Painting 28mm 17th Century Lowland Scots - Part Three

Stage 6

Figures after dip has dried,very glossy and not looking that good!

You'll note I glue figures to their final bases before applying dip.

There re many other places in the internet where you can read-up on the Army Painter 'Shading' products, so I'll not bore you with a rehash of all those. <try here as a start>

All I can say is that after experimenting with the product for a number of years and becoming more and ore familiar with it - I love it!

I have a couple of tips that I'll share - I always use 'Dark Shade',my preference,this is the one that uses black as the pigmentation - the other two uses browns.

Next always keep it indoors and the lid well sealed, the product doesn't like the changes in temperature it'll experience out in  ashed or garage.

The product is Oil based - so it smells and requires 24 hours to dry. Tempting as it s to fiddle with the figures before it is dry - don't! You'll also need white spirit or similar to clean your brushes.

This leads to my final tip - the product is described as a dip, don't dip your figures! Paint on the product with a largish brush and work a generous amount into all the nooks and crannies of your figure. 

When satisfied move on to the next figure and then the next.

After the third figure, go back to the first, you'll see the shading product will have started to do its magic - with a critical eye - look for whee the product has started to pool or is obscuring important detail on the figure and correct this with your brush. Then put the figure aside to dry for 24 hours....

Stage 7

Sand and electrostatic grass added to bases,
Sergeant & Musketeer plus Pikeman Base

You're on the home leg now, before applying the dip you'll note that I glue the figures on to their final wargaming bases, any dip that flows off the figure will help fix it to it's base! These bases have been scored with a modelling knife, prior to fixing figures to help glues and paint 'key' to them.

Same treatment for command bases.

Once the Amy Painter Shading product has dried, I will then start the basing process - use filler applied with those small wooden coffee stir-sticks found at McDonalds or other such places. this will take a couple hours to dry but gives a good even surface to apply the next layer of paint.

I use emulsion paint than can be obtained from any DIY store, usually from sample pots which come  many colours - though i use a brown based paint for earth - which seems the obvious choice for me. When first opening the pot, I'll immediately top it up to the top with PVA wood glue, to make it better for sticking basing materials to. I regularly top up the pot with more PVA glue as I use up the paint.

Grass tufts and other scenics added to bases

I paint the whole base and whilst still wet I cover the surface with fine sand and leave to dry. Next I'll apply patches of the same paint to the base and then cover base with electro-static grass, before shaking off the excess - again leave to dry.

Finally apply various grass tufts and other ground vegetation to taste.

I'll now add the unit's flags to the officers - maybe a separate article on how I make these sometime (pretty much always print out on my home printer and apply with PVA wood glue).

Figures after final Matt Varnish spray

Not only does the Matt Varnish finish ff the figures
it sets the scenics in place as well.

The final step when all is good and dry is to spray paint the whole unit with Mat Varnish,  use Army Painter Matt Varnish as it is easy to find. I spray on sunny days only after a good shake of the can. Weather does effect the final finish of the spray varnish as does lack of shaking...

... Cover the figures from each direction - I do four sweeps to get each side, front and back and again leave to dry and stop smelling.

In my opinion the figures turn out pretty well ...

Figures en-mass, representing Grant of Grants' Lowland Regiment.