Speedpainting/Quickshade : Tercio de Barcelona (in its early uniform)

 Hello guys,

A couple of months ago I bought from a Facebook friend, Richard O' Connor, a bunch of (mostly) upainted miniatures from North Star 1672, but also 9 painted miniatures in green and yellow uniform, from Tercio of Barcelona in its first uniform for the early 1670's. They were based in round single bases, so I thought about rebase them on my regular 4cm x 4cm bases for infantry, and also painted the rest of miniatures in order to get a full unit (usually 16 infantry models in my armies). 

I wanted this to be made "fast" so I took several models I had, like the "French" grenadier on the left from Northstar 1672, a Reiver Castings new Spanish model, and new Spaniard musketeers from Northstar 1672.  

In order to paint them quickly, I airbrushed them all in green, and then just applied a basecoat of all the others colors. They were ready for the Quickshade application! I slapped on the thing all over the miniatures, lightly thinned with White Spirit, and then leave them to dry for 48 hours... Then I re applied the basecoat colours and some minor highlights (2-3 coats of lighter colors), then a matt varnish coat, and they were ready to fight.  

That is why this Tercio was speed painted...because I had half unit painted already by another painter, and the other part, quickly painted with the Quickshade method!

The blue flag with Barcelona´s coat of arms is from Minairons miniatures, a Spanish based company, the other one, generic with the Burgundy cross... I don't remember.

They are now ready to take part in Catalonian campaign against Schombergs' French forces, that were defeated in Bellegarde fortress and Maureillas field battle in 1673-4.  You can read that action here in the blog :

https://spanishleadpainting.blogspot.com/2019/02/franco-dutch-war-spanish-victories-at.html

I have another post in this blog dealing with Tercio de Barcelona, but in its later uniform:

you can read it here :

https://spanishleadpainting.blogspot.com/2019/09/late-xvii-c-tercio-de-barcelona.html

Here you have more shots of the unit:

I hope you like it !

More Fantasy "Speedpainting": Quickshade Orcs

Hello hobby mates!

I have decided to give my orcs a big impulse,  for 2 main reasons: 1) I need bad guys for my Warhammer Quest adventures and 2) I want a second (painted) army to fight my Empire forces.

I have some classic orcs since 1999 or so, and I have bought some 4th/5th edition orcs in the last 5 years, so nowadays I have a respectable force to play with (which needs to be painted!).

I want to paint my army in 2 painting standards; 

- tabletop quality for most plastic monopose figures, orc swordsmen & bowmen and  goblin  spearmen.

-good quality for metal miniatures and the first row of plastic miniatures in a unit.

I don't like to paint tabletop quality miniatures, but as I want to field this army "soon" so I thought a solution:

- prime the miniatures in grey

- airbrush the miniatures in goblin green or similar

- basecoat all the colours (light colours rather than dark)

- Army Painter Quickshade strong tone dip

- just a highlight for most colours, maybe two for the skin, 10 min aprox per miniature.

- matt varnish and base.

I have tried the previous method with good results in my humble opinion. It is just a tool to speed up the process of mass painting.

TEST MODELS:

primed and airbrushed

basecoated and given a coat of Quickshade

single highlight 48 hours after the Quickshade and BEFORE matt varnish

based and matt varnished, the miniature is finished and just need his shield.

Time of actual painting each miniature... maybe 20-25 minutes! 

But you don't paint just one, you paint in batches of 5-10 miniatures, so you can paint most basic troops in a month, and the result is nice enough (at least for me!).

Here are my first batch of speedpainted Orcs:

Cheers!

"Speedpainted" Austrian Tercio and Spanish Command

Hello again

This week I finished a couple of mini projects. The first one is an Imperial Austrian Tercio for 30 years war. I used 2 bases of Quickshade painted musketeers, and a base of spare pikemen I have, I painted a standard bearer, all miniatures from Warlord Games plastics, and a generic flag included in the box. I spent a little more time in the standard bearer in order to draw attention to him and the flag and not to his tabletop painted companions.

here the last base painted

Now, If I combine the 2 musketeers wings I intended to use for commanded shot or storming party, with this pike block... Voilà, we have a brand new Tercio/Regiment for the Imperials, to fight along his Habsburg cousins in Madrid against the Swedish at Nordlingen 1634, or support the Army of Flanders against Dutch or French. 

As I said, just tabletop quality, but effective, with nice base and flag, Quickshade method is not unpleasant to the eye. Of course most of my units are and will be painted with more elaborate techniques or just highlighting over the Quickshade.

The Second part of this post is the continuation of the test my friend did with the 3D modified miniatures. The next 3 miniatures are Mars 1/72 "Later Spanish" enlarged to 30mm... of course the lack of quality is evident, the miniatures themselves were poorly sculpted in their  original scale, so If you make them bigger, their shortcomings become bigger too, but nevertheles I have made a command base  for a battalia with them.  Just for fun. I hope you like it!

Speed painting ? Airbrush+Quickshade

Hi mates,

Sometimes I just dont want to paint tons of miniatures at a high standard, or spend too many hours on a single unit, when you have a lot of simultaneous projects.

I have used Army Painter's Quickshade before, using a similar technique to the one used by Master David Imrie aka Saxon Dog, in his old blog, with very good results, it saves time, but not that much.

This time I have tried a simpler method. Just airbrush the dominant colour, and paint  some miniatures in various brown tones, then block in the different colours, basecoat stuff... boring but you have to do a clean paintjob.  After that is done, the Quickshade's turn arrives. I used the "splash on" method... with a cheap brush, mid to large size, cover the entire miniature with the Quickshade, and then re touch it with a damp brush with White Spirit or turpentine, in order to remove the excess Quickshade, this is a matter of practice, you will know over time how much you have to remove or touch...

After 24-48h  you can paint over it a few highlights, just 10 minutes per miniature, nothing too fancy, and then spray matt varnish.  In my case, I had troubles (hot weather) with the varnish and it became whiteish, almost ruining some miniatures (Thank God they were cheap plastic Warlord´s ECW storming party figures)

In the next pics you can see the some samples before and after the Quickshade.

and now after... (OMG this is horrible! ... No wait, we all think the same at this stage)

Now matt varnish and a couple of brush strokes. the are near decent for tabletop standard

In my humble opinion, you can achieve decent resolts if combined with a good basing and nice flags. In this case, you can se a musketeer wing, using cheap plastic miniatures. I would not use this technique on more expensive or better sculpted miniatures, but I have at least 2 complete Pike & Shot units that I will paint quickly this way. I think it works better with earthy tones, so Thirty Years War miniatures are perfect for it.

Regards!