“A roll of the die” (week 19)

First off I’ll begin with an apology for the late posting, this is because though the figures were basically finished apart from painting up the bases and their coat of varnish by Friday dinnertime we were out visiting family on that evening so I had to wait till this morning to finally get these little chaps “in the bag” as it were. Now that’s out of the way I’d like to begin with wishing you all a happy Easter, I hope you haven’t eaten too many chocolate eggs yet! Well as you may have read last week Myles’ has now begun to creep ahead of me in the “Dystopian Wars” stakes, but I will just have to put up with that for a couple of weeks as I had already picked out this postings figures (well my random painting generator had) and I’ve now also got something lined up for next week, but I’ll talk about them when we get there. Anyway as I said I’d tossed the coins and double heads had me reaching for “Lancelot’s” list, and a roll of twenty seven on the old D30 meant….

Box 27 – (4x Pirates of choice)

So I pulled out four random swashbucklers and set to work cleaning up the figures of flash and mould lines before sanding the “slotta” tags and wedging the figures between tiny strips of card on their two pence piece bases, after the superglue was dry I glued on the separate hands/cutlasses before the bases were covered in “tetrion” filler and it was out to the garage for a coat of matt black.

As usual I began by dry-brushing all the metallic bits with chainmail and then base coated all the trousers either in dark grey, to be later highlighted with light grey or coffee to be highlighted with cream, on the one baggy pair I also added stripes (why do I do this?? As it’s a right pain to do) these were done in dark red and highlighted with bright red (as was the sash on the peg legged chap). Shirts and jackets came next in various blues, greens, purples and pinks, each highlighted with a lighter shade of the same. Chocolate brown was added next onto all of the leather items (belts, hat and scabbards) pistol stocks, rum barrels (some people really don’t like to share this, do they!) and flesh (well how can you play “Pirates of the Caribbean” without at least one afro Caribbean pirate! These were then highlighted with either leather brown, butternut or a mixture of chocolate brown and a dark flesh tone (for the flesh of course). Next I mixed a little dark flesh tone with European flesh and painted in the faces and hands of the other three, and after a good swearing session added the bare legs on the chap in shorts that I’d missed five minutes earlier (what a plonker!). After I’d added the eyes and open mouths in black and white, I highlighted said fleshy bits in European flesh, but this was just too similar to the undercoat so I ended up doing it again in the same with a bit of pale flesh added (much better). Buckles, buttons and sword hilts came next in copper and shinning gold. Then some brown and grey hair, a royal blue and an orange scarf/sash combo again highlighted in lighter shades of the same and these chaps were ready to hit the seven seas (well a brush loaded with quickshade anyway).

That as stated just left me to do the basing this morning, this actually took considerably longer than it should have as I applied the chocolate brown base coat on the bases way to thick and it took ages to dry, I even ended up using my wife’s hair drier on them, much to her disgust! (Well we all get carried away with too much chocolate at Easter don’t we?) The other colours went on a lot thinner and thus dried a lot quicker and after the flock was added and dry it was out to the garage again for a final coat of matt varnish and they were ready for their photo call. All in all I pretty happy with my latest batch of “Scurvy dogs”, nothing says pirate like eye patches and wooden legs, though perhaps that one chap should seek different employment as he doesn’t seem to be having much luck on the open seas!

Till next week, Aaaaarrrgg!