Sunday 12 January 2014

406 Ups and Downs...and Stupidity in Paint Nomenclature

Hullo, All.

As always the weather's absolutely dreadful, so the photo I snapped yesterday with my mobile phone - mid-basecoating - is about all I can muster in terms of proof(!) but since then I've done a lot...with mixed results. With green being 'good' and red 'less so', I've now...
  1. ...more-or-less devoured the Bolt Action rules. I'm not one for writing reviews, but I like how refreshingly open and explicitly simplistic they are. The book is lovely inded (helped by the Osprey illustrations) and it has a delightfully tongue-in-cheek tone throughout. An index would be helpful, but it's really very readable indeed.
  2. ...basecoated my Matilda II. Now if you're not aware of this, please note that I have absolutely no understanding of colour. I'm not colour-blind, but I quite literally cannot see the image of a colour on a painting guide and recreate it. At all. And trust me - if you're like me with this, the names and code numbers that companies (like Vallejo and GW) assign to their colours REALLY don't help: for example (trying to paint my Matilda II) the colour Brown-Violet is neither brown nor violet and is in appearance a kind of dirty bluey-grey. I do not have a snowball's chance in hell here...
  3. ...got the fivepence bases sorted for my reinforced 15mm Bolt Action rulebook: £1.75's worth in total. I stuck them, built them up them with filler and spray-basecoated them, along with some outstanding FoW sniper bases...and ONLY THEN did I realise I'd forgotten to texture them with sand. Doing so and painting over it cost me another hour.
    Based? - YES!   Sprayed? - YES!  Textured? - Oh, bugger.
  4. ...painted the thress base colours onto my platoon HQ, 1 and 2 sections, the 2" mortar team and the Boys Rifle team...and here's where I hit trouble. The wonderful Dai was right: my troops (as it says on the back of BBX04) are indeed supposed to be in Italy. No problem,' thought I... until I realised that unlike any picture I can find of the BEF in 1940 they've all got their bloody sleeves rolled up. Downside of 15mm, eh? Bugger.
Still, the upside of 15mm at least is that having decided to sod it and paint them up in olive drab anyway I breezed through them at pace, and another two-hour session should enable me to finish the all of the paint on those core troops noted above (the remainder comprise 3 section, a sniper team and my artillery FOO's team). If by some chance I develop a sudden and uncharacteristic urge to play some Italian theate battles...well, then I guess maybe they're fresh reinforcements from England without their lighter battledress.

Experimental BA army lists to follow later this week.

...and don't worry: I aven't forgotten other projects. The Emperor keeps his watch over me yet...

- Drax.

8 comments:

  1. There have always been not so hot days in Italy.

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  2. Having recently been to Bovington I can confirm that on their Matilda, the colour "dirty bluey grey" is present. I can't appear to add photos here but I have stuck the Matilda on my blog.

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  3. I'm wonderful!? Even my wife doesn't say that. :)

    Eh, as long as your opponent doesn't care about the accuracy of the sculpts, then it really doesn't matter mate.

    Hurry up and finish so we can see some completed figs already!

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  4. I strongly agree with all this paint naming business. I mainly use GW paints and their names are ridiculous. 'Chaos Black' you can understand, but 'Rawhide Intestine' or 'Loquacious Kroot' or whatever they have now are just unfathomable.

    They are looking good - and also, good idea with the rubber glove for spraypainting! Might invest, so I don't keep having to explain to people why I have white thumbs.

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  5. Drax, a very entertaining post, cheers.
    Personally I never really pay attention to paint colour names. I mostly mix the colour that I want anyway. Its not that I probably haven't got the right colour somewhere, its far more likely that I just can't see where it is - even with my new paint rack! I wish a company would just give me a plain red, yellow, blue, black and white (and maybe a green, orange and purple) and I'd be a happy man. But no, that would be too easy!

    White fingernails are something to explain but black ones stand out much more. When I was spraying my Risk cards I ended up with silver finger nails on one hand. When people looked at me funny and asked why my nails were silver I said "oh its paint" - not realising that that answer didn't explain anything. Yep, I was some sort of new age man that week!

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  6. Some paint colours I'd like to see:

    Spaniel's breath, Death Watch crotch, Vostroyan Imagination and Mechanicus bruise.

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  7. Thanks for all the comments chaps (and for making me laugh!).

    > Ady: very useful to know - thanks! I drive past Bovington every time I go home to my Dad's but I've never yet taken the detour...

    > Scipio and Ackland: the gloves (UK: 'Marigolds') are an absolute essential for me. I didn't realise anyone would ever spray without them. How funny!

    I didn't do much work tonight; tomorrow I've got parents' evening and I won't even be home until 8pm (it's now 1.40am) but I'm stuffed if I'll do too much homework after a 13 hour day, so expect a post tomorrow night...
    > Wonderful Dai: against the odds tonight I managed to FINISH PAINTING the HQ section, 1 section, the 2" mortar and the Boys. This is unprecedented for me, although they'll still need to be varnished and grassed once I'm home in the daylight again...


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  8. (sorry - that comment went all over the place)

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Thanks for taking the time to comment!