A Journey through the Gates of Antares (or your further steps into painting) – part 3 by Jon Harrington
Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.
Stage 3: Finishing the figures.
Bases for figures can be as simple or elaborate as you want. Shown below are examples with no additions, basic grit, large grit and filler over foam board. For figures that are going to be used, I tend to keep it simple partly to reduce the painting time but also acknowledging that they will get knocked and damaged and it’ll be easier to fix.
To paint the desert style bases I run a brown wash over the undercoated grit. Using a wash helps the paint run into the corners and round the feet of the figures. I then dry brush with a lighter brown and finally a light drybrush with white just to pick out the highlights. You can see that I’ve added a rock to act as a point of interest, tufts of grass or abandoned weapons work just as well.
An example that mistakes can happen and thankfully are easy to rectify
Droning On.
The last items to build from the Algoryn are the spotter drones. Before painting a good tip is to mount them temporarily on matchsticks to avoid getting paint on the clear post. The only difference to the figures was to highlight the camera lens in blue.
Paint, dry repeat.
With the first squad complete I moved on to the second and third squads confident that I had a colour scheme that I liked. The process to paint large numbers of figures (I consider anything above 10 to be a large number) is as individual as the colour schemes. Some people build them all and paint them all at once, others work on individual figures. I sit somewhere in the middle, I prefer to be working on no more than 10 figures at the same time broken down into 2 groups.
For the Algoryn I started painting the first squad then while coats of paint were drying I built and undercoated the second squad. This allows me to move between painting and building so I don’t get bored of painting the same colour on lots of figures one after the other.
Everyone makes mistakes.
Whilst painting the second squad I realised that, despite carefully sorting out the parts, I had attached a Mag Gun to my squad leader that also had a left hand on the grip which was in addition to the left hand with an XSling. Precision surgery using a sharp knife removed the part and the correct one was fitted. Not a big problem but it serves as an example that mistakes can happen and thankfully are easy to rectify.
First Army Built.
So that’s the Algoryn force complete.
Half the painting done and I’m already looking forward to actually playing a game with them the very near future.
Next time the Concord. Jon
Download this article as Jon’s original PDF here.
View part four here
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Start your army with these Algoryn!
Sam Phillips
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