WWII Canadians Group Shot

With only 14 miniatures to be painted before the completion of my 28mm WWII Canadian project I thought it’d be a good time to take a group shot. I’ve been showing all these work in progress images, but no finished images. I’m not ready to create the gallery page just yet. In fact, I just had an idea for making the gallery work better for pages with lots of pictures which may take some work to implement. It feels good to be so near the end without having veered off into side projects. When I am finished I will have decided to play a new game and painted a workable force for it within six months. I’ll be proud when I am done, and I’ll have to bug Tod at the OMG to setup a game.

The whole group so far. Click for full size.

One of the problems with photographing large groups of miniatures is trying to get all the miniatures in one picture without ending up with a giant image. I like to keep my images to 600px wide to fit on the screen.

A closer look at the left side of the group.

Here’s a closer look. The fellow in the foreground is from the last batch completed. I noticed I haven’t touched-up the base edge after removing him from the painting stand. You can see that this is a rough wargame paint-job. I’ve knocked back some of the highlights–something I want to fix in my next batch–and left some details unpainted, such as the buttons. My understanding is that the Canadians never switched to a Battledress with exposed buttons. This is the trade-off between getting a force finished and on the table and never getting anything finished at all.

Still, I’d like to improve how I do the webbing, find some way to make it more interesting. I know that having more contrast between the shade and mid-tone, and less between the highlight and mid will look better. This is something that will come as I paint more. One thing that’s different between this project and all the ones that came before is that I’m refining a technique instead of trying something different each time.

A little free, unsolicited advice: As a wargame painter the best way to improve while still enjoying the hobby is to improve the next batch, not the current batch. If you are in the middle of painting a batch try not to judge your technique. You’re too deep in to change it without a lot of extra work. Instead, look critically at the batch you just finished before starting the new one and find things to improve. The exception is, sometimes when I’ve mixed a new colour and can tell it’s bad as soon as I apply it to the model I’ll tweak it and repaint the same area. However, once I’m more than 5-6 brush-strokes in I’m committed. You’ve heard me complain about my green being wrong, but once I’d started I finished the batch and tried a different shade on the next. In this way I’ve painted 26 miniatures.

Tyler