Search the Community

Last week I finished up a stand of medieval city militia using a 4-color limited Zorn palette. This turned out to be oddly calming, so I went ahead this week and prepared a second stand of 8 figures (mostly duplicate poses) from the same box of Strelets 1/72 scale plastics. I would ordinarily use 2 stands for something like a Dragon Rampant unit, so it’s nice to have them in matching pairs where possible. I started in on them Friday morning, and had them varnished by supper time on Saturday (when we headed out to a ballroom dance event). I finished up the basing and put a final spray coat on them this afternoon. When I clipped these 8 from their sprues, I collected a few of the more interesting poses for use on individual bases for contingency fantasy games. I finished one of the three this afternoon, still using a Zorn palette. As you can see, these are pretty small compared to the usual Reaper sizes. I was please with how the face came out, given the size. I don’t usually zoom in to the level where the individual brush strokes are showing, but there you are. Given the size, that’s more than you’ll actually see during a game, so it’s really just for my own amusement.

I finally had the opportunity to get to a pending fun project this weekend. I heard about the Zorn palette, a limited set of four colors, a while back, and wanted to try this. So, this is the set of hobby paints I chose. The key is that the black has to be a blue-black, that will give a sort of faded denim when mixed with white. Here’s some playing around on the wet palette. Considering that the only brilliant color you’ll get is red, I thought that the best fit would be something medieval, where the subdued colors would look natural. I removed a batch of Strelets Medieval City Levy from the sprues a couple of weeks ago, because I needed some spearmen for my fantasy campaign, and they seemed like a good choice. So, yesterday morning I started. Knowing that these were going to end in a group, I didn’t worry too much about the occasional stray mold line. After I finished up the 8th figure, I posed them on the stand. I gave them my usual base treatment of sand and white glue, followed by a tuft and some flock. When all of that was dry, a coat of spray varnish: All of these pictures represent a much closer view that would be seen on the table. Anyway, an interesting exercise, and one that I will repeat. For travel painting, a four palette would be handy…