Santa's Workshop

Figures, Figures Everywhere

First of all, I want to say that I'm sorry I missed the painting bash earlier in April. Unfortunately, Santa was down with a bad case of pneumonia. Nobody ever said that life as all roses here at the pole. I hope that every one who attended learned some really useful techniques, I know that I would have, perhaps even changed my painting style yet again.

The topic that I wanted to write on this time was of mass production- something that Santa has gotten good at over the years. In the event that you didn't know it, there is painting, and there is painting. You can paint individual figures, which would be great for competition, but what if you have a million of them to do?

There are several steps that you can take. First, it depends on what scale you are painting. If you are painting 15mm, you should mount them on popsicle sticks, I usually do from 4 to 6 to a stick. That way, you just go right down the line with your paint brush, and it avoids having to put them down and pick the next one up. Believe it or not, this is a huge time and energy saver. Unfortunately, I have tried to do this with 25mm, and the things are just too bulky, but you can still group paint them, just do 3 or 4 at a time, and you are still saving time because you have to change colors less frequently. Obviously the strip method is very effective for 6mm and you can crank out 100 figures in no time. Additionally, as you paint down the line, do the same or comparable feature on all figures-in other words, go down the line painting the right hand, and come back up the line painting the left. This speeds the process up even more. Several years ago when I painted my Napoleonic figures for competition, I cut the time in half for painting them, and they still looked great.

Another time saver is that of spray priming. Some people are dead set against this because they say that they can't control the amount of primer and it covers unevenly. Well, that's true if you just hold the nozzle down and shoot. I use a box, lie the figures down, and give a light spray, rotate 90 degrees and spray, etc. Always use light coats. You can go back if you missed any. I find that this process is very quick and time saving. I recommend Rustoleum brand auto primer if doing pewter, and anything for lead. Also, if you like to blacken them, I recommend a heavy black wash over the primer. I don't just prime black, because its too dark and harder to cover with the regular paint. While this extra step does add to the amount of work, the heavy wash goes on easily, and I do a hundred of them at a sitting, so that I have several units ready to paint.

At this point, you may be thinking that you have 300 irregularly clothed confederates to do, and the strip method will produce too much regularity. Not so-what I do is I paint 5 or 6 strips at a sitting, and I paint each figure on that strip the same (I may just vary the headgear), but each group of figures differently. When you go to mount the unit, just take one figure from each group and presto- you have a great deal of irregularity!

So much for now.--