Time for another painting blog - and only a few short weeks since the last one!

For GameBlast25 I needed a WWII era train set - preferably a military one. Originally I was looking to buy something that I could just use without any prep but that didn't work and now, I was getting close to the date of the event!

Instead I quickly looked for alternatives and settled on getting something from Sarissa-Precision.
They sell a WWII train bundle  which was exactly what I was looking for. I also bought some additional track, foolishly thinking I might need some extra but the bundle comes with plenty of track - easily enough to hold the entire train.

The train comes a flat packed kit of card and MDF (I think?) that required a lot of assembly and some painting.
To be honest it was a bit more of a crafting project than I was hoping for - particularly with the deadline looming.

This was the first time I was doing something like this and I was on a deadline too! I found that the carriages were pretty tricky to create and I made quite a few mistakes, especially early on.

The kits are fairly elaborate and even come with features such as spinning wheels when constructed correctly. However, since I was painting so fast I found once I'd painted the wheels, they got stuck.

​Lacking the time to do a proper camo paint job, I ended up spraying them army green and finishing with a military shader all from Army Painter. There was a bit of a cleaning up afterwards.

I'm not sure how I feel about the results, I definitely could have done better - there's lots of gaps and mismatched edges, don't look too closely at the photos!
On the other hand, the flaws give it them a sort of lived-in, battered quality.
I think it looks passable and they're there to be played with, not looked at.

Sarissa also do a European style train bundle and since I can be a glutton for punishment, I may pick that up when I'm more 'cash-rich' and see if I can do a better job with a bit more experience, time and patience.

2 posts in 2 days!
What's the world coming to?

Despite being cold, today was sunny and good opportunity to do some varnishing.

That's all 30 of my Pulp Figures Melanesian figures now finished and varnished.

From Midlam Miniatures are 3 Red Hook Horrors, only one of which I painted red! However, I find the idea of flesh and poo coloured monsters appealing. These were painted earlier in the year and are now varnished.

18 more pulp personalities painted and varnished.

That's all of them done, unless they're some more lying around that I haven't spotted. Which is quite likely!

2 of them are wearing kilts, I've hidden them in the back. Painting tartan is something that eludes me still.

The figures here are a mixture of Copplestone Casting's 'Back of Beyond' figures, Pulp Figures, Artizan Design's 'Thrilling Tales' figures and a couple Bad Squiddo figures.

Finally it's time to make a start on those WWII Soviets.

I've been slowly but surely painting since my last update 3 months ago.

Today I varnished 21 pulp personality figures.

They're a mixture of Pulp Figures Pulp Heroes & Personalities, Copplestone Castings' Back of Beyond Adventures and Footsore Miniatures' Irish War of Independence figures.

I'm now about 75% of the way through painting all my pulp personalities.

After that I have to move on to WWII Russians and I need to varnish some vehicles I've got laying around.

There was a gap in the weather on the 21st February that allowed me to varnish the last 9 figures that I'd painted.

It took me about a week to paint all 9 - which is quick going for me.

Painted and varnished 18 figures for Gameblast, various pulp figures and the like.

Unfortunately, the photos I took looked crap! So may some more at a later date.

Yes I know it's now 2020.
And yes, it's taken nearly a year to prepare to write the next post for this blog.

But I have been doing some painting during all this time... honest...
So I'm going to try post photos I took of the miniatures I painted from February to December!

These figures were photographed on the 13th November 2019.
These are the first of the 'pulp' figures for my GameBlast20 game - The Indiana Jones Charity Globe Trot.

These are Thuggee cultists from Pulp Figures. Again they're for The Indiana Jones Charity Globe Trot.

I've painted some of them in the yellow and white scheme I saw on the Pulp Figures website. The others are painted in red and black as seen in 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'.

The mine carts and track all come from Ainsty Castings.

8 of the mine carts were painted for GameBlast19 (Which was before the end of February 2019.), they've only just been varnished.
The track has all been painted and varnished recently.

There you have it. That's all the photo's I have.
I've painted more than (I must have!?!) this over 2019, it's just there's no photos of them, honest... You'll have to take my word for it!

Hopefully, the blog will see some use over 2020.