How real is real?

Well, I've been sitting around painting my Fallschirmjager & missing my BabyDoll. She's in Vegas at a trade show, and I'm here with Memphis our Golden Retriever. We're both bummed. She's tearing to shit any stuffed animal she can find, and I'm feverishly painting 13 FJ in tropical camo. I've also rewatched the entire Band of Brothers series, The Eagle has Landed, Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, and a drum instructional dvd by master player Steve Smith. Yes, we miss our BabyDoll...

I'm finished with the 7 or 8 stages of layering, highlighting, inking, & relayering, when I reach that final point last night where a decision had to be made.

I finished watching Black Hawk Down and went to bed. I've got work to do at the office at 1pm, so here I sit, writing this for lack of anything better to do.

Anyway, enough whinging.

Every well painted Splinter B pattern German FJ camo job I've seen does something that doesn't make any sense to me except that its done for effect. That is, the green lines or hash marks that cover most of the smock are painted to be visible on a 28mm mini's smock, but I think this is incorrect.

The effect of taking a man wearing pattern B and shrinking him down to 28mm would mean that we would lose a lot of details that we could see at full size. That being said, the small, thin green hash marks would go to. We wouldn't be able to see them at that size. Moreover, the overall effect would be to slightly 'haze' the beige smock color.

Since my aforementioned BabyDoll has the camera with her in Vegas, I can't very well show you what effect I'm talking about, but I've managed to capture it on my figs.

"Well you're just saying that cuz you can't paint 'em that small" says the Mushroom Man in the back of the room. Listen, I can paint the warts on a Gnat's ass. I can certainly paint tiny green lines on beige color. I just happen to think that it isn't realistic looking when considered in that size.

So, with nods of support for every guy and gal out there who have painted visible lines in 28mm, I must contend that it doesn't represent what IMO, Splinter B would look like up close at that scale.

With this in mind, I also noticed that there is a much larger area of beige on the figs that have the lines, than on mine, which looks proportionally closer to the actual camouflage smock in real life.

Of course, this could just all be in my head. Anyway, work progresses on the baker's dozen I'm painting. I'll likely be finished with them by the end of the week, when my BabyDoll returns and brings with her the camera.

So, I'll post a new poll about lines or no lines.

Multi-tasking!

Well, as it would happen I have two concurrent projects running through my head, as though I didn't already have enough to do with work, writing Strike Force Commander, and spending time with my hot honey.

So, I ordered the 1644 ruleset from Foundry. I gave the old copy to WebOgre and this new updated version is simply tits. So, me and the boys are gonna give it a whirl and use our copious amounts of unpainted Testudo minis that are lying about. We dig the shizzle out of Thirty Years War. So we're testing different Figure to Base ratios to come up with something that looks awesome and still uses a format close to the basing standards set forth in the book.

What you see above is the ratio we'll be using. On each infantry base 20mmx20mm, we'll have two foot figs; or 4 for a 20x40mm base. On each 20mm wide x 40mm deep base will be one cavalry fig. Works for us.

Above that photo is my other obsession: Fallschirmjager in 28mm for Strike Force Commander games set in the Mediterranean theatre. I dig the scheissen out of Operation Husky and will be building some Sicily/Italy terrain in the near future.

What you see are some horrid photos I took as they got the first part of their splinter camo added today. I'm working on all 13 at the same time. A bit daunting, but at least the paint isn't wasted and the look is consistent.

Well, that's about it for today. I have worked out some wriggling details for SFC and am ready to start writing the Close Combat section. More to do, more to do....

Fallschirmjager

Well, tonight I base painted my 13 Fallschirmjager figs. 12 are by Artizan, & the Flamethrower is by Foundry.

No pics, but I'll be sure to show them off once they're finished. It was nice to get back to my meditative painting. It's nice to still my mind with my longest running hobby.

Also put up some Empire Cavalry units for sale on ebay today. You can find the links on the sidebar to your right.

G'night.

Finally!

I picked up the paint brush for the first time in over a year. I had some touch up work to do on my Empire Knights before I put them on Ebay, so out came the paints and brush this afternoon. Wow, I'm out of practice.

I finished my touch ups for the new photos, which I have below, and quickly shifted over to an exacto knife. I have noticed I'm not as nimble with that either. I must be getting old.

However, I managed to scrape, buff, and prep 13 Artizan Fallschirmjager minis in 28mm for my Strike Force Commander game playtesting. I reckon I should have some stuff painted up for next time so the boys can't break my balls anymore.

I also broke out the can of matte clear coat and sprayed two minis that were giving me the shiny trouble. Then I re-shot photos of them, so they appear below as well.

Now back to typing my game. Gonna be tasty. That's all I can say.

Faust