Colore ton Monde: Mars/March, The Masked Ball

Enough of the Oldhammer minis, back to the present, or indeed the near future...
 
March's challenge was to paint a figure with their face hidden. Really not to taxing at all to find, as there are a lot of near/far future games that stick a gas mask on their minis, and many many other ranges that have at least a few figs with full face helmets. In the end, I went with the Viridians I brought back from the UK, as I seem to be on a roll with them. I have five Special Forces minis, and four of them are wearing gas masks. Easy peasy. They also fit into the stealth motif of this months challenge.

 

So, there you go, faces all hidden, and stealth theme too. I have also had the call to say the bases for these guys have arrived, so they will be based and done very shortly.

I love the fact that of the five minis in this squad, three are female.

Warhammer Fantasy: Wood Elf Archers

The last of my painted minis from way back for the moment, and the last of the Wood Elves. This time, from the first boxed set of plastic minis from GW (maybe some of the first plastic minis? I'm sure someone will correct me there). Three of these have since been painted (see here for details), and I have started to add some inks to the others, to get some definition.

The elf on the far right of the front rank was one of my first conversions. From archer to standard bearer.

The flag is of course, freehand, and the pole is a spare plastic lance from a set of early Wood Elf cavalry, which are languishing unpainted in a box, but will be seeing the front of the paint queue shortly, as they are proper Oldhammer Ols Skool minis, pre 3rd ed. The pole has been fixed and pinned to the bearer now (something that was not in my tool kit of skills back in the day).

Warhammer Fantasy: Wood Elf Wardancers

Continuing this week's theme of showing off my early works, I stay with the Wood Elves again, but thsi time we have some Wardancers. The Wood Elf Wardancers were without a doubt my favourite unit for any Warhammer Army. Maybe of any army of any system, well at least back in the 90s they were. I was also a big fan of their incarnation in WFRP, and had a couple of Elven characters I wanted to advance to this career, but unfortunately that never transpired.
These particular Wardancers were painted to go more with a High Elf Army, as a Sea Elf allied contingent. The Wardancers in this case were the first over the side in a landing party or boarding action. The marines of the Warhammer world.

Three of these guys have shields, all done with freehand. Something which I rarely attempt these days, but I think I should start looking at again, as some of these are alright. I especially like the eye.

Compare these to my more recent attempt at painting a wardancer, and you can see how my painting has evolved over time.

There's at least one more post of Wood Elves to follow, at least of my painted minis from back in the 90s. There are a bunch more Oldhammer minis that I brought back, but none are painted. Some will be though, as these old minis are really working as an inspiration to me to get me going on them.

As to the old painted minis, I don't know yet if I want to repaint them, but they will certainly be rebased. Maybe I'll just go over them with the odd ink or two, just to help them pop a little more.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle: Wood Elf Beast Handler

Some more good old fashioned Warhammer Fantasy Battle minis, this time some wood Elves. I bought two blisters for animal handlers, one of the boar-handler and his boar, and another of the dog handler and his dogs. There were two others in the set, one with a bear, and I think another with three large cats. The only one to have been painted was the boar handler. I am still very proud of the way the boars came out, and of the tattoos on the elf. There are some touch ups needed to make up for the 20 odd years of neglect and handling, but that shouldn't take too much effort. The only think I want to change is the bases for the boar, as they're just too big. These guys wouldn't look too out of place on some simple 25mm bases, as these cavalry bases just swamp them.

Oldhammer Minis

Some painted minis from way back when, that took the trip back to Canada with me. This time, we've got some old-school Games Workshop minis a couple from my Empire army, and one from the High Elves. Again, don't look too closely at the bases, that was not a strong point of mine.

Imperial Pistoleer. I am a fan of this mini, and in my memory, I was quite proud of the paint job. After seeing it now, I think this one will be a candidate for stripping and repainting.

A Sea Elf for my High Elf army. One of the Ship's Company unit I had. Looking at the shield, this was back in the time where I was experimenting with freehand. This is one of the lesser efforts, there are better examples on my Wardancers, which I will post shortly. More paint chipping here, but I think this one will be given a patch job rather than stripping it.

A human wizard. Not necessarily for my Empire army, as the heart in the hand suggests darker magics. This one was not completed, but was an initial test with inks (or diluted paint). his one will be easy to finish off. I especially like his robes, and am looking forward to adding some gore to that heart.

Paint Table Saturday

I have never yet participated in this spot as yet, as Saturdays are not a day I get to do much painting. However, this afternoon was a family painting session, as the girls and I sat down together.

First off, we did some painting on paper, then, once I waited to see if everyone was actually in the mood to paint, and not to wander off and do other stuff, we each took one of these old WFB Wood Elf archers each and got stuck in.

Man, these things are old. The first plastic minis I bought, and I think some of the first plastics GW made. The detail on these is impressively minimal, but they were perfect for today's exercise.

The big'un was having trouble with the paint coming off the mini when she was holding it (we were using other craft paints as well as my acrylics, but they were doing the job), so I had to get each of them a cork to hold the mini with.

Here are the final results:

As you can see, only the lil'un finished hers off, what a speed painter! I loved the colour the big'un used for the cloak, so I copied her, no need for more green in my archer unit. She in turn liked the green hair her sister had painted and copied that.

I have more of these guys, some of which I painted about 20 years ago or so. Look out for them in the near future.