Painting up the Back of Beyond
In recent weeks most of the members of Heston and Ealing Wargamers have been immersed in a very wide-ranging Back of Beyond wargame campaign.
To support Rob, who has been doing a fabulous, almost Herculean, job running the show, I have been hard at work to provide a safety net of figures and models to be used alongside the collections of members of the club. Photos of the results and some of the preparation are attached.
My Approach
My approach to painting is to think in terms of armies not units – you either have a painted army or you don’t. I try to make it as an industrial approach as possible, proceeding stage by stage and colour by colour, across all figures in an army before moving to the next stage.
1. On sticks
2. Primed
My method involves using sticks to mount figures, always priming in white to brighten the end result, working from the inside out and usually from larger areas to smaller areas.
3. Part-painted
Initial stages are very much slap-it-on. Subsequent stages involve over-painting allowing most small mistakes to be corrected by a later colour and if not left to the very end to be corrected in the final tidy-up stage.
4. Pre-basing
Sweeping along a stick of usually 12 (28mm) foot figures in similar pose, painting different bits of the figure in each sweep is as efficient as I can make it.
This approach suits me personally – I need to be as productive as possible while enthusiasm for the project lasts. It works for me and other members of the club have commented on how quickly I can produce painted armies.
The Armies
Bolsheviks
Bukharans
Chinese bandits
Chinese warlord
Japanese, Indian, Dacoits, Czech Legion, and Cossacks
Mongols 1
Mongols 2
Tanks, guns and armoured cars
Transport pool
White Russians
WWI veterans in French, German-Austrian, kit
