Ghurkas, Automatons and more

 So things took yet another tumble and I ended up not painting for a few more days, instead turning to sorting my childhood Lego collection and watching the first season of The Pitt; That is to say, my schedule has been all over the place and will most likely remain so for the next few days as well. In between I did find some time to hobby though, not a lot, but still enough to put together a small post talking about it.

First off I have been painting away at this old metal Ghurka. Seeing as there is a new plastic kit on the horizon I was motivated to dust off the old models I own. I think it was around Christmas two years ago when I picked up the old Ghurka Platoon box and a MMG team, which have since been left untouched. Well not anymore! I also got a bit more space to practice NMM on with this guy. I have said it before and I will say it again, WW2 miniatures are perfect to get into NMM with since there is only ever a small amount present, so you can get some striking results with little effort.

The new MKI surprisingly can be built doing the classic Italian gesture of disbelief.

Moving forward a few years, I got a surprise package by Warlord Games the other day with a sprue each of the new Automated infantry. I love the new slightly bulkier look of the MK1 and the complete overhaul of the MKII as the hulking monstrosities they are meant to be. As you may know I love painting Italians for Bolt Action, so doing them for K47 is the logical choice. Sadly the Italians have been orphaned between three forces. In Konflikt you can play either allied or axis Italians, playing them as axis is easy since they are all in one faction. When trying to play them as allied it becomes a bit of an issue. They have two rift units, the Bersaglieri armoured infantry and the Firefly Paracadutisti; As you can guess, the Paracadutisti are using the Firefly equipment and are thus available in the US army list. The Bersaglieri however are based on Galahad armoured infantry(They are literally just a head swap) and are thus in the Commonwealth list. This makes it quite hard to build an Italian Konflikt force without using Proxys.

Those goggles with that eye? No sense of fashion.

So this is exactly what I will be doing, I took this opportunity to build some allied Italian Automated Infantry, the MKIs are relatively easy as their heads are just about small enough to fit the Italian helmets(even if I did not make it fit that well). The MKIIs are the trickier of the two as their heads are much bigger. I decided to settle for giving them the goggles from the Italian sprue and a feather from the Alpini; These guys will have their paintjob do most of the heavy lifting.

Last but not least we go back by a few hundred years to the times of the Ottoman invasions of Europe. Warlord Games sent me a big package a while back for their newest Pike and Shotte Supplement and I’ve been working to slowly paint up the new promotional figure Kara Mustafa Pasha. He was a welcome opportunity to practice painting darker skin that is not 'black'(you know what I mean). I am not 100% sold on this scheme yet, but I already repainted his skin once, so I think this will do for now.

While I love painting slow and methodically, I recently felt I should get out of my comfort zone more and try to get quicker. To that end I am trying to emulate the very sketch like style of painting I have seen in many videos online. The yellow cape here felt like a good exercise for this. I definitely need to improve on my smoothing, but I think I managed to place the highlights correctly. This is part of a general attempt to improve my painting by trying new things I would not normally do.