painting all of the flesh Reaper Runic Purple, which serves as my shadow color. And then I build up the skin tone over several layers adding more and more of WarColours Flesh 4 and WarColours Flesh 2. WarColurs Flesh 4 is a very pink or red flesh tone and Flesh 2 is a slightly yellow tinited off white flesh tone.

And finally, the last half hour was spent painting the brass “apples” of counter weights on the spears, the trumpet and some of the edging on the officer’s uniform. And the officer’s cloak was painted Vallejo Grey Green and Vallejo Medium Sea Grey.

I might have been able to spend more time painting today, but TCM ran a lot of Robert Mitchum movies today and I just had to watch one of them and ended up watching two. Though they didn’t show it today, my most favorite Robert Mitchum films are “River of No Return” and “Macao” – but nearly all of his movies are on my favorite list.

So today was another 2.5 hour day for hobby time bringing the total time spent on the project to 17.5 hours.