Just finished my first 30 Years' War mini!

Well, it's probably been a year or more since I picked up my paint brush. I'm painting up two strike forces for the Early Modern Period for my Strike Force Commander game, and decided I was not going to get too detailed. I figured, pun intended, that my days of highly detailed, painstaking paint jobs was no longer in my personal bag of interests. I was wrong.

I will take some photos after dinner to show you my first 28mm TYW Imperialist captain. It's too windy right now to top coat him, plus we're having company over for dinner and I don't wanna fume up the place.

I tried a new eye painting technique. I'm a harsh critic when it comes to eyes. It seems too few painters paint the eyelids and then have models that look perpetually horror struck. Better to just paint a dark slit in that case.

This time I did the eyes, primarily because they were sculpted in correctly on the model. After they dried, I not only painted in the eyebrows, though you'll never really see them, and then took a very thin wash of flesh color and sunk it over the whites and pupils. Its probably the most realistic set of eyes I've ever painted, since you wouldn't see a real person with huge whites staring at you from 100 feet away...

I'm doing Imperialists and Swedes for these two forces. The connective color for the Impi's will be red of course, and I'm doing some Blue brigade colors for the damn dirty Swedes.

I guess if I like a mini, I can't do a quick and dirty paint job on it.

Gotta eat some Christmas dinner, be back in a bit.

Faust

TIME TO PAINT!!!

Well, its about time I picked up the brush and had a go. I'm currently in the heat of a 30 Years' War fetish and busted out all of my Foundry TYW pikemen & leaders. I also ordered some Perry ECW musketeers to use as well. All in all Wallenstein is in the hizzie!

I also picked up a Rackham Kelt Centaur fig and my Babydoll got me a box of GW Beastmen for Christmas. Thanks Babydoll! So, not being happy with the GW Centigor models, I decided to convert my own.

I also didn't get too enthused about the TYW leader models from foundry, since they weren't carrying enough sword and pistol combos for my Strike Force Commander taste. So, out came the bitz box with the old Mordheim sprue bitz and viola! arms with guns. Some snipping and filing later and I had some officers with big fuggin' horse pistols and sabres ready for some storming party action.

My favorite conversion though was the Cuirassier officer on foot. He had an empty left hand, and I filled it with a single, handless pistol at first. However, the arm angle didn't look natural. I used some Empire Knights arm piece and did a complete conversion with a better angle. Now he can be my unhorsed Cuirassier that is leading an Imperialist forlorn hope skirmishing line.

I also added a sword and pistol combo to a fig that was waving his hat. Can't shoot Catholics with a hat, I always say, so I converted him into a Lutheran Swede!

I'm painting away to my heart's content. The final version of SFC is on hold, since I've had a period of writer's block. I'll do some figure work instead and still be moving the project forward.

Noch Weiter!

Faust