I’ve been cracking on with the painting of my models.

Chaff

At this point I decided that I was most of the way through making one of each unit in black powder, so I may as well add some chaff to my collection. Building the same way as fodder with arms in a skirmishing pose. Then add on a modest shako, to match voltigeurs, and paint the same as grogs.

I’ve been avoiding mixing paints, but as I currently don’t own any dark grey paint I have been left unable to properly highlight the black regions. I finally decided to give mixing paints a crack, and it is so much easier than I what I thought it would be.

Chaff

Lump

There’s something about having a big ugly monster in a warband.

I didn’t want to sculpt it out of greenstuff due to the limited working time of the material. I used oven bake clay - otherwise called polymer clay - for his body, greenstuff for the details, aluminium for the weapon and finally cardboard for the teeth.

I also used an armature to for support. However I made the head part too long, this concerned me as I played around with the clay that it’d look too much like a worm-man. But the moment I bended the armature down I knew I was onto something.

Its weapon is made out of a can and I tried to shape it like a cake fork to fit the theme of 722nd Cake Forks.

Be sure to bake the clay before gluing it to the base, you can see that I had to try and cut out most of the original base and add a second non-melted base.

The painting was done with the same colours as done previously, but I added more white to the paint to push the blue highlight a bit brighter. The ribbon was painted with the Fresh Rust colour. I thought how the primer looked on the rocks was good, so that was left without further painting.

Lump

Stump Gun

Considering the vague theme of Napoleonic French military I was clearly missing some field artillery.

Looking at some guns on image search for ideas whilst I rummaged around my bits box I found the handle of a sponge-brush about the right shape for the barrel. The wheels are made out of the bottom of tea lights, I would recommend finding another material as this seems too fragile and I worry my model will break. The axle is a 1mm brass rod, also used in the match and ramming stick. The bands around the barrel are greenstuff, to get a more of an edge I gently pressed the greenstuff with a flat tool alternating each of the three sides until I was satisfied. The rear is made out of two matchsticks and some cardboard, this didn’t need to be too detailed as the focus is on the front but it did bring some balance to the model. The cannonballs are beads.

I used Onyx Skin, Steel Legion Drab and Amber Skin for the barrel, this matches the horses from the whelps. I also added black to Onyx Skin to create a darker shadow beneath the barrel. After painting the cannon I realised that I had only used warm colours for the model, to add a bit more balance the balls were painted blue.

I chose to have a crew of three as the Stump Gun in Turnip28 has three wounds and I could use them as wound markers. This was my first time sculpting hands, and when you hear people say “hands are hard” they are right. Painted the same as my fodder with the sponge on the ram stick the same colours as the barrel and the match flame painted in a yellow to red gradient. This was my first time trying to blend between two different colours, and was once again surprised by how easy it was. However the colours ended up being too vibrant and it draws the eye too much.

Gun

Conclusion

Painting these guys has been quite fun, but I feel I’m nearing the completion of the 722nd Cake Forks, I’m keen to try different colour schemes and I am running out of backpacks. There’s some ideas cooking and much more to explore in miniature painting.