These Foundry Pirates were painted by Shaun Watson who is a full-time figure painter.
Take a look at his website, and at some of the great miniatures in the galleries. A special mention must go out to the wonderful regiment of Persian troops... Stunning.
Editorial
Welcome to the first issue of Wargames Painting and Modelling and thank you for taking a look at our new magazine.
Although I may not have been painting miniatures as long as some people I have spent a good few years with a brush in my hands. Throughout this time I have been continually developing my skills and learning from other painters.
I am constantly impressed by many of the top painters and modellers in our community, not just for the stunning and inspirational work they produce but also because of their constant willingness to share their techniques and skills, taking the time to answer
questions about their models and provide insights about how they work. Wargames Painting and Modelling has been created with this ethos. We want to provide articles that are informative and inspirational with results that are hopefully achievable.
This doesn’t mean we are not going to cover the advanced techniques that are really only used on display models and army centre pieces, far from it. It’s just we want people to be able to take the information provided here and apply it to painting up their own armies and warbands. This magazine is about painting models for wargames not competitions…
I’d love to hear any feedback you have about the magazine please do get in touch by emailing me or visit the W:P&M blog and leave us a comment or two.
May your brushes always be pointy, Dave
Contents
African Shanty Towns - Page 6
Unarmoured Samurai - Page 24
Paint Recognition Guide - Page 4
SS Camouflage - Page 15
French Foreign Legion - Page 30
Tom Weiss on Flesh - Page 35
Pirate Galleries -
Pages 2, 14, 22, 23, 29
All content is © Wargames Painting and Modelling and its contributors. Strictly no reproduction without prior written consent. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the individual authors concerned.
Contact
If you have any comments or feedback, or you would like to contribute an article or two to the magazine then send an email to:
[email protected]
Although many people probably already know enough about the paints we talk about in the articles of this magazine, there is of course the chance that some people might not have heard of a specific brand. These two pages will detail the paint ranges used in the articles for each issue.
Hopefully they will prove useful to some of you? My thanks go out to Steve Flashman for his help in writing these short descriptions. If you have any feedback about how useful these pages are, please get in touch…
Plaka, supplied in 500ml jars, is a water based, casein product most closely resembling children’s poster paints, yet its dense fine pigments, opaque covering quality and flat eggshell finish make it ideal for painting miniatures and groundwork. Plaka can be intermixed with other brands, thinners and matting agents.
Although the current range of only 40 shades means that colours often have to be mixed to suit, advantages include Plaka’s comparitive value for money, its totally non-toxic properties and its ease of use.
A word of caution: although Plaka Black is justly famous as the flattest, blackest Black in existence ever (!), avoid the metallic and flouroescent colours which use a different carrier and are less suitable for miniatures.
What ever did we all do before the launch of the Vallejo paints range? Vallejo Model Colour is a classic acrylic, water soluble paint, providing a colour fast, satin finish when dry. Although harder on brushes due to Vallejos acrylic carrier fluid, the range’s advantages are its ready availability and
vast colour choice. There are over 200
dif-ferent paints in the range.
Disadvantages are that Vallejos eye-drop-per bottles are prone to blocking and they must be vigorously shaken before each painting session as the carrier fluid has a tendancy to seperate from the pig-ment. However, Vallejo’s plus points far outweigh these minor quibbles, and the paint’s ongoing popularity with some of the hobby’s finest brushmen is testament to its quality.
The newest paint range to hit the streets, released by Privateer Press, is still in its fledgling stage but so far things look bright. The P3 formula paints have excellent coverage over darker colours and dry with a satin finish. The basic range is limited with only 36 colours but additions are already planned for the range. The paints take water extremely well and often can be thinned down considerably without too much loss of opacity.
Very quickly the P3 paints have become some of the main colours I use, with a great selection of browns and drabs for WWII as well as a fantastic red that is not too bright but still vibrant.
Chances are almost everyone reading this has at some point used Citadel paints. In its fourth ‘edition’ now, the citadel paint range still continues to divide painters’ opinions. Probably the easiest paint to get hold of, they are more expensive per millilitre than most other manufacturers. Citadel paint dries relatively quickly with a satin finish. You can be relatively sure that the colour you see in the pot is the colour you will see when the paint dries.
The Citadel range does include a good selection of inks as well as what is in my opinion some of the best metallic colours out there.
Not just a paint range but an entire painting style, each foundry colour is split into three shades providing you with a basecoat and two highlights for each colour. The range is huge with 65 colours totalling 195 different shades. The foundry paints dry with a satin sheen and their coverage ranges from great to very bad. The consistency of the paint also varies across the range.
The foundry range of colours is great for beginners who want a simple way of highlighting and shading their miniatures, but also provide a huge number of colours for the more advanced painter to experiment with.
When I first saw pictures of Rodger’s scenery I was totally blown away
by the feel and atmosphere he had managed to build into his work.
Looking over the images took me straight back to the days when I lived
in South Africa and the smoke would come rolling over the savana at
dusk as the smell of cooking fires filled the air... I was delighted when
Rodger agreed to expand his original articles for WPM. - Dave
Having spent a fair bit of time in Africa and having been involved in a superb AK47 campaign back here in blighty I decided to take the plunge and expand into yet another period: 15mm Modern Africa.
With Peter Pig’s range of figures and many raids on toy shops and second hand shops for the vechicles I soon had enough troops to get stuck in. However, I was not totally happy with the AK47 rules. Although excellent in their own right, they did not give me some of the
detail I wanted. So I
wrote (well, nicked from various places and threw in some original ideas) my own set for the lads at the club.
These rules do not use terrain templates, so I could really do what I wanted terrain
wise. A trip to Kenya gave me huge amounts of visual reference and most of the buildings in this article are inspired by buildings and shanty in and around Nanyuki, Timau, Karen and Nairobi. I got the original idea of how to build the Shantytowns from the “Wargames Africa” Yahoo Group. The method is simple, if a little time consuming, but great fun.
Bases
The first thing I did was create the bases to build the scenery on. I used chamfered 3mm thick MDF for my bases. The size of each base really depends on how flexible you want the scenery to be and what size buildings you want to build. The bases I cut out ranged from 2x6ins to 9x9ins with many sizes in between.
Before building the shanties I textured and painted them. First, I spray painted them with a rough spray paint, the type that has a textured finish much like Games Workshop’s (GW’s) Roughcoat, this gives the base dirt texture. Then to add colour to the bases I use spray paints
(great for getting things done super quick). I spray a coat of Humbrol Dark Earth and finish it off with a dusting of Humbrol Desert Yellow.
Construction
Now onto building the shanties and buildings themselves… To get a good idea of what I wanted to build I started by sketching the perimeter of the
buildings directly onto the bases. To get that real claustrophobic African township feel I made sure that if a base had multiple shacks on it they were pressed up close together or had rat runs and alleyways between them. If you want a ‘road’ wide enough to carry a base (I build in 15mm so my bases for Modern Africa are 30mm x 30mm) then stick a road in, however it does break up that ‘sea’ of rusted, corrugated iron.
Once I had the building areas drawn in I got some cocktail sticks and a power drill with a bit that matches the width of the stick (although a bit that is a touch smaller is better for a tighter fit). I marked out all the corners of the buildings and if there was a long wall I marked a centre point along it. I then drilled through the base at each mark,
ready for the cocktail sticks.
I cut the sharp points off the cocktail sticks and then cut the sticks to length (based on the scale of models you are using: I was building my scenery for a 15mm game). An important aspect to remember is that most of the buildings will have a slope on the roof for rain runoff, so I made sure one side was lower that the other. To give you an idea of the how to size up the shanties I built mine so that a 15mm figure on a 3mm deep base standing off the building base would have to bend his head to enter a shanty hut. Once I had all the right lengths (remembering roof lines should vary quite a bit even between buildings that lie alongside each other) I glued the cocktail sticks onto the base of the buildings.
Next was the fun part, actually building the shanties. I started off by filling in the walls with “walling material”. What you use for this is up to you but I used anything that came to hand; bits of cereal boxes, card, off-cuts of plastic,
embossed sheeting, plastic box steel sheet and corrugated plasticard in a number of widths (that can be bought from most good model shops).
Whilst I was building up the walls I also made sure to add doors and windows. When making the doors I used a variety of different effects from having a real door in it, a cloth drape or leaving it open. The windows I either left blank or filled them with a fine wire mesh (the stuff you can easily get from hardware stores that is used for patching holes in cars). I glued everything with UHU and thick superglue.
For the roofs I used corrugated
plasticard. A handy trick here (as well as when you are building the walls) is to cut up the corrugated plastic into sheets to a size that mirrors what you can get them in the real world so that when you lay down the roofs you get a much better feel for the shanty look. To start the roofing off I cut a thin piece of card to size for each building roof and glue it down.
Then I layered the corrugated plasticard sheets on so that if it rained the
corrugation would help with the rain run-off. It’s a bugger to cut corrugated iron sheets in real life so just jam them in and don’t trim them down to fit
neatly. Remember that you are building something that would have been jerry built in the first place and then patched up time and again; so feel free to stick bits on at odd angles as well.
Details
The final step before painting the
buildings was to add all the little details.
I added oil drums, old sofas, the odd mattress, car seats and the odd tyre. Peter Pig sell a mattress, piano and chest of draws set in one of their accessory ranges which work very well for this sort of detailing. For the car seats and tyres I took apart cheap toy cars from my local toyshop and for things like sofas that were hard to find as models I sculpted them with Miliput. You could do electric wires; I’ve seen real shanties where power lines are botched onto overhead cables and run into the huts… yikes!
huge. If you wanted to you could do ‘shops’ with simple counters and make fruit and other wares from Greenstuff or Miliput. You can incorporate burnt out cars, rubbish tips or whatever you fancy. Remember the eye will be entertained by the mixture of structure and chaos. The detail can be sparse as long as it sits well and is logical.
A Lick of Paint
Now comes the painting, the step that really breathes life into the model. I used a black undercoat on all the
buildings using Games Workshop spray paint. If it gets on the bases you have already painted, don’t worry.
After the undercoat I started with the roofs for which I chose two different methods. For that pristine newly laid down iron look I used GW’s Space Wolf
Grey. Then I selectively sprayed over that with Plasti-kote Primer Super 1147 Red Oxide Primer, which works well for rust. The other method I used was to forget the pristine look and just go straight for rust and spray the roofs with the Red Oxide.
Moving onto corrugated iron and other sheet metal on the walls I painted on Vallejo Red Leather or Derivan Light Chestnut for the rusted look and where I wanted a newer look to the iron I use GW’s Space Wolves paint.
To represent parts of the walls that had been painted or were made of materials other than metal I used bright colours that you might imagine seeing on African buildings. I used Vallejo Sky Blue, Blue Green, Pale Green and Pastel Blue. Basically anything that is bright.
After laying down all the base colours I then washed everything with varying consistencies of Windsor and Newton Peat Brown Ink. After the ink had been allowed to dry I worked back into all the colours with layers of drybrushing in progressively lighter shades. The corrugated roofs benefited from dry
brushing in lighter shades as well but try and look at some real rusty corrugated iron in Africa: it is VERY orange.
A good way to spice up what would otherwise be a boring wall you can paint patterns (a simple internet search
will turn up a few ideas). I also glued to the walls a few advertising images reduced in size and then distressed with a quick drybrush. The thing here is to just have fun.
If at any time the models started to look too clean I had at them again with use thinned down Peat Brown ink to knock the colours back down.
After I was happy with the buildings I set about finishing the bases. I used a variation of Foundry and Coat D’Arms
colours. My preferred colours were Foundry’s Rawhide A & B highlighting with Coat D’Arms Bone or Pale Sand. The last step to really bring the whole model together and give it that dusty, lived-in feel I dusted the entire model with Humbrol Desert Yellow spray paint. When I say dusting I really do mean a light coat. Using an airbrush makes this part easier but I don’t have one but with a bit of practise you can get some very good results just using the aerosol spray.
Below: rural housing on the outskirts of Lonely Park, a township just outside Mafikeng in South
Above: The high street of Ottoshoop, a three building frontier town 15 minutes outside Mafikeng. Examples of modern African buildings and architecture.
All photos from the editor’s personal albums.
Pirates
painted bySteve Dean
Visit Steve’s website to see hundreds of figures in his galleries...
The German army in World War II has always attracted a large amount
of attention from modellers and painters. What is it that makes painting and modelling the German forces so popular? Compared to the
relatively boring drab olives and greens of the allied forces, the German uniforms and vehicles, with their huge variety of camouflage patterns, are just more interesting to look at and paint.
Unlike the Heer and Luftwaffe forces it was the Waffen SS that made use of a large variety of different camouflage
patterns. A late war force of SS infantry can often be painted in 5 or 6 different styles of
camouflage as the soldiers used whatever they could get their hands on and
even resorted to making their own garments in the field.
A well painted unit of SS troops
decked out in swathes of camouflaged fabric will always look very
impressive on the wargames table but how exactly are these complicated patterns
transferred onto a 28mm model? Over the next couple of issues I will take you through the techniques I have
been using to paint up SS troops. Using these colour schemes I have been
able to produce large numbers of models for my own games as
well as for my customers. To start with I have covered the 1944 SS-Erbsenmuster “pea-dot” camouflage and next issue I’ll cover the more classic Oak-Leaf pattern.
By Carl Robson
Astute readers may well have already picked up on the fact that the model pictured on this page is in fact an Artizan Designs
Fallschirmjager and that the jump smock was never produced in the pea-dot camouflage as it has been painted.
I painted a small SS Fallschirmjager unit for a very late war ‘what if?” scenario involving such nefarious plots as might have been lifted for the pages of ‘The Eagle has Landed’… Carl Robson is the very talented painter
behind Raven Painting. I urge you to take a look at his website (click on the ban-ner).
Carl has painted some of the finest 15mm AB Napoleonics I think I have ever
3.
2.
1.
1. The model is undercoated black and
then painted with Games Workshop’s Scorched Brown. Then all parts of the figure that are going to be peadot are painted with Foundry Peaty Brown 61A.
2. Foundry Peaty Brown 61B is then
used to highlight both the trousers and the smock.
3. Foundry Peaty Brown 61C is then
used to highlight just the smock. This ensures that the two items of clothing will have slightly different appearances representing the variations of different manufacturers throughout the war.
6.
5.
4.
4. Black patches are painted onto
the smock and trousers and Games Workshop Tanned Flesh patches are painted onto the trousers.
5. Games Workshop Dwarf Flesh is
used to paint patches on the smock and highlight the Tanned Flesh patches on the trousers.
6. Foundry Forrest Green 26A patches
9.
8.
7.
7. Foundry Bright Green 25B patches
were painted onto the smock and was used to highlight the Forrest Green patches on the trousers.
8. Foundry Quagmire 63A is used to
highlight all the black patches on the smock and trousers.
9. Vallejo Salmon Rose is used to
highlight the Dwarf/Tanned flesh patches on the smock.
12.
11.
10.
10. Foundry Bright Green 25B and
Games Workshop Bleached Bone are mixed 50/50 and then painted in a
series of dots across the smock. Making sure not to paint any dots on any green patches.
11. Olive green dots are then painted
over the trousers avoiding the green patches.
12. Black dots are painted across both
the smock and trousers, avoiding the black patches.
13.
14.
13. Vallejo Salmon Rose dots have
been painted across the smock avoiding the similarly coloured patches.
14. Games Workshop Dwarf Flesh dots
are painted onto the trousers avoiding the similarly coloured patches.
All the photographs of SS camouflaged items in this article were supplied by Militaria.net and used with their permission.
Over the next two pages are Pirates painted by the legendary Kevin Dallimore. Pictures A & D are models taken from Front Rank ranges and simply painted to look like pirates.
There is a huge number of figures out there just begging to be turned into cutthroat swashbucklers...
Pictures B & C are Wargames Foundry miniatures from their Cutthroats & Ne’er-Do-Wells range.
A.
C.
When Mike Lewis at Black Hat Miniatures
asked me if I had time to paint a few of his new Samurai models ready for the Salute wargames show I jumped at the chance. The first step was to find out a bit about the clothing these samurai models were wearing. After a bit of digging I uncovered enough information to get the paints out and start working. These un-armoured samurai are wearing clothing typical of the Edo period. Over their kimono they are wearing a
kamishimo which comprises of two parts, the hakama and the kataginu.
The hakama covered the lower body and looked like a wide pleated skirt. There were two types of hakama, one divided like a pair of trousers and one undivided although from outside appearances they were identical. The kataginu was a sleeveless jacket with exaggerated shoulders. The hakama and kataginu that made up the kamishimo were almost always made of the same material. The Edo period was extremely status conscious and no where was this more evident than amongst the Samurai and more often than not the kamishimo was a direct representation of the status of its wearer.
I decided to keep the colour schemes simple for these figures. I chose relatively plain colours and avoided outlandish and bright colours and patterns as these were often seen as a show of immodesty or conceit.
I built up the colours on these figures with successive layers of very thinned paint, not actual blending as such. The bonus of working with thinned paints like this is that the transparency of the paint increases as it is watered down. So when you paint a layer on more than likely you will still see the colour underneath.
The trick to build up a stronger colour is to paint the same colour again but leaving a sliver of the first layer showing through. This will have the effect of feathering your colours and helping smooth the transition from colour to colour.
Although feathering the highlights like this can be time consuming it does have a great finish. If you are looking to speed up the painting process (because you have more than 6 figures to paint) you could just paint the layers one at a time without using very watered down paints. When placed on a gaming table en mass they will look just as good.
By Dave Robotham
If you are particularly taken with the bamboo art featured on theses pages then visit Michael Kopald‘s
5.
4.
3.
1.
A.
2.
B.
C.
1.
2.
3.
To paint this beige kamishimo I used the following colours:
1. Foundry Drab 12A 2. Foundry Drab 12B 3. P3 Menoth White Base
4. Mixed 50/50 with P3 Menoth
White Highlight
5. P3 Menoth White Highlight
To paint this model’s hair I used the Foundry Granite 31 trio of paints. Shades A, B and then C.
I chose a rich blue for this model’s kimono to contrast with the rather drab kamishimo.
1. I started with P3 Exile Blue
2. The first highlight was a mix of P3
Exile Blue and P3 Cygnar Blue Base
3. The final highlight was P3 Cygnar
5.
4.
3.
1.
2.
5.
4.
3.
1.
2.
Keeping with the idea that this Samurai wasn’t particularly wealthy I thought a plain brown kimono would compliment the grey kamishimo.
1. P3 Battlefield Brown
2. Mixed 50/50 P3 Bootstrap Leather 3. P3 Bootstrap Leather
4. Mixed 50/50 with P3 Gun Corps Brown 5. P3 Gun Corps Brown
This kamishimo was painted using just three colours. The Foundry Granite 31 trio.
1. Foundry Granite 31A
2. Mixed 50/50 with Foundry Granite 31B 3. Foundry Granite 31B
4. Mixed 50/50 with Foundry Granite 31C 5. Foundry Granite 31B
The leaf scatter on the bases was bought from
Antenociti’s Workshop.
The obi (blelt) was painted using the same colours as the kamishimo on the previous page. His hair was painted using the Foundry Arctic Grey 33 trio.
The saya (scabbard) was painted black and highlighted with P3 Exile Blue
5.
4.
3.
1.
2.
3.
1.
2.
5.
4.
3.
1.
2.
The skin for all the Samurai models was painted with the same colours:
1. Foundry Dusky Flesh 6B 2. Foundry Chestnut 53B 3. Foundry Chestnut 53C
4. Mixed 50/50 with Foundry Flesh 5C 5. Foundry Flesh 5C
The deep blue kamishimo started with a basecoat of black. I started by adding small amounts of P3 Exile Blue. I eventually
worked up to a pure highlight of just P3 Exile Blue. I made sure to keep the final pure blue highlight to just the creases, pleats and edges of the clothes.
The red kimono was painted with the following colours:
1. P3 Sanguine Base 2. P3 Sanguine Highlight 3. P3 Khador Red Base
The shaft of the Naginata (the pointy stick in the picture above) was painted using the Foundry Spearshaft 13 trio. These three shades are great for (as their name suggests) woodwork. You can vary the finish of the
woodwork by adding a final lighter highlight by mixing an ivory colour into Spearshaft 13C. Or you can make the finish darker by starting with a darker brown than Spearshaft 13A. Simply paint the layers onto the shaft in small stripes running down the pole. When you add the next highlight try to keep within the previous colour to help build up the effect of wood grain, although its not a problem if you can’t follow the previous layer line for line.
A more random look is often as good. The silver metalwork was painted with black and white. A mid grey was mixed up and then highlighted by adding
white until I was using pure white. The watered down black was used to shade the areas I wanted darker.
The gold metalwork was painted with a basecoat of Games Workshop Snakebite Leather. White was added in increasing amounts for the highlights until a final highlight of pure white was added.
This is very simplified Non Metalic Metal method, but it works well enough on this single figure.
hopefully next issue I will have time to explain how I painted
A.
C.
B.
D.
A. This Wargames Foundry figure waspainted by Craig Mitchell who goes by the online name of peachey_carnehan. He can be found selling the odd figure on eBay under that name.
B. This Musketeer Miniatures Pirate was
painted by John Mooney. Napoleonics are normally John’s vice but this unique pirate from MM was painted in practice for an up coming painting competition
C. Another rendition of MM’s new pirate figure, this time painted by “Dwarfman”. Take a look at the galleries on his website...
D. Blackbeard was painted by Robert Cater. The model is availble from
Freebooter Miniatures and although it is quite cartoony is still a great sculpt.
These models from Artizan designs have been painted to be used in the deserts of North Africa during World War Two.
Over the next few pages I have separated out and listed all the colours that
were used to paint this platoon of elite legionaires.
The entire platoon was painted by building up layers of colour without blending or using inks. Highlights were built up with successive layers of colour ranging from three to five layers of paint depending on the depth of colour that was required.
In some of the close up pictures you can see quite distinctly the different layers of paint. While this close, the painting looks quite rough and not very subtle, but get these figures onto the table and they look fantastic…
Holding the line at the Battle of Bir Hakeim as the rest of the allied army retreats to El Alamein and is able to re-organise…
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
The Uniforms
These very sand coloured unifroms were built up from a suprisingly dark basecoat. You do not have to use all five colours if you wanted to speed up the painting. You could just use colours 3-5, but you would end up with a much lighter finish.
The bonus of such dark shading is that the details of uniform will be much better defined and more visible. Obviously not everyone likes this highly stylized painting effect so if it’s not your cup of tea start with a lighter base colour.
To the right you can see a close up of the trousers, the layers of paint are clearly visible this close...
1. I started with Foundry Drab 12A 2. For the first highlight I used Foundry Drab 12B
3. Next up was Foundry Raw Linen 30B
4. The fourth colour to be applied was Foundry Raw Linen 30C
5. A final light highlight of Foundry Boneyard C
The Shorts
The Webbing
1. Foundry Conker Brown 54A 2. Foundry Buff Leather 7A 3. Foundry Bone Yard 9A 4. Foundry Bone Yard 9B 1. Games Workshop Scorched Brown 2. Games Workshop Bestial Brown 3. Games Workshop Snakebite LeatherWeaponry
Dark Gunmetal and
Black Leather Wood
Light Gunmetal 1. Black 2. Foundry Charcoal Black 34B 3. Foundry Charcoal Black 34C 1. Foundry Spearshaft 13A 2. Foundry Spearshaft 13B 3. Foundry Spearshaft 13C 1. Foundry Charcoal Black 34C 2. Foundry Arctic Grey 33A 3. Foundry Arctic Grey 33B
Skarves and Kepis
1.
2.
3.
Officers’ Jackets
1.
2.
3.
4.
Basing
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
1. Watered down Games Workshop Graveyard Earth
2. Drubrush Foundry Dusky Flesh 6C 3. DryBrush Foundry Canvas 8A
4. Drybrush Foundry Base Sand 10A
5. A final light Drybrush of Foundry Bone Yard 9C. This layer is done after glueing down the static grass.
1. P3 Battlefield Brown 2. P3 Gun Corps Brown
3. Mixed 50/50 with Foundry Drab 12C 4. Foundry Drab 12C
The White was painted in three simple layers:
1. Foundry Arctic Grey 33A 2. Foundry Arctic Grey 33B 3. White
1.
5.
4.
3.
2.
I start with a basecoat of Plaka Red Brown. The eyes are painted
before this first layer.
For the first highlight I use a mix of Games Workshop Dwarf Flesh & Vallejo Dark
Flesh plus a little bit Plaka Redbrown
For the next highlight I use Vallejo Flat Flesh
plus a touch of Games Workshop Dwarf Flesh I then add white to the previous mix for this final highlights.
Foundry Terracotta is a good colour for the lips or any deep red/brown colour will do.