Lead Painter's League 5 - Rnd 3

Lead Painter's League 5 - Rnd 3 notes

Her are my photo details from round 3.

for those who are not aware of the competition have a look here, its pretty cool

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?board=22.0

So here is the pic in question



The Figures

All the figures apart from one are from Dixon miniatures. The odd one out, the Pinkerton Detective with the rifle is of course from the excellent Artizan western range.

I thought this was a better pic having a good range of poses and it included a mounted fig. I thought the western building made a good backround as well.
As before all figs were painted with acrylic paints being a mix of humbrol, vallejo, then magic ink (sepia) washed.

And yes still with the gloss varnish, and it's not going away :-)

The only fig painted recently was the Pinkerton Detective and even he was done early last year, the rest I have had for ages. The building was finished late last year though.

Taking the photo

I took the photo using a Pentax K-7, with a 90mm lens on a 1 sec exposure (with a cable release) at F36 using a mix of natural and Fluro light. I manually set the white balance again but still I'm having problems with the colours being too vivid particularly the green, here are the other 2 edits I made



and this one



As you can see the green foreground never quite looks right, but the difference different PCs was quite surprising, in the end I got my mates to vote on which one I should submit. Tell em which one you prefer

I'm going badly in the voting this week but its more about the high quality of my opponents painting than any gloss varnish hate (I think his pic is too green as well though, I think I'm getting obsessed).

More next week

Lead Painter's League 5 - Rnd 2 notes

Her are my photo details from round 2.

for those who are not aware of the competition have a look here, its pretty cool

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?board=22.0

So here is the pic in question



The Figures

All the figures this time are from Bob Murch's Pulp figures which as everyone knows are brilliant. Olga is a She Wolf while the rest of the lads are German Seebataillon Troops apart from 1 rifleman who is a ring in from Notorious Warlord Chun King & command

With no theme for the second round, I just choose 5 figs that I thought would look well together, and since I'll have a diiferent set of soldiers in a later round I thought it would be best to separate them a bit.

As before all figs were painted with acrylic paints being a mix of humbrol, vallejo, then magic ink (sepia) washed.

And yes still with the gloss varnish :-) it looks good on the table I promise but my pics are suffering.

I am only painting up about 20% of the figs needed for the comp as I go, I'm more interested in the competition as a way to force me to take more pics of my figs.

Taking the photo

I took the photo using a Pentax K-7, with a 90mm lens on a 1 sec exposure (with a cable release) at F36 using a mix of natural and Fluro light. I manually set the white balance again but the colour if anything is worse that the previous one - too green ! It is a bit frustrating as I'm a reasonably good photographer normally but my macro stuff just isn't up to the mark. From now on I'll be doing my editing on my wife's PC and hopefully that will improve things.

I'm going a bit better in the voting this week but it looks like the gloss varnish is even more disliked than I thought which does not bode well, anyway more next week

Lead Painter's League 5 - Rnd 1 notes

I have entered the Lead Painter's League competition for the first time, so I thought I would give some extra information about what I did for the competition. I thought I would gives some details on the figures, painting and basing, and then the photography.

for those who are not aware of the competition have a look here, its pretty cool

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?board=22.0

So here is the pic in question


The Figures

First up Madame is a RAFM dilettante, her mystic is a RAFM cultist, while her driver, bodyguard and secretary are Innocent Bystanders from Brigade. The car is a Lledo Rolls Royce Phantom II.

Since the 1st round theme was civilians, I found it hard to find 5 civilian figures all with the sme theme, so this was the best I could come up with. My teams for the next 9 rounds are alot stronger.

all figs were painted with acrylic paints being a mix of humbrol, vallejo, then magic ink (sepia) washed. I varnish in gloss and I like it :-), I know heaps of people don't though.

All figures were flocked with a fine green flock which was then painted; for the bystanders it was black dry dry brushed grey to replicate tarmac, its a little dull I know but it works pretty well. For Madame and the Mystic it was the same except using red paint and no dry brushing, surprisingly, its a pretty good match for carpet. Some people may have noticed that Madame seems to have a very tall base, RAFM figures come on very heavy bases and because of her dress I couldn't cut it off so I built it up instead

Taking the photo

I took the photo using a Pentax K-7, with a 90mm lens on a 1 sec exposure (with a cable release) at F36 using a mix of natural and Fluro light. I manually set the white balance but the colour is still a little off. Also just as an aside the colour is much more intense than I thought, I did my editing on a laptop but seeing it on the compettion page on a normal desktop PC, the difference is quite marked. I think I may have to resubmit 1 of my other photos after viewing them again.

This pic has probably the weakest compostion of all the photos I plan to take for the competition because I don't enough 20th C terrain to set the scene, so I just kept it simple. It didn't turn out too bad, anyway more next week !

Saving Private Lurtz

I'm not a massive fan of the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings miniatures in general but I DO like the Uruk-hai. They're nasty looking, wear plenty of very "functional" armour and just generally seem very much like I always imagined them to look.

Having finished a "good" army for Hordes of the Things I decided I'd give the Uruk-hai a go for my first "bad" army. I picked up a good number of the Fighting Uruk-hai off eBay for a nice cheap price, all pike. Unfortunately "a couple" with snapped pikes turned out to be almost a quarter of the miniatures and the majority of the broken pikes (present in the picture and therefore fixable) turned out to be just one when they arrived. Hmmm....

Anyway, trying not to let that annoy me I set about what I like to call Saving Private X, or in this case Saving Private Lurtz. By that I mean picking up some badly painted or bashed about miniatures and "saving" them. Sometimes that means surgery, replacements or whatever. In this case an armless guy will appear later as a crossbow wielding chap, several more have changed pose slightly and had replacement pike installed. The whole lot then got a blast of matt black spray. Even at that point the neglect of the previous owner seemed miles away.

A few hours and lots of dry brushing and inking later and I now have 22 quite useful pike, ready to be based up in sixes as Spears for HotT. Tim, aka Saskminigamer, has done a very similar force to what I'm working on but didn't use the levelled pike figs as they might catch on opposing stands when ranking up. I'm going to give it a try. Madness? We'll see...

So here they are in all their as yet unbased glory. Remember to click for bigger pics...

I've got a couple more pikes in the post along with a shed load more Fighting Uruks with hand weapons, plus Scouts of various flavours too, a Cave Troll and of course Saruman. Once all are complete I should have about 36 points worth. Stay tuned...

Cheers,
Millsy