Painting 28mm Medieval Archers on Stream on Twitch.tv

I've upgraded my setup for streaming on my Twitch.tv stream recently. All of the figures posted to my blog in the past couple of weeks were painted on stream. Those of you who looked at my preview videos posted earlier may want to take a quick peek at this preview clip which shows the current video and audio quality of the stream as well as a sample of the type of content you are likely to see on stream.

Hope to see you sometime in stream.

WIP French Marshals - Part 2

Here's a second update on the 28mm French Marshals that I've been painting live on my Twitch.TV stream. I've added some background music to my stream so I won't be posting the replay videos on YouTube any more due to copyright reasons. You can however, still see replays of my recent streams on my replay page. There is a short highlight of last night's stream in my Twitch highlights folder for you to look at to see if this interests you.

The painting on these is now done. I'd like to give a shout out to my friend Ed M from Ed M's Wargame Meanderings Blog for giving me some constructive feedback on my last WIP shots when I asked him for some. Ed clued me in that the Marshal's hat crests should be black or white feathers, most commonly white, instead of the gold that I had painted them. They're now corrected thanks to Ed. I'll be setting these aside for now until I can finish up the horses.

I'm very excited about the quality of the paint job on these. There are multiple layers of intentional highlights. Painting on stream has helped me pay more attention to the finer details and motivated me to 'up my game' a bit more on these and I think it shows.  As of now I'm 50/50 if I'm going to brush paint the horses or try some airbrushing on them.

WIP - Flakpanzer 38 (t) Gepard - Conversion from Warlord Hetzer

I've been reading all of the conversion articles on the Warlord Games website and have been itching to try one myself. After discussing my plans with the people on the Warlord forums, including prolific converters Rich H and Jacob Lotsz, I decided to give it a go.



These are some work in progress (WIP) shots so far. The Flak 38 AA gun is magnetized so that it can be pivoted, as well as removed to be used as a normal ground-based Flak 38 on it's original mount, which is also magnetized. The Warlord Hetzer III has had its superstructure removed, the compartment has been ground out to remove all of the Pak-40 ammo racks and to make space for crew. The Pak-40 travel lock has been removed and the access panel hinges added where the removed travel lock was sanded off.

The lower, fixed portion of the AA 'tub' has been created. This was a significant challenge as the geometry here is VERY complex. I've done my best, but in some places I had to just accept that as a wargaming model, IPMS standards need not apply. I've also kept the original rear hull panel in place for now. This was initially done to add structure during construction. The actual vehicle didn't have this panel in place when built, but removing it will be an amazingly difficult and dangerous operation. I may simply add another bench over it and call it 'good enough' for wargaming use.

Next up will be the upper portion of the tub. At this point I am thinking I will have these panels on the model in their lowered state, which is how they would usually be when the vehicle was deployed for AA use, as seen in this historic photo.

At this point I have what I believe should be the hardest part of the model behind me - the tub construction. I still have a lot of work to do with the folded panels, and then adding and restoring somewhere around 50-75 individual rivets. Then of course painting and final assembly. So far the project has been a lot of fun and I can finally see myself being able to successfully complete it.

Roman Legion - WIP

Last week my wife had the entire week off for a 'staycation' - i.e. a vacation at home. I wasn't able to get the whole week off due to work deadlines, but I was able to take part of the week off. I spent a day catching up on home improvement chores and a day preparing for family to visit for an early Easter dinner. That left one day to myself....to paint. This is the remainder of the infantry for my red legion. On the right the principes, which were in process before my day of painting. On the left the hastati, which were painted entirely during my vacation day. In the front figures for a command stand that were painted with the principes.

I gloss my figures before using the Army Painter figure quick shade on them. I feel it helps the quick shade flow better. After shading I spray the figures with Testors Dullcote to give them their final matte finish. I have to let the gloss dry for several days to a week to prevent the army painter quick shade from dissolving it. I've found if I rush this step the figures get a very undesirable hazing or crazing of the finish. In about a week I'll post a final finished figures post for these units with hopefully better photos.