Combatpainter Studios

Wow! Just made it back. I had a great experience. Made a new friend, talked to lots of old ones and bought two items I am especially excited about-10mm Alamo and troops and Stuka Saurus troops(i.e. three flying dinos with WW2 German pilots) The con, at its new venue, was about 30 minute ride from the Philly airport as opposed to an 1:30 ride it takes to get to Lancaster. The space was very large and the AC worked nicely. The rooms  clean and large. The food was available but nothing really special. Do I go to these things for the food??? No! 

Again I spent some time with an old gaming buddy-Matt. I sat around with Michael Perry and Howard Whitehouse. I also shared some time with  Lee Howard painter extraodinaire. He does lots of work for OG/Blue Moon. Talented and passionate he is very entertaining and dedicated to this “crazy career” as he calls it. I retired early to my room as I needed the rest so I didn’t do too much at night. Mike, Igor, Frank were all at the con from my club in NY. I saw Bill, my neighbor from my South Florida days. The con staff was gracious and helpful. Monica did a great job putting it all together. I didn’t make it back til Monday morning 3:30 AM. My plane was delayed in Houston for two hours. I got back and immediately got to work as I scheduled a series of jobs at the con and want to get a move on the queue.

Since arriving home I have been working on a largish FOW armor commission. Mostly I have been assembling the models with all their little tank bits-priming and basecoating them. I will line them up and then paint. I have done some WW2 French Dragoons should get to some Blue Moon martians later today. That will be fun. The next potential cons I have in line are Sept Hurricon in Florida, Halloween at Fall In and Milcon in Austin in November so stay tuned. I will be pulling out a few boxes I have and getting a move on things. I need to secure some storage space in the neighborhood as I have less and less room for my private property, most of it baseball equipment I use for the camps I run. Just got finished with this commission 17 USA Ultra Moderns in Digital Camo!  Here you have a picture of 6 of them. I am working with a new camera-Canon Rebel $500 so hopefully my painting will look  better. Hahahahahaha! Not really good to laugh at my own  jokes….

Good to be back!

Seems I will be away this week-my son’s baseball camp and Historicon 2010. I will return next Sunday night very very late. My trips are not the easiest in the world as I reside 3 hours from nearest airport. I will travel alone this time and meet up with my cohorts in PA. I hope the ride from Philadelphia International to Valley Forge is fast and affordable. I will be running my booth (Cavalcade’s spot/ We switched. He couldn’t make it!) and talking to friends I hope I see you there. Recently,  I have been painting up lots of 15mm Rebel Minis and Foundry Old West lately. The latter will be at the con with me. Do I plan to purchase anything at the con? I doubt I will return empty handed. I seriously doubt it!

I recently found an old memory card of work I did three years ago. Also, a pic of some work I am doing painting Battle Honour’s Alpine French, Dragoons and Francs with helmet covers. Note:The French LMG is missing a bipod. It is not floating in the air.

Just finished a commission over the weekend. Will be ready to shoot out tomorrow in the mail. The Panthers came to me partially painted by another. They may have been purchased like this. The Panthers were missing some parts-splash guards, exhaust pipes, hull MG and the like. I made do with what I had to work with.  They are properly sealed and ready to roll. I request was to keep all the extra tank baggage separate so that the owner could attach where he likes. This was no problem and done that way. (Not in Picture) I normally take pics with a white background. This time I used a dark blue background for a change.  Hope you enjoy it. I will add a few extra pics in a bit as my memory card was complete and I need to find another.

Ok Starting to get back on track after being overwhelmed for two months with both commissions and conventions. These are from Resistant Rooster. Easy enough to paint. I really like ém. Painted in my studio using both Foundry Rawhide for the coats and Vallejo Brown-violet for the helmets. I used Vallejo Green-gray(I think) for the Webbing and some dark green for some other equipment here and there. Some bags have a highlight of Khaki to make them standout a bit.  A bit larger than the Battlefront but the picture shows some Battlefront and I personally don’t notice the difference. I offer you both front and back shot but no closeu-ups as I really don’t think it is needed.

Finally, back home.  I thought I coulnd’t paint 15mm!!! Lol…I don’t have to worry about stocking up for the con so I am free to focus on my commissions now. Need to get them out before Hcon in July which will be the last con I fly to this year and the next to last con I attend. The last con will be Milcon in Austin which I am looking forward to. The year, I notice, passes so quickly. I am working on some winterized WW2 infantry for FOW at the moment. Pics will be up shortly. Then I will be taking on modern digital camo on some 20mm stuff. This I am both looking forward to and wanting to avoid. Lol… Finally, I had a great time at the con in Florida. Lots of very cool people remembered me from when I lived there and seemed pleased to see me. I made a few contacts and picked up a couple of commissions which is always good and won 1st place in the painting competition!!! Need to add that I found a guy in the flea market who was dumping Copplestone, Foundry, Artizan and TAG for .50 a casting and still in bllisters. My eyes popped out of my head and picked up about $150 of minis for about $30 about 80% off! Still didn’t pay for the trip.

Anyway, thanks for listening and I will begin taking pics again this week after about a month off with non-stop commission work.

Will be attending both these so will be out for 2 weeks on “vacation”.” I will return on May 5. I will be answering all Emails daily despite being on the road so no worries getting in contact with me.

Regards,

Combatpainter

For the remaining 2 weeks I will take a select few commissions at $2 each and free shipping!!! I will take one week off from painting between March 9 to 16th to attend Cold Wars in PA!!! Contact me at combatpainter@aol dot com

No more. No more! Please, I need to get by this assault on my brain by the undead. I already had serious issues regarding zombies since I was about 9-10. It traumatized me dearly, if that is what you call it. Years afterwards, I was unable to sleep a whole night through without waking at least once from a nightmare relating to me defending my family and friends from hordes of roaming countryside zombies. Why did I have to go see Romero’s “Night” alone and so young and impressionable?  It has truly screwed my brain. It has fried it! I am no use to society at this point with zombies in my brain.

I spent my summers in a house not unlike the one in the Romero movie, not in PA but in the North of Spain. It was quiet, rural and very isolated. I mean you could hear a car miles away that is how quiet it was at the summer place.  Now I have a chance of bringing back all this in my hobby. I fuse Undead, FOW, my life and Nazis all in one.

When I examine that time now, I realize why the movie “Night of the Living Dead” had such a profound effect on my psyche.  First of all, zombies hadn’t really existed in that form-swarming hordes of nextdoor neighbor type cannibalistic zombies in a modern 1960’s setting. You have a couple of obscure earlier films depicting Hatian voodoo type zombies but nothing like this. The first time you are introduced to something it has more of an impact on you-it’s new!  Next, the movie was in black and white kind of the way I saw society cause I wouldn’t get my first color TV for another year or two so I pretty much understood the adult world in black and white. Thirdly, you really didn’t totally recognize the zombies as friend or foe until you really looked. This terrorized me. They were monsters that looked just like us.  They could be standing next to you and you wouldn’t really notice until they took a bite out of you. I mean you had to really look.  Finally, the movie created a feeling that there was just no way out and that this was it-the end. That was very scary. No way out??? Romero you bastard!  You have a sick mind!

 Now back to minis-Rebel Minis puts out a very inexpensive blister of 15mm metal Nazi Zombies-about 7 poses I think. The poses I like. They communicate zombie to me so that is good. As 15mm they are not too big and not too small.  Fit pretty well with battlefront. They are easy to convert. I took one and cut him at the waist. If you get the one dragging the rifle, his base is big enough for two so you cut that and attach the torso of the zombie to the new base.  Although it is not shown here in the pics, I will have it for my next batch of Afrika Korp Nazi zombies. Also, it is easy to cut arms and just raise or lower them to produce a variation and change their  appearance a little bit so you are not looking at the same mini over and over.  Nobody I know makes these and with all these cool Nazi Zombie movies coming out-”Outpost,” ” Dead Snow,” “Blood Creek,” and such it is good to have them around.

 It was about 1977 and the Late Show on CBS would show “Shockwaves,” eerie as hell and always managed to scare the hell out of me.  It is about a group on a three hour boat tour that end up stranded on an island inhabited by , you guessed it,  Nazi zombies! Anyway, I digress so back to the minis; these little bastards are fine specimens except that I find the belts are not raised enough from the figures so you need to guess and make your own which I really am not a fan of doing that when I paint. 

I mentioned this to Mike at Rebel Minis and he said he would do that in future releases. I also mentioned how I thought that a pack of heads with small pins attached to minimize the drilling and such would be added bonus and would be great to create diversity in the zombie pack. Also you can beat the price. He now has platoon packs you can get for $14 or something like that which is cool.  Anyway, here are some pics of the zombies I did using Flames of War inspired basing and organization.

Recently I have been struggling with the notion of how much detail  to put into the painting of 15mm figures.  Do I paint the figures to stand out at arms length or do I paint them to be examined close-up with a magnifying glass. The third alternative would be to paint them somewhere in between. WW2, a few weeks ago I discovered a painter that uses a very loud painting style. He then takes pictures from a few feet away and they truly scream out at you. I know this method and have used this method for years but over the last two my painting, especially of 28mm have become much softer. No harsh screaming degrees of tonality or color, more of a sleepy and quiet look which requires a close look to interpret.

One issue I have always had with gaming at cons is that there is never any light. This has always gotten me crazy. I spend hours and hours painting these models. I then use them in a game and you can barely notice the work. This of course has been with the 25mm models. 15mm and less is a whole norther world. This is what I did-I took some models and painted them in a very discrete and subdued fashion using washes. I based and took pictures. Then weeks later I went back and added more details. Finally, I took them about three weeks later and added more detail but this time used more contrasting colors to bring them to life and make them stand out on the tabletop. The purpose of all this is to allow you to make out the details from a few feet away. I really like this look and think that it actually makes sense. At the end of the day it shows up pretty obviously in the pictures. You decide…

Original

Retouched 8th Army

Original

Retouched DAK