Thursday 17 October 2013

Painting Rocks!

Painting miniatures really rocks! Seriously, its a great hobby, but sometimes I do have to ask myself "what the hell am I doing?". Take my latest little project. Painting a real life rock to make it look more, well, rock like....!

A rather dodgy photo of 'Rocky' the Rock
I found this interesting shaped piece of slate in the gravel verge of my office car park and as soon as I saw it I knew I could do something 'useful' with it. So the real rock was given a base coat of English Uniform (921) and several dry brushed highlight layers of Tan Yellow (912) and Ivory (918) to bring out its inner rockiness. Now it looks like a proper rock and will make a nice bit of impassible terrain for an otherwise barren desert table. [Madness, utter madness!].

I've actually been getting quite a lot of painting done over the last couple of weeks, galvanised into action by the self imposed deadline of running a North Africa FOW game before the year is out. With a couple of marathon painting sessions (by my standards at least) I am pretty close to having everything I want for the game finished. There are a couple of small items still to do and I am waiting on some crucial scenery items from the US which will also need to be painted but the bulk of the work is done now. This is fortunate as I may have to have an evening off because I seem to have developed a painfully swollen right elbow. The wife is trying to convince me its painting related repetitive strain injury (we're calling it 'Mini-Painters Elbow'), but I think she just wants me to help with the washing up! Dream on dear...

13 comments:

  1. I tried blaming it on decorating but oddly Mrs BIgLee didn't think that was the cause at all...

    [BTW Andy, the BFC models arrived yesterday and I'll get Ray and Fran's models to them in a couple of days]

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  2. I must confess that I often paint wood to look more "woody" - the lengths we go for realism when real world realism isn't good enough!
    Miles

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  3. I did the very same thing this weekend. Result: the lads with the MG now look like men hiding behind rocks, not like small plastic figures hiding behind pebbles. Even if you can't tell the difference between the patterns in various types of stone, you eye knows how it's supposed to look and what size it is. Hence you need to trick the eye.

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  4. I'm glad I am not the only one to have painting natural (sand, wood and rocks - check) products to 'improve' their appearance. Makes me feel like I really am part of a big international (admittedly slightly odd) family.

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  5. It is actually imprtant to paint this stuff. It is all to do with scale colour, we need to make them look like they are in scale with our little men, so have to alter the colour ix, and as Thomas says, trick the eye

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  6. My sister used to enjoy painting rocks when she was 3 or so . . . .

    FMB

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  7. Painting rock, been there done that! I can imagine what Stadler and Waldorf will say about this post so I will not pile on!

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  8. You painted a rock and then posted it...............maybe a picture of the washing up too!

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  9. Well done !!
    I think that painting rocks to make them more looking like "real rocks" is the same thing than doing shading and highlighting or painting real wood: because of the scale, the details are easier to see at a normal distance.
    Maybe, we must think that painting figures or anything else is like painting in 2D.

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  10. I think this would fall under the category of "you know you're a real wargamer when."

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    Replies
    1. a very addictive hobbie im new to it so learning to paint i got some rock that I need to paintmmm

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  11. Well at least one stone with a better life as under a car wheel! It looks like it is rocking!
    I understand what you mean. On a gaming table you want it to look like a rock and not like something you picked up from the parking! Maybe you should have posted pictures before and after.

    Greetings
    Peter

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