Painting drive, engage!

After essay season ended on Thursday, there's been a flurry of painting activity! The first cause of this was the arrival of many new Infinity models; those sculpts are so cool I can't keep myself away! So now I have an additional Sekban (armed with a Heavy Rocket Launcher no less), an Azra'Il, a Djanbazan sniper and a Fiday to my name as well as the Sekban box set.

The full Sekban team. The new HRL guy (second from the right) is the mini which made me get into Haqqislam.

Been a while since I painted eyes, but I think these turned out OK...

 Seriously cool pose on this guy.

The Fiday. She'll be used as an Odalisque or an Al'Hawwa depending on the list. Needed a female mini and the single Odalisque looks silly, so I got this one instead.

The second cause of the mass painting is the imminence of the UK Student Nationals, which I shall be attending, along with my Britannian fleet. The rules say every mini has to be fully painted, which has forced me to paint tiny flyers after 3 years of procrastination. It also means I've got around to painting some of the stuff from the sub flotilla box I picked up in October.

16 bloody TFTs. Not as annoying to paint as I thought they'd be. Just very boring...

Dominion Support Cruiser

TFTs

Valiant Attack Subs

On all these I've started using the Tamiya acrylics I picked up, and using either an oil wash, or, on the DW stuff and the bodysuit for the Fiday, a gloss enamel wash. After being told great things about Tamiya, then being informed by the internet that they were "AIDS for brush painting", I've found them reasonable to use. They don't need thinning really, but in between each layer you definitely have to allow the proper time for drying, otherwise you can end up wiping all the paint off. The colours are nice- the dark green on the Infinity stuff is the Olive Drab (JGSDF) XF-74 and the blue-grey on the DW stuff is the Medium Blue XF-18.

I'm really liking mixing my own washes. Mixed right, the flow control is great and the glossiness of the enamel really lends itself to DW stuff.

Hopefully this amount of painting shall continue, but with my diss to be worked on I doubt it...

New poison!

So after the my wargaming club exploded with Infinity players I decided to take the plunge myself and go for some Haqqislam. I love their medium & heavy infantry, and with the new Sekban boxset just out I decided to treat myself to that.

The minis are nicely proportioned and the poses are good, although not as dynamic as some of the other individual Infinity models. Although the details seemed to be lacking at first glance, after some primer they showed up a lot better, showing some really quite intricate detail. Although there is a reasonable amount of small flash, the lack of casting lines on these minis is quite astounding. The moment I realised they weren't there snuck up on me, but it's really nice not having to deal with them.

Assembly of the head & back is extremely straight forward, but the arms are a different matter and can be very fiddly to attach.
I went with a straight forward scheme similar to the official one of khaki for cloth & a light green for armour. Shoulder pads in yellow & red and the back rods (something to do with the Sekban fighting in zero-G I reckon) in dark grey break up the scheme. As my old GW wash was all dried up, I experimented with a burnt umber oil paint thinned with artists turpentine as a wash, which works very nicely, providing a much more weathered look to the minis

The end result is only table-top standard, with the shoulder pads in need of touching up and some way of preventing metal minis chipping needed desperately, but they're fun to paint and still a really cool design.

I also went and got some more supplies. The Tamiya shall be my new main paint for my Britannian's in Dystopian Wars, as I've heard good things about Tamiya, and the Enamel thinners is for some old Humbrol Black which I plan on using as a wash for DW minis. I hadn't realised Tamiya acrylics smell, and the combination along with trying out the Enamel thinners and mixing the oil wash for the Sekban resulted in many new smells coming from the paint bench yesterday!