Monday, November 11, 2013

An Army Painter/Quickshade Test Figure

For this figure and horse, I used Paul Alba's technique of blocking main colors, applying AP, and touching up with highlights. It sure is faster than painting at least two color shades for every color. I'm considering whether I like this enough to switch for my remaining figures - but I'm also in the midst of using AP on some Old Glory figures, to see how the sculpting comes out with AP.





I still need to finish the horse and horse furniture, put a final dose of flat lacquer on it, and add the static grass. I figured that a casualty figure would be a suitable test figure.

6 comments:

Paulalba said...

you sound like me Mark. I balanced up if I liked the finished AP figure enough to do my whole army with it. Will be nice in OG. I did some OG Austrians for a friend with it and they turned out well with it.

Paulalba said...

Looks great by the way!

Sun of York said...

Thanks for the response re the colours you used for the horse - looks like I am searching for a maple shade.

And as for shading, I rarely do. The last ones I tried when on my Prussian grenadiers and I found that the effort involved was lost when viewing the figures at anything like table distance.

My technique/skill would easily be a grade below yours and Paul's. I use a simple black undercoat (grey for Austrians and dark brown for my WW2 Australians and ancients), top coat and then varnish. Biggest challenge is having a good range of colours, particularly greys and blues and on deciding when to stop adding detail.

But I have to say your finished figures look fantastic. I particularly like the Spanish.

Mark Case said...

Thanks, Sun of York. The fact is that there is no "right way" to do it. Whatever style works for you is just fine. I started out with the three foot rule, and narrowed in incrementally, but then again, I paint far more than I game. So the fun for me is painting miniature portraits of the figures, which most die hard gamers think is an exercise in futility! It's all good . . . we each have our ways of enjoying the hobby :)

Mark Case said...

The green is a bit too bright because I expected the AP wash to darken everything a couple of shades. Will use a different shade on a couple other test figures.

Chris said...

This is the technique I use - block colour (one shade brighter than you want the final result) then slosh on the Quickshade. Line highlight with one shade brighter than the base colour. I'm still a bit slow painting my minis, but it's much quicker than multiple layers and washes and doing it the "old way".

http://nerdclub-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/more-miniature-painting-with-army.html