Company of Comrades

To most painters 15mm figures can be quite intimidating. The details are generally small, and tend to rely on the composition of figures as well as the strength of the basing work to tie the entire miniature together. Recently I decided to expand my Team Yankee army in the anticipation of entering in the Team Yankee two day tourney at Cancon. However, I didn't get my entry in so it seems to be all for naught. Never the less, I now have a full Battalion of Soviet Motorized Rifles. Since I haven't seen much material in terms of how to paint 15mm, so I think it'll be useful to share my standard method for painting infantry at 15mm.

1. Preparation and Mounting

First stage involves unpacking the miniatures from their box and cleaning up any mold lines. I usually do this with a scalpel and a very light file. Once the miniatures are cleaned up I mount them, about six at a time, to a paddle pop stick. In turn, I mount the paddle pop stick on one of my usual miniature painting model stands, in all cases using blu-tac for adhesive.

 2. Priming

I tend to prime in big batches, in this case I primed all miniatures in the batch at once using my usual method. First a Chaos black layer, worked into all angels and recesses. Once that layer is dry I give the miniature a 45 degree zenithal highlight with Corax White. This layer catches all of the highest highlights and helps emphasis the highlights after applying our first layers.

3. Main Basecoat

In most cases the first basecoat I put down is the main uniform colour. In this case VMC Green Brown. I did the initial application with an airbrush, however due to feed problems I ended up doing the last layer with a brush.

4. Basecoat of Details

This is by far the most tedious stage of the painting process. This involves using a fine tipped brush to paint all of the major colours on the model. While all of the colour choices were lifted from the Team Yankee rule book, I translated them as best I could into Vallejo Model Colour.

• Helmet & Painted Metal - US Dark Green
• European Skin - Flat Flesh
• Webbing - Khaki
• Boots - Black Grey
• Metal Parts - 50/50 mix of Black and Gunmetal Grey
• Rifle Furniture & Magazine - German Camouflage Orange Ochre

5. Washing

This stage involves a single application of Agrax Earthshade over all colours apart from the flesh, which will get an even layer of Reikland Fleshshade.

6. Re-Layering

This stage involves re-layering all of the mid-tone colours to reestablish the mid-tone while ensuring the deeper recesses remain the shaded colour. This is probably the second most tedious stage of the painting process. About seventy percent of the model's surface should be painted this colour.

7. Highlights

For my highlight colours I typically use the mid-tone colour with some VMC Buff mixed in. The exceptions are VMC Highlight Flesh for the flesh highlight, and pure VMC Gunmetal Grey, applied very sparingly to the metal components.

8. Base Work

I usually use my standard basing method to base fifteen mil miniatures as well. The chief difference is that I glue some tufts of railway flock on the base along with the static grass to represent bushes.

That is pretty much it for my standard method for painting 15mm. This works for almost all colour scheme and is fairly easy to adapt to a wide variety of subject matter. I hope this helps with your own projects.

Shouting Into The Void

Just in case you aren't as unhealthily online as I am, the big news of the hour is that Tumblr is on track to do a massive porn purge, on violence against sex workers day no less, but that is another issue. At first appraisal, for a humble wargamer blogger such as myself, this shouldn't be an issue, as the most porny images on my blog are my photos of my mermaid bust, and I haven't even bothered to see if it was flagged or not.
This little seems to be a signal or a larger sign of looming collapse, as a large chunk of Tumblr's user base will flee the platform after this comes to pass, and we all know by now that the number of total active users are the metric by which social media platforms live or die. By doing this, Tumblr is going to take a massive self inflicted nutshot, which may well continue to platform's decline into eventual oblivion.
Since Tumblr is by far my most successful platform in terms of follower count, this should be bad for me. But ultimately, what does having a large follower count even do for me? Ultimately very little, in terms of what I even do this for... that is another question.
I like having a blog / journal for my work, more often than not I tend to spend more time curating and adding to my own portfolio than I do reading other people's hobby blogs. In terms of what appeals to me, I tend to prefer the mid range hobby painters that are sincere about their hobby rather than the pro-painters that are using social media to drum up business for their painting service. It is nice to follow people and see them improve, and in my case you can definitely track my own development from my very first posts up to now.
In terms of actual engagement, I admit, I do get a sense of satisfaction from helping people out. This is why despite my own mediocre talent I tend to prefer writing and producing guides, and I generally get around to responding to people's questions whenever they have them. And by some miracle I seem to avoid all of the hostility of online communities that seems to be the norm. I suspect this is due to my own restrained and minimalist posting style.
To be honest if this all went away, which in a sense it has certainly eased off, I'd be okay with that. I'm more interested in maintaining a well curated hobby diary and documenting my overall progress rather than chasing likes and reblogs like we're being conditioned to do so. If no one, or very few people are actually reading my work, I'm also okay with that as well.
Shouting into the void is fine, it is peaceful out here.

In other news I've been thinking about making some major additions to this blog. To start with I'm planning on pulling down a lot of my old Tumblr content and compiling my best into a series of neatly categorized galleries, more for my benefit than anyone else. I've also been thinking of expanding into some of my other interests to get more of a journal vibe going, as well as potentially writing up and publishing some of my fan fiction, mostly 40k and some original.

What I've Been Working On

I've been pushing my Team Yankee pretty hard as of late, mostly because it is a relatively large project and I want to start hammering it to completion as soon as possible. I also suspect I missed out on registering for the tourney that I was building them for, so while the urgency for building them may have been quashed, they are still taking up a lot of space on my desk. As of the time of writing I've finished the Frogfoot air support, mostly finished the additional vics, and am yet to start on the infantry. Even after I finish this batch I'll need to throw in another box of BMPs so I can fully field a Motor Rifle Battalion.

Steelheart's Champions has been progressed, granted not much. Already I've noticed enough flaws in it, e.g. mold lines, visible seams, etc, to make me think twice about entering it into the Crystal Dragon, we'll see what I feel when we get the final result.

Finally, to pass the time while searching for a re-up on glaze medium, I dipped into my single mini pile on finished off this piece from Wargames Illustrated. I wanted to practice mostly using, shading with and glazing Vallejo Model Colour. Overall I think I pulled off an okay paint job proportional to the amount of time that I wanted to spend on it.

I think that'll do for now, I'll catch you the next time I have something I feel like saying.

ScaleACT 2018 Photo Gallery

I didn't enter any of my work this year, as these days I'm too busy on the Saturday to make in early enough in the morning to register, and the entire day is usually taken up with life maintenance tasks anyway. This year, I think I didn't even make it last year, I managed to make the Sunday morning on the show and had a good chance to browse the displays without having to deal with crowds of graying old men or young families with overly excitable children.
I went in with the intention of not buying anything, as I have more than enough toys to keep me occupied for several years at least. However, in the end I wandered into the swap and sell for the first time ever and spotted a couple of smaller kits for comparatively cheap, and after my last couple of attempts I realize that I could use some more practice before I start on some of my more expensive kits. So I spent a paltry thirty bucks and walked out with three old 1:72 scale kits, which'll give me a chance to to practice some of my scale model techniques. In future I'd like to have a crack at larger and more detailed kits, but my apartment demands that I be economical with space in order to live comfortably, so there is only so much I can do before I literally run out of space to put things.
That being said, the vendors usually put on a pretty good spread. You can easily pick up a kit of just about any tank or aircraft you desire, though generally I find that the prices aren't much better than my local hobby supply place. The real draw are some of the figure painter suppliers that have a decent selection from most of the major figure painting bust and figure suppliers. I must admit the quantity on display was significantly up from previous years, which is good to see. I also saw many, many more busts and figures on display, significantly moreso than previous years.

Anyway that'll do for now, enjoy the gallery.

The Haul

The Pictures