Working with the terrain III

Yes, yes. I am still alive. At least, at the moment. I am in the last step of my PhD, writing the thesis, and these weeks / months are being crazy.  Hopefully everything will be done soon, and then I could continue painting every now and then while continuing working with mitochondria. However, my brushes did not stall completely these days. I have the need to scape a little bit from the reality of the world and I find in this hobby a great valve of scape. Therefore, I bring here a new post addressing how to prepare scenery bases.…

How to make flags

In this tutorial I would like to share with you the method I use to make flags for our wargame armies. Although paper-printed flags are much easier and quicker to use, and basically we can find any design we need on the internet, the final effect is not the same. In my humble opinion, printed-flags lack charisma; and most of the times, they do not reflect the same [painting] style our miniatures have. They look like a part of a toy. When I see one, I immediately think: it does not belong here. Therefore, I prefer to hand-paint my own…

Warhammer 40.000 tanks I

Today I wanted to share with you a painting guide for a Warhammer 40k tank, a Leman Russ for my Genestealer Cult. Ten years ago I gathered around twelve Imperial Guard tanks. I loved them, those enormous and powerful steel monsters. Especially the Forge World versions, more realistic (less toy-like) and charismatic. However, when I was younger I did not spend much time painting these tanks: just with a brush I tried to simulate a simple camo. And that was all. Lately, I could not help feeling gutted about this, since over the last years I have learnt a lot…

War in the Middle-East

Over the last years I have been commissioned to paint plenty of miniatures featuring the Middle-East conflicts we have sadly seen in the TV lately. I am the first one who consider that there might be something wrong with this… when these conflicts are very close in time and space. But let be honest. As wargamers we do not require much motivation to start collecting and painting tiny miniatures. Just a book, a movie…or the BBC channel. We like to simulate any conflict and play one of our “chess games”. And this has nothing to do either with the war…

Genestealer Cult, Warhammer 40.0000

During the short –but amazing- visit of the ModelBrush.com team to Finland, we found a Shadow War: Armageddon box in the local shop. This was a grateful surprise as we thought it was absolutely sold out everywhere. After splitting it among the four of us, I was the lucky guy who obtained the rule book. Since I read the first news about this game I wanted to check it out. And now I had the perfect opportunity. But I needed a warband! At this point I remember that I had plenty of Cultists miniatures at home from the Overkill box,…

Trench and mud

I had the great opportunity to prepare a diorama for the cover of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy #90, where I have represented one of the probably most charismatic scenes of the last century wars, a trench raiding. More specifically, a German counter attack to take a trench section back. I wanted to share with you some details addressing the preparation of this diorama, although you will actually find more information inside the magazine. Additionally, in this very same WSS issue I have published a complete step-by-step painting guide of the Spanish 1898 colonial army, using the new miniatures from 1898…

How to paint the 1980 Spanish army

Today, I have another painting guide to share with you. If last time we saw how to paint Spanish Tercios, this time we move a bit forward until 1980. I have ad-hoc prepared a painting guide for the new Totentanz Miniatures Kickstarter campaign which covers the 1980 Spanish army in 15mm (perfect to play Team Yankee!). In this guide I show how to paint Spanish infantry in a detailed step-by-step guide, besides a couple of color sheets; one of them dedicated to the AMX-30E tank. This time the painting guide has been prepared in collaboration with Modelbrush. Note that the…

How to paint 28mm Spanish Tercios

Today, I wanted to share with you a painting guide I prepared ad-hoc for the Kraken Released’s guys, who recently founded a Kickstarter campaign to produce an entire new range of 28mm Spanish Tercios miniatures (17th century). The painting guide, prepared in collaboration with the PaintingWar magazine’s crew, is divided in two sections. The former contains a step-by-step painting guide showing how to paint a pikeman (how to paint clothes, metal parts, skin, etc); while three sheets or color carts form the latter, covering the colors needed to paint the miniature beside some historical data and painting tips (for instance,…

Painting 15mm tanks: E25 tank hunter

I painted this German tank –one of my favorites WWII tanks, although it was a prototype– two years ago. It is a E-25 tank, produced in 15mm by Khurasan Miniatures. Although I have already published similar painting guides in my blog, I think that there is always something new to learn. The main topic of this article is the combination of the hairspray technique (or chipping effect fluid) with masks to create worn tritonal camouflage. Step 1 – Preparation We remove all imperfections from the model with a modelling knife and files. Then, glue some parts such as hatches, but…

Painting uniforms

I obtained a nice feedback from the “philosophical” article I posted regarding how to paint mounted units; where instead of discussing technical issues (or “how to paint…”), I paid more attention on the question mark “why”: why we do what we do. In my opinion, painting miniatures for wargames is not only about the painting, but it is also about telling a story. And these stories might be based on the (military) history; something that is real. And therefore, we can try to reflect this reality in our tiny armies. And in this post I would like to discuss some…