another 3D printing post: siege work GABIONS

Hello guys, 

Today I bring you a short post, all of us who paint and play with miniatures from the horse and musket era, or renaissance, need gabions, indeed we will need a lot of gabions!  As I don't like the plastic gabions too much (Renedrea produces them), I have some spare metal gabions from several manufacturers, but the metal ones are a bit pricey in my humble opinion so I had an idea, albeit maybe a controversial one...

I decided to ask a friend for help, a good friend of mine is dentist (and an enthusiast wargamer), and in his own clinic, he has a VERY  expensive dental scanner and several high quality resin 3d printers, so I asked him  If he could scan a gabion for me and then modify the digital archive of the gabion so that we can expand or reduce the size...  and now I have an almost unlimited supply of customized gabions for almost no price (well, just a few cents). 

I also want to say that I am absolutely against fraudulent use of intellectual property, and historical miniature brands are usually small companies that invest large amounts of money in sculptors and material to produce their miniatures, so although the current technology allows us to reproduce miniatures in resin at almost the same quality as the originals, I will always prefer original miniatures in my collection, and in sacred metal!  That said, in some cases I think it is legitimate to use 3d printers and scanners, specifically to make spare copies of your OWN conversions in metal/plastic/green putty,  for your personal use only, or also small elements of scenery such as these gabions. 

 Beyond this boring legal disclaimer, I wanted to share with you my new gabions for small dioramas and pieces of scenery.

What do you think?

Cheers

Bolt Action: Manchukuo's Type 94 Tankette

Hello guys,

some months ago I decided to paint a small force for Warlord Games' Bolt Action, a defense force of the Empire of Manchukuo.  I know it is a rare subject, but I liked the idea of an auxiliary army fighting bandits, Chinese or Soviets in the steppes of Far East, with cavalry, outdated equipment and such. I started the project with a plane, a Japanese fighter in Manchukuo's service, you can see it here:
https://spanishleadpainting.blogspot.com/2019/12/air-support-for-bolt-action-manchukuos.html

And next miniature is a "tank" well, a tankette, a type 94, also of Japanese origin, we know Japan supplied Manchukuo with at least 10 of these vehicles throughout the war, amongst other vehicles, but I found this one was the nicest of all (imho).

The kit is in resin and metal, by Warlord Games, painted with Ammo Mig paints and weathered in the usual way of enamel washes, chipping and pigments. This time I think I did too much dusting on the vehicle, but it is not a big issue given the dusty and sandy terrain of the north China/Mongolian plains.

I downloaded a Manchukuo flag from the internet and added it to the tank, following the Japanese way of attaching flags to vehicles, in order to give some colour to the little model.  It's not my best paintjob, but I like it anyway.

I also like to use a picture of me with the vehicle painted, It is almost a tradition in this blog, so... here you have.

Cheers

Aventine's 28mm Sassanid Elephant

Hi there,

A year before starting this blog I painted a Sassanid elephant from the excellent Aventine Miniatures Sassanid range, I have taken new pics of the elephant these days, and now it is finally in the blog, where it deserved to be.

This unit is one of the center pieces of my growing Sassanid Army for Impetus and/Hail Caesar... The army is composed by miniatures from A&A, Aventine and Gripping Beast.

It is a metal Elephant, and  I am very pleased with the sculpt and the finished result of the paintjob 

(it was painted partly with airbrush).

The Sassanid shield transfers are Little Big Men Studios, the best transfers I have ever seen. The shield in the ground is hand painted, a late Roman design belonging to "Lanciarri Seniores"

I hope you like this little jumbo, soon I will post a Savaran/Clibanarii unit I am currently painting, and a post showing the whole army.

Cheers!

More scenery: 28mm plastic Barn

Hello again!

Here you have a very quick & easy project; Renedra's plastic Barn. 

This little piece of scenery is very easy to clean and build, and of course, to paint. I just primed it in Panzer grey, Ammo Mig spray can, after that, I airbrushed only two colours, blue-grey in the roof, for a slightly fantasy look (you know, blue shingles=medieval fantasy) and chocolate brown for all the wooden planks.

After that, I tried a new (for me) technique; to apply several citadel washes to modify the tone of some shingles and wooden planks all over the barn, painting with the ink here and there, to break the monotony, and make the model more interesting. 

next step was airbrushing gloss varnish all over the barn, and give the model some oil washes and oil fading as follows.

I painted several dots of white, yellow, browns tones in the roof, with Ammo Mig Oilbrushers, a very interesting tool for me, much better than using old oil tubes (they have a tendency to get stuck). And a general dark brown wash in the brown part of the barn, and then leave it to dry 48h. 

The funny and easy part wash the drybrushing step,  beige for the brown and light grey for the blue roof... It really gives life to the building, highlighting all the parts in a quick and effective way.

The final part was painting the metal details a giving them a black and an orange wash to give it the sensation of rust,  some green moss in the roof ( Just to give it some green touches) and Voilá, matt varnish and finished.

Actual painting time, a couple of hourse at most... It will not win a painting competition, but is nice enough for me, and it fulfills its role :)

I have not made a base for it, because I don't know yet if I will field the Barn alone or as part of a larger farm... so, for now, without base, If I made a large one, with it, I will show it here.

Cheers!

Plastic scenery: Citadel Forest

Hello guys!

I have completed a very quick and easy piece of scenery, a forest ( well , 3 trees in a base) by Games Workshop, I bought it second hand, very cheap, and had it laying around several months until last week.

I cleaned all the parts and branches of the trees and sanded the mould lines, then primed in dark grey (Panzer grey by Ammo Mig), normally I would have painted the basecoat with airbrush, but in this particular case, I thought it would be fine If I used a wide a brush.

                                         primed

                                         basecoat

                                         drybrushed

                                         static grass

The process was very quick, just a base coat of arts store paints, the same I use to paint my scenery and terrain boards,  cheap paint,   dark brown or chocolate for the base, leaving the rocks in dark grey, and then the same on the trees, dark brown all over them.

the next step was drybrush all the kit, for the ground, ochre drybrush all over the base (avoiding the rocks) and finally a drybrush coat of beige. For the rocks 3 different shades of lighter greys until almost white for the edges of the rocks. And for the trees, I used Vallejo beige brown for the drybrush coat and a second coat of beige brown plus beige or white.

When the forest was painted, came the funny part, I substituted the plastic leaves of the trees (tedious to paint and unnatural) with Noch leaves in different shades, not expensive and very useful for this kind of work.   

the finished scenic piece:

Cheers!

28mm Spanish Galleon in plastic PART I

Hello guys!

Since 2015 I'm involved in an ambitious project. A few years ago I asked for opinions on plastic models of galleons in order to convert the model kit into a wargames ship,  for naval skirmish games, secenery and such.  I can use it as naval gunfire support in field battles, like Niewpoort or the Dunes, or in siege operations like Tarragona, Barcelona or Dunkirk.

Now there are games such as "Blood & Plunder" that involves ship fighting and land skirmishes together, and you can adapt a ship with home rules to almost every wargame rules, using it as a mobile artillery battery or a building that can be occupated.

I found the ship on Ebay and ordered it for 65 euros, it is a the Revell Galleon at 1/96 ... don't be scared, the model is by no means  1/96 in fact I suspect it is 1/65, judging its measures.

As it is a display model kit, it comes with the complete hull, so I decided to make it "waterline" by a major conversion of the hull, cutting it very carefully, in order not to break it . Then I needed to sand it down.

With the 2 part hull already glued, the fun began with the true building process.

the ship today

 the two part hull prior to cutting it

ta daaaaa, waterline ship

tesing the scale

testing the scale 2.

time for painting,

I used tamiya paints and airbrushed the base colours, and then all the highights. As its bare plastic, I tried to emulate the wood planks by painting different planks in creamy colours andeveral shades of browns with brush , these planks were later unified with oils, and drybrush

at this stage, it starts to resemble a galleon :)

There is still a lot of work to do! I have replaced the kit's plastic lantern (boat lantern) with a metal and "glass" one purchased from a model ship shop, and purchased metal and wood cannons as well as deck light guns

As you can see, the masts were added and painted, as well as the ratlines, with a simple drybrush, the sails are true cloth sails,  bought in Radek's ship store, great service, but not cheap!  the sails of the plastic ship were terrible (imho) so replacement was compulsory for me...
I painted a red and yellow pattern as it was common in early galleons in Spanish service. I also used some Northstar 1672 miniatures to show you the compatibility of scales (they are Tercio de la mar de Napoles) Spanish Neapolitan Marines.

Nowadays you can find a fantastic galleon by Firelock games, but I think it costs more or less 300$, so my option was more than good, for 65 euros (plus cloth sails).

Now the most boring part is rigging the ship, but this is a gaming ship, so the rigging will be VERY simple, because is difficult to playe with a lot of ropes over there, and it is time consuming too!  guns,  anchors, flags and some rigging and the ship will be finished, I will definitely complete this post with a part II.

Thanks for watching!