This is getting out of hand... Now there are two of them!

 I took a short four day break from painting as I am currently remodelling my hobby area. Now I am back again to painting and as I want to finish what I start, I continued my work on the Senate Commando captain.

The progress is not super noticeable as all I really did was resharpen the highlights around his face and legs; Using heavily thinned purple shade to enhance the contrast in some armour plates and near recesses; And lastly I redid his blasters entirely. As you can see he is nearing completion and I will probably spend no more than an evening or two to get him done. However..

I mentioned in the last post that there is a second Commando I started painting g a while back; I pulled him out of my WIP pile and touched him up a little. Primarily I did his gun in tandem with the captain; His belt was black but I decided to stay somewhat lore accurate and paint it blue like the armour; You may notice that the captain only has the two front boxes blue on his belt while the rest is black. Since he has two leather holsters I felt it appropriate to paint the other pouches black too, on top of that the sculptor clearly sculpted them like leather pouches rather than the mechanical boxes on this second guy. This guy is pretty much done except for his undersuit and the small bit of armour poking out from below his gun‘s butt. Safe to say he will be done around the same time as the captain. 

Nepo-Baby WIP

 Ever since I started actually buying STLs for miniatures, I’ve fallen into the same trap as most hobbyists do of just buying STLs, but never actually using them. It’s so easy since they don’t even take up space. As such I am attempting to combat this by actually making myself paint at least a few of those I buy. And by 'making' I obviously mean putting them in my field of view until the inspiration takes me. This is a hobby, not a job.

This is a Senate Commando Captain by Anvilrage Studios. If you are not a massive Star Wars Nerd, these are essentially the security of the republic senate building and their diplomatic delegations. These were primarily a ceremonial guard, but during the Clone Wars they were equipped with the same armour and weapons as the Clones and served more in combat. This would show how truly corrupt their organization was, as most of these 'Commandos' were just the family of high ranking Senators and thus completely incompetent as soldiers. Just like the last Star Wars miniature I painted, I am going to take a Star Wars Unlimited card as my inspiration so-to-speak. I know this guy looks slightly different than the standard guards, but it still works. While the card does not serve as my sole inspiration or anything like that, I find it fun to connect my two hobbies in this way. 

Some of you may remember that I actually started painting a Senate Commando around a year ago and I think I will get around to finishing him as well alongside his captain.

Star Wars Legion: Tantive IV Base Painting Guide

When I showed off my Rebel Fleet Trooper I uploaded the painting guide for them on my Patreon; What I omitted at the time was how I painted the Tantive IV base. At the time I had no good photo angle for it and I also experienced some issues while painting it. Because of those reasons it was left out of the painting guide. I still wanted to put together a painting guide though, since some of you requested it. It took me a bit, but today is the day you get your wish:

Let us start with the painting card; I make and use these as a quick reference when painting by recipe. They are easy to have a quick idea what paints you need, but do not tell you much about the finer details. 

If you want to have an overview over all the cards available, you can join my Discord Server where I upload those that are publicly available. For those not publicly available you can get them either by subscribing to my Patreon or Ko-Fi or buy them for a one time payment. All of the money raised this way goes towards my Hobby and development of my game. 

Now with all that preamble out of the way, let us begin; You will need four paints and a light primer; The paints you need can be seen as above and are as follows:

• Army Painter Speedpaint Ashen Stone(or any light bluish white grey speedpaint equivalent; You could also use a bone colored one for a different look)
• Speedpaint Medium(or whichever medium is appropriate for the above used paint)
• Vallejo Sky Grey(or any light grey paint)
• White

You will also need a base, obviously. I bought up two blisters of the old Star Wars Legion moulded bases, but I am sure there are plenty of equivalent STLs that work too. You just need a vaguely Sci Fi corridor looking floor. 

Step 1

The initial prime can be any light colour. I used Wraithbone, because it is the least volatile of my light spray paints. You want a smooth finish, so your prime should not cover entirely and only give your paint a surface to stick to. I made that mistake the first time where I ended up having a slightly coarse texture, which affected later stages of the paint scheme. The next step is to basecoat the entire base with the Sky Grey, I forgot to take a picture of that, but just make sure it covers evenly. Be sure to use multiple thin coats and watch out for build up in the recesses, we do not want those. 

Step 3

The first pass of Ashen Stone is a mix of 7 parts Speedpaint Medium and 4 parts Ashen Stone; This mix ensures a thinner coverage and decent viscosity. Apply this broadly over the base; You might notice the paint curling in some areas, just quickly pass over it with the brush and it should cover decently again. Now once everything is covered you are not done yet. Take a thin brush with a decent belly and run it through the recesses to soak up excess paint. If you do not do this and let it dry, it will clog up the recesses. The end result should show most of the Speedpaint pooling towards the centre of deck plates. Give this stage a solid 20 minutes to dry at minimum. 

Step 4

The next step will require a round Drybrush or a make up brush. Before you put paint on it, dip it in some water and rub it vigorously into a paper towel to remove any paint still stuck in there. You would be surprised how much a little paint can tint bright white paints like Sky Grey. Once you ensured a clean and dry brush you want to softly drybrush the base with Sky Grey to strengthen the paint near the edges of deck plates. We achieve this by doing circular motions always going from an edge towards the inner area. Take your time with this until you have brightened up the edges a bit more.

Step 5

After the Drybrush you might notice a slightly chalky finish, to combat this, we are going to do another pass of Ashen Stone. This time the mix is a ratio of 1 part of Ashen Stone and 3 parts of Speedpaint Medium. Apply this only to the deck plates; Leave out the recesses unless you see any drybrush dust had collected in it after the previous step.

Step 6

This step requires quite a bit of brush control as we are going to glaze up some highlights. If you do not know what glazing is, I would point you to the myriad of Youtube tutorials on this technique as I do not think I can adequately explain it over text. That being said, you can also leave out this step and do a thick edge highlight with Sky Grey instead. If you feel up to the task, you are going to take Sky Grey and edge highlight the entire base; Once you are done you are going to glaze Sky Grey towards the edges. Do this as many times until you have a decent colour transition towards the end of each deck plate. 

Final Step

The final step is an edge highlight of White to finish off the base. Optionally you can apply weathering with white too such as scratches or dings. This leaves the top of the base done; I am not going to go over how to paint the base rim, as the colour used will depend on your army, project or preference. What I will tell you is to get a long brush with a decent belly and apply the paint in 3-4 thin layers across the rim, work methodically to not spill any on the top. For my Fleet Trooper I used Ionic Smart Colors Neutral Grey.

This wraps up my painting guide on Tantive IV style bases, I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful for your own projects. If you did, please let me know by leaving a comment. If you have any requests for a painting guide, you can do so via the comments as well and I will see what I can do. Lastly a reminder you can support me by joining either my Patreon or Ko-Fi or if you cannot afford to support me monetarily I always love seeing new faces on my Discord. Cheers!

A Little Detour To A Galaxy Far Far Away...

 

I love Star Wars; When I was a little girl when my father showed me the movies and I got even more into it when the Clone Wars started airing. It became sort of a weekly ritual for some classmates and I to meet at one of our places and watch the newest episode on Sunday. That said, despite my biggest love being the prequel era, the Clone Wars especially, I always had this odd love for the Rebel fleet troopers. Besides seeing them in A New Hope I also had the 2008 LEGO Rebel scout speeder set and so had four of these little guys in Lego. And I marvelled at their simple attire, you had the Storm Troopers in their pristine white armour, the Rebels on Hoth in functional cold weather gear and the Commandos on Endor in their camouflage ponchos; Yet these guys were rocking simple shirts and vests as well as these iconic weird helmets. At the time I had no context for what their deal was and so they seemed so out of place and I think that is what drew me to them. Unlike the professional looking rebels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi these guys looked like you handed some office worker a gun and told them to go hold that ship corridor.

Almost 1 1/2 decade later and I learn about Star Wars Legion and see that they have them as miniatures. So I bought them almost immediately, but seeing that they were made from soft PVC plastic I got demotivated and put them away turning towards different projects. That was until two months ago when I got really into Star Wars Unlimited, specifically because I saw they had cards for the Fleet Troopers(you can see one of those cards in the top image). It immediately sparked that love again and then two days ago I grabbed one of them and put her together, ready to paint.

Sadly my initial aversion to their material was not unfounded and these sculpts are really rough, with janky edges, awful to remove mould lines and worst of all they have no sculpted eyes, just pits. All in all, despite loving these guys I decided not to invest too much effort into these miniatures as to not get disheartened when something goes wrong. That said, despite being such a rushed and simple paint job I am very happy with the result. I think my attempts at more messy and sketchy painting is starting to bear fruits and I am starting to get better results in shorter amounts of time. I also sat down and put together a painting guide on how I did it, you can find it over on my Patreon here for the price of a coffee and bun. I had a lot of fun painting this miniature regardless of the troubles, it was a joy reminiscing about how I felt about them back as a kid. Do you have a _glup shitto' that you were obsessed/fascinated with as a kid? I would love to know!

A rebellious WIP

The SW Unlimited cards are great reference material!

I am yet again jumping systems and universes and ended up painting a rebel fleet trooper; This time it was pretty much just a quick two session paint job though. And in a way I have been wanting to paint these guys for years, but never got the courage to try because they were made from PVC plastic. I used my Star Wars Unlimited cards I have of these guys(and I have all different forms of Fleet trooper cards except for the newest one from Lawless Time) as a reference mixed with photos from A New Hope and Rogue One.

These guys just get all the banger scenes don't they?

All she needs now is a space ship base and I can take some studio photos of her.

May The 4th Be With You!

 

Happy May the 4th! For Star Wars Day this year I thought I would upload these Legion miniatures I painted back in 2023 for work again. I was new at work and was asked to paint some Miniatures to put in the display for May the 4th.

You can kind of tell how much my photography set up has changed since then. Back then I used my Pixel 4 which had a pretty miserable camera, especially for larger shots like these.

Besides these two diorama like shots I also painted two B2 Super Battle Droids to flank Asajj Ventress. I originally intended for the line up to be Ventress with two B2s, Anakin with two ARC Troopers, Thrawn with two Storm Troopers and a Lando Calrissian with two Rebel Commandos. In the end I ran out of time and one of the ARC Troopers broke so I ended up with just what is shown.

I really enjoyed painting the B2s, they were a staple of early Clone Wars which I really enjoyed as a kid.

You may have noticed that I used a General Veers as a Thrawn inspired by his field uniform in Star Wars Rebels. Now that there is an official miniature, maybe I should revisit him again, let me know in the comments!

At the time I was rewatching The Mandalorian and in a bid to make the Storm Trooper seem a bit more interesting I painted one as a Mortar Trooper from the episode that reintroduces Boba Fett.

I tried following the Sorastro Paints guide for Anakin, which on the one hand made for an amazing looking tunic; On the other hand his skin came out creepily pale.

Last on the list is my personal favourite; Asajj Ventress, the bald headed witch who I loved ever since I was a kid.

I have since been on and off trying to get back into painting Star Wars, the most promising of these attempts is this Senate Commando who I will try and finish one of these days; Stay tuned for that.