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So I was pretty excited and Thursday I was ready to give my first attempt at using the oil wipe technique. I pulled out my water soluble Windsor Newton Burnt Umber and mixed up a nice wash, a little thicker than my acrylic washes but thin enough to flow into the depths of the detail.

I grabbed five of the Arquebusier Cavalry and applied a nice liberal wash and in my high dry climate I figured that was a long enough wait, I didn't want it to dry on me. I took a some cotton rags and started to lightly rub off the wash. Looked good at the start but then I noticed that I was rubbing down to bare metal. I tried it on the next letting up on the pressure I was applying. No go, still taking paint down to the bare metal.

I finished rubbing the five figures that I started with and could see quite a variation on how much metal was now visible. Clearly not a successful evening. I have used the Vallejo acrylic primers with a lot of success but I have never subjected them to this kind of pressure before and obviously it was not up to the task. My only good choice was to strip everything down to the bare metal again and go with an enamel or lacquer primer.

I have a couple of different paints I'm going to try this time. First up will be Army Painter Leather Brown (and actually is a primer) and three Tamiya colors: TS-33 Dull Red, TS-62 Nato Brown and TS-34 Camel Yellow. Why not Humbrol as used by Metal Mountain? Because Humbrol is not readily available in my area except in small pots and I wasn't going to be home this weekend and wouldn't have access to my airbrush. I figure what I have on hand right now should do the trick.

Of course now that I have everything stripped (and found a few more mold lines to deal with) its raining hard and it looks like its going to keep on raining for the rest of the evening. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get some primer on these guys and they will be ready for the oil wash on Monday.

Here are some pictures of the bare pewter showing through after I wiped off the oil wash. It varies a lot, from a whole patches to just some buckles.

Well I finally made some progress today on the Danish Cavalry. I pulled out the airbrush and my bottle of Vallejo Surface Primer (RAL 8000 German Green Brown). I'm pretty happy with the primer coat on these, looks nice and smooth, no fuzzies.

I have been waiting for this package to arrive since the middle of May. Of course that's no reflection on their ability to ship its just when I pre-ordered this one. So waiting was necessary this time around. This is one packed box full of cool wood products to build, of all things, a Brick Freight House. Laser cut and scribed components and two booklets of building and weathering instructions. This should look great on my version of the Patch and I'm looking forward to diving in and putting this one together. In fact I might be putting some stuff aside to do just that. I'm haven't done a building kit in a year or so, and I'm really looking forward to putting this one together.

The Box Top


The Instruction books

I didn't actually manage to paint anything this weekend but I now have 2 dozen or so cavalry ready to be primed. Hopefully there will be no interruptions and I'll be able to do that tonight and then do the oil rubbing tomorrow and if I'm really lucky start painting them up on Wednesday.

As I said no painting this weekend so there was no love for my Rohan Helmingas. This issue with these right now is that I want to paint them but I have no reason to paint them since the tournament was cancelled. So they have been set to the side for a bit while I work my TYW Danes. I'll probably pull them out and do some work on them just to ease the monotony of painting horses and what not.

I also find myself in something of a painting slump. I have a bunch of stuff that is more than half finished, some of which wouldn't take long to finish, and I just can't seem to get the brushes out and get it done. Hopefully sitting down with the airbrush and priming will get me back on track. Hope everyone has a good week.