New Beginning

The start of a new year, and with it the continuation of the never-ending journey of miniatures painting.  The end of last year was very busy between work and family, but I have not been completely idle.  Time to catch everybody up on what I've painted.  Let's start with an exchange I did for a Jayne hat that a friend of mine made:



And a gift for my friend's birthday:



I'm going to be keeping my descriptions brief with one exception.  There's a lot that's been done, and a lot to go.  I painted up an OGRE Mk. IV in ATACS camo:



That was for my friend, and he liked it enough that he sent it along to the people who make ATACS camo.  Sadly they did not respond, but it would've been really cool if they had.  This same friend is the one who I paint miniatures for on a regular basis.



As of right now I've completed nearly everything I've been commissioned to do:



Probably one of my finest pieces was the tiger stripe camo I did for a group of tanks and infantry:



Tigerstripe is my favorite camo because I feel that the name captures both the essence and the setting where it was used perfectly.  Tigerstripe camo was developed for use in jungle territories, and it's easy to see how it would help a person to blend in to the background.  I started off with a dark drab green for the basecoat:



I spent some time trying to figure out a good way to get the breaking lines you see in the tigerstripe pattern, and eventually decided to use an old brush that could no longer hold a point:



This turned out really well!  The bristles ended up splitting into two or three small tips, which gave me some very nice stripes.  After getting the gray down I had to switch to a brown color to paint over it as the grey is very subtle and doesn't show through as much:



It's easy to see at this point that the colors are coming together beautifully.  The last layer to add was the black stripes, and I had to be very careful with these.  Too little and it wouldn't be quite finished, too much and it would stand out.  Thankfully I managed to get it just right:



They turned out beautifully, and the camo looks like it was actually printed rather than painted on.  Definitely a noticeable advancement of my camo-painting skills:



I am nearing the end of my commission.  All the vehicles, buildings, and infantry have been painted:



Now all that remains is a Babylon 5 Shadow Omega.  I've already prepped some Shadow vessels for practice since the Shadow Omega uses the same scheme, and the Shadow Omega itself is just about done being assembled.  Expect a few more Babylon Project posts in the near future!