“Old Red Eye & Friends”

Well it’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted (sorry), and I’ve been casting about a bit over this time as to what to paint next, you see it’s “Keith’s, Monster May(hem)” next month (or this month depending on when you’re reading this of course, either way go check it out here and take part if possible!) and as my excitement builds over this it’s hard to get enthused on anything else (How sad is that!!). Anyway luckily Simon came to the rescue here as I remembered he’d sent me some old “Nexus Miniatures” (not) Cylons from original “Battlestar Galactica”, and as they have just re-started showing this on “Legend” (the “Horror channel” as was in the UK), I thought it was an opportune time to pigment these perpetrators of the “Cylon” tyranny!

Well the first job (or jobs) were to attach the one figures separate hand and weapon, I decided to drill and pin this with a little florists wire partially to strengthen the joint but also because I already had the drill and wire out. Why did I have these out already? Because all tree figures have the familiar “Centurion sword” (which I don’t think I ever saw them actually use in the series once) scabbarded on their left hand side, but on a couple of the figures these were moulded short where the metal hadn’t flowed into the end of the mould. So cutting away the “stumps” I drilled into the hilts slotted in a bit of wire and built them back up using “greenstuff”, and used a little more of this miraculous stuff to fill round the wrist joint I mentioned earlier. Then it was a case of sticking on their heads and basing them onto two pence pieces away from their hateful “slotta’s”🤮 . A blow over with the matt black and we were good to go.

I decided to start by adding there eyes, so after painting the slots in sanguine scarlet, I first added a dot in orange followed by another smaller dot of bright red. After a quick look on “Google” I discovered that the BSG aficionados and cos-players know that the under suits are in fact purple! (Well there you go learning all the time!), I however had (and still do) a hard time seeing this on the series so in the end I just mixed a little black into some royal purple and highlighted the under suits in this. The armour that looks so shiny and chrome in the series, I went with a basecoat of chainmail that I followed with highlights of sir coats silver, not quite as “bling” as the originals sadly but as good as I was going to get. Next I highlighted all the other black pieces of armour along with the guns and boots with dark grey and finally I used two different versions of mid grey on their newly restored scabbards, miniature paints for the undercoat and colour parties’ slightly lighter version for the highlights and they were pretty much painted.

I say pretty much as I now had to “Quickshade” them of course, and though I could have gone with the lighter soft tone, I thought as they weren’t bright chrome I’d go for a more battle worn look to them and to this end decided on the strong tone instead, I actually rather like the result. Basing was next as my usual recipe was used here followed by a coat of matt varnish. I have got three of the Colonial warriors (again gifted by Simon) here as well but they’ll have to wait a while now as we are coming into “Challenge Season”, starting with one of my favourites, the aforementioned “Monster May(hem)” run by the “Angry Piper” himself, so expect something a little more “monstrous” over the coming weeks.

Oh and talking of monsters just before I go Dave has now got the “Ogre” for the “Paint what we’ve all got Challenge” into production. So if you are taking part in this later in the year don’t forget get your order in.

Till next time, cheers Roger.

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