Step-by-Step

This time around, I thought it would be cool to take picks of the minis at each step of the color blocking:

For those keeping count, this was round two of painting these gents. After the first shading dip fail, I stripped and attempted to re-prime them. That didn't go so well (high humidity?) so I tried a different primer (white auto-primer).

I like the look and feel of the auto primer. A couple of caveats though. It seems to be more fragile than the Army Painter primers. That seems counter-intuitive as, at least in theory, it should bond better to the metal since that's what it's made for. Maybe it goes on thinner or I've just been clumsier with the minis this week. Also, I need to be more liberal with the base colors when using the white primer. This time they've got a lot of little white specks peeking through. Hopefully the Quickshade will take care of that. We'll find out soon enough!

As to the painting, I've gone and forth on the wet palette. At first I liked how it kept the paints from glopping up on me during the painting session. But then it felt like I couldn't control how wet the paints were getting. Since I'm only painting these three stupid levy over and over again, I don't feel like I'm getting the benefit of the wet palette - helping you save paint when you paint day-in and day-out. My painting has been sporadic at best. I might try it out again but keep the sponge in the wet palette less water logged.

I had another brush fail. This time it's my own damn fault. All the advice was: buy some nice Kolinsky sable brushes. I am pretty cheap however and I was wooed by these awesome red handles. Talk about getting the cart before the ox! The handles are brilliant. The brushes are crap. They were marginally better than the Army Painter brushes, but still had some crazy wild hairs poking out at random. Painting miniatures well can be taxing on its own. Let alone with itinerant brushes. I finally broke down and bought some real brushes. They made it from England in two days! Have not yet tried them, but I'm optimistic...