09 March 2009

Painting? Is it easier with Historicals?

Well, I got a lot of work done this week. I rebased and touched up some Soviets for WWII, and painted a few of them. I am getting enamored of the "Popsicle stick" method of painting figures. It's something I have had a long time coming. Funny thing is, having gotten back into painting historicals? I find it EASIER than painting CBT. Why? You might ask:

Exhibit A

Ok, now look at my second piece of evidence.

Exhibit B

Same unit, same time period, but the base reds are different, and so is the the black. Heck, in A, I'd be hard pressed to say that was BLACK if I didn't know what the colors were. And both exhibits are from Camospecs, the official paintscheme site for CBT. Yes, I know there are such things as faded paint, weathering and the like, but it's also the descriptions of said colors. Vallejo thankfully, can do a million colors approximating just about every uniform shade in history, but good luck matching shads of units from a future that probably won't happen!

By the way, kudos to Artizan Designs! Their camo guide is nothing short of fantastic. It, combined with my copious Osprey collection has made painting almost anything WWII a snap! No matter what scale WWII you paint, go take a look.

2 comments:

  1. I know this is digging up a long dead post, but I found you through TMP and can't help myself, since I feel the need to make a comment.

    Quite frankly I thinking that you are making a rod for your own back on this one. I applaud you for your painting skills, but to get hung up over two models in the same camo that don't match, is mind boggling to me.

    Even in real life different classes of vehicles will have their own camo pattern that hopefully is applied with a certain degree of consistency across the same class. The US Army goes to great trouble to design patterns that meet their criteria for the right percentage of green, brown and dark greeny black that they use to meet the NATO standards.

    The Battletech pictures you posted are of two different mechs, though I'm sure that you could find a similar discrepancy in finish between two of the same mechs from that unit. However, the differences you see are a product of both the choice of paints and skill of the painter in duplicating both the scheme, and the same quality of application on both models.

    So for me, they look different, but it's a perfectly understandable thing, which causes me no concern. Though, if you are arguing that mechs from the same unit, painted by the same painter should match, then if that was an important criteria then that would be different, maybe?

    Anyway, nice blog you've got here.

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  2. You're right Paint it Pink, I guess what I was going on about is that Camospecs was setting itself up as the "Osprey for Battletech" when they couldn't do an internally consistent paint for the same unit. Not to knock the skill involved, or your points, and such things should be a reminder for ALL painters, it just drives me nuts they write down a color in the book, and then you've got three different references in photo for it. But yeah, shades not withstanding, you make an excellent point. And welcome to the blog!

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