WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD!

Continuing the Star Wars theme from my previous post, here's the latest figure fresh off the painting desk; Star Wars: Legion - Darth Vader.

I'd put off painting him for such a long time, pushing him to the back of the queue in favour of other Star Wars: Legion figures. It's probably the thought of painting all that black. There's actually a lot of sculpted detail on the figure and I worried about it being lost with everything turning out a bit on the dark side. (See what I did there! 😉). 

The helmet was the first area to receive attention as I figured if I could get that to look right, everything else would flow from there. It took me a while to get a satisfactory result as to begin with I wasn't bold enough with my highlights. Possibly I could have gone even further with the highlights to give a really shiny effect, but decided to stop when I was happy with it and not push my luck too far. By this stage I was feeling a lot more confident about painting the rest of the figure.

For the cloak and clothing I started with varying shades of blue-grey and toned them down with successive black washes to add depth. This was followed by dry-brushing successively lighter layers of blue-grey to gradually bring out the highlights. This worked well as there is a lot of texture on the figure and the cloak has plenty of folds.

Before I started painting, I already had a good idea how I wanted the lightsaber to look and knew that using a single solid colour just wouldn't give the right effect. It needed to have that red aura, but with a white-hot center. I'd already experimented with painting a paler inner stripe along the length of the lightsaber on the Luke Skywalker figure, but I felt I could have been a bit braver with the contrast and wanted to try this on Vader's lightsaber. This was achieved by painting the lightsaber in an appropriate red base-coat, then adding a thin pink line along the length and then a thinner, almost white line on top. I used several very thin layers to build up the effect so the lines didn't appear too 'hard'. Second time around I was a lot happier with the final result. 

I did have to think carefully about the placement of the white stripe on the lightsaber as the effect only works best when viewed from certain angles. An obvious choice was along the top of the lightsaber when viewed from above as this is how the figure is most likely to be viewed on the tabletop. (See the picture below). I also painted stripes along each side of the lightsaber so these are visible when the figure is viewed from the left or the right. The second and third pictures above show this. I took them from angles that show off the effect to best advantage but on the tabletop, depending on the viewing angle,  you won't always see this. This is a compromise but I decided it still looks better than leaving the sides of the lightsaber plain red. I think the effect works best from angles where the reflected glow on the clothing is visible. 

Painting that red reflection did give me a headache as apart from a fairly cautious attempt on the Luke Skywalker figure, I have not tried painting Object Source Lighting (OSL) effects before. I was already really happy with how the figure had turned out and was worried that I'd mess up the OSL and spoil all my hard work. As it turned out, I achieved the effect I was looking for and do feel a lot more confident about trying more OSL effects in the future. It's always nice to learn a new technique. 

Painting this figure is something of a milestone as he is the last of the miniatures to be completed from my Star Wars: Legion core set. Looking back at the blog, I posted the first group of completed figures from the set about two-and-a-half years ago. Scarier still, it's been nearly four years since I first bought the set. Ah well, as I said in the very first post on this blog; "To begin is good. To continue is better. To finish is best".

May the force be with you!

Farmboy Hero

I fell off my hobbyhorse rather badly toward the back end of last year (long story not worth repeating here) and it has taken me far longer than I anticipated to get back in the saddle - at least as far as painting is concerned. That's not to say the past months have been a complete hobby desert. On-line games via Skype resumed in the New Year and Ian and I have just wrapped up a cracking series of Star Trek games using Fistful of Lead Galactic Heroes. Maybe one day I'll recreate some of those games and post on the blog. 

Anyway, to get back to the painting, here's the first fruit of my labours this year; Star Wars: Legion - Luke Skywalker. 

I like this figure a lot. The sculptor did a great job of capturing the look of the young Skywalker as he appeared on Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back. He wields his lightsaber, but he's "not a Jedi yet" - and he knows it, which is probably why he still carries a holstered blaster pistol as 'back-up'.

I really enjoyed painting this figure. There's not too much fiddly detail and painting progressed fairly quickly by my own standards. The only thing that caused me some hesitation was figuring out how best to paint the lightsaber, but I think I nailed it. I'm happy with the result and that's what counts.

So a very enjoyable return to painting in 2023. It feels good to get the paintbrushes out at last. Next up in the painting queue; Luke's secret dad, Mr Vader himself.

Till next time.

Back of Beyond Misfits

What to do with these guys? They are (mostly) Copplestone Castings 'White Russians in Chinese service'. They're some of the very first figures that I painted from Copplestone's Back of Beyond range at a time when my interest in gaming the Russian Civil War was little more than the germ of an idea. I'm sure Mr Copplestone intended them to be mixed up in some rip-roaring action and adventure in the far east, with the Mad Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, Mongol tribesmen, Chinese Warlords and all that jazz. That's all very well, but my direction of travel pointed more towards Siberia or the Kuban than Mongolia and these chaps look a tad out of place for those theatres of the Russian Civil War. My odd choice of uniform colours doesn't help matters either.

But never mind. Never let historical accuracy get in the way of a good game, to paraphrase some wit called Twain (no, that's Mark not Shania, you philistine!)

Lets face it, there are plenty of examples of 'fantasy' RCW wargame armies with over-represented ''colourful' units, tanks, or elite 'cheka' and the like. Don't sweat it. It's a game.

And I haven't completely abandoned historical accuracy. If you know your Copplestone ranges and look closely, I've painted up a couple of 'Ragged White Russians' and mixed them in to give enough figures for four bases. So then, another unit completed for my RCW forces.

Need For Speed

Okay great, you're an Imperial Scout Trooper. You have a 74-Z Speeder Bike capable of several hundred km per hour. Sure that's fast, but at that speed it steers like a cow. So, where do they send you? Endor. Some god-forsaken forest moon packed full of trees. If the murder bears don't get you, you'll likely end up splashed all over the trunk of some giant redwood.

But these two guys are luckier. There aren't too many trees on Tatooine. 

Yes, here are a pair of Scout Troopers on their speeder bikes ready to join my Star Wars: Legion Imperial forces. As usual, they are based for arid or semi-arid operations, the aforementioned Tatooine for example.

The Scout Troopers were quite fun to paint, which is perhaps surprising after my challenging experience with their Stormtrooper brothers in arms. It's probably because there are only two of them so painting progressed quickly before I got bored. 

The speeder bikes were also a pleasure to paint. Just a couple of main colours with washes and subtle drybrushing to highlight the detail. Nice and simple, but effective I think.

The coat is quite new comrade, only the holes are old.

More Bolsheviks. This time in greatcoats. I had to have a little rethink about these guys. When I first started collecting figures for Red Actions, my purchases were quite haphazard. Nothing was planned out and I just picked up packs of figures as my fancy took me. It was only later, when I started doing a bit of planning that I realised I had an odd mix of figures in summer and winter dress. My original solution was to paint two forces, one for summer and one in greatcoats with snowy bases for winter. What was I thinking?!!! At the speed I paint, that was never going to happen.

I could just have sold the figures, but I like them too much. So, they join the ranks of their lighter clad comrades - a bit over-dressed for the season perhaps, but let's suppose the air is still damp with the Spring rain, or the first chill of early Autumn. I'm not going to be too fussy about it anyway and they are a handy addition to my RCW forces.

Walk This Way

My Star Wars: Legion Rebels now have some recce assets and mobile firepower; a pair of AT-RT walkers. I chose a colour scheme suitable for arid or semi-arid settings to match my existing Rebel forces. I think they fit in just fine. 

I had planned to paint the walkers using my airbrush, but ended up using it only for priming. Everything else was achieved with base coats, washes, dry brushing and detailing. 

I'm not a fan of the thick bases supplied with the models, so I replaced them with thin Star Wars: Legion-style bases from Justlasered. They are clear acrylic, not that I like clear bases either, but they are the perfect thickness for my tastes and are just as easily textured and painted as any other base material.

Weapon options - fitted with magnets and easy to swap out.

Walk this way...

Air/Raft

I discovered plasticard (aka styrene sheet) some time in my mid-teens. Wonderful stuff. It's been a staple of my model-making and scratch-building projects ever since. Whenever an idea popped into my head, out came the plasticard and solvent. There's never been any rhyme or reason to this; just wherever inspiration took me - often into the realms of Science Fiction. An appetite for Sci-Fi novels, Traveller RPG and SPI's 'Universe', the art of Chris Foss, and tabletop games of Laserburn all fed my imagination and spawned a collection of vehicles and other 'gubbins'. Here's one example; another model rescued from the back of the gaming cupboard and given a spruce-up. 

It's a 25mm, 3-seat air/raft or grav-craft. Looking at it now, the finish is a bit rough-and-ready but considering it was made from scratch and pretty much made up as I went along I still think it's really neat. I had to add a new headrest and windshield as both had broken off and been lost. Other than that, it's just as it was originally finished many years past. It did need a flight stand though. I don't know why I never made one for it before, but now I've rectified that omission. 

Now it really just needs some crew. That's slightly problematic as it was originally built to scale with 25mm figures and most of my figures are now 28mm, (or 35mm in the case of Star Wars: Legion) and way too big. I think a 3D printed crew is the way to go as I can easily scale to fit. Maybe some 'smaller than human' aliens would work, so it will still fit in with my existing miniatures. I just need to find some that are seated, which isn't so easy. Scanning....