The Spectre of Summer

The start of any new academic year is always a busy and exciting time.  New names to learn, departmental development plans that need revising and the obligatory safeguarding refresher courses all leave remarkably little time for hobby related fluff.  That said, I was so buoyed by the enthusiasm generated through the summer's series of posts that I am keen to keep a little momentum going if I can.

The difficulty, of course, is finding the balance.  One of the great pleasures of the last couple of months has been reconnecting with friends across the blogging community, and I would very much like to maintain those connections.  However, I am also conscious that once the school year is in full swing, finding time for the hobby desk becomes rather more challenging.  There are only so many hours in the day and the Charcoal Avalanche, that heavy, dark and slightly messy physical weight of sketchbooks requiring marking, remains stubbornly indifferent to my own artistic ambitions.

September is already well underway, but I do have a couple of residual projects from the summer holidays still waiting to see the light of day.  The first of these is this rather splendid collection of spectral soldiers.  These wonderful sculpts were created as part of a rules supplement for The Silver Bayonet that I am, as yet, nowhere near starting.  There was something about them, however, that immediately appealed to me and so they found themselves promoted up the painting queue.  Having cleaned them up, I was reminded of a post I had seen on Instagram where a talented creator had used washes of colour to paint their Dead Men of Dunharrow from The Lord of the Rings; I wondered whether a similar approach might work on these rather fabulous apparitions?

Initially, they were primed with Colour Forge Ghoul Grey before I sponged on areas of white paint across the surface to create a zenithal highlight.  Electric Blue and Livery Green, both fabulously bright colours exhumed from the very back of my paint rack, were then given a new lease of life as washes, thinned with Vallejo matt medium.  Once dry, I began building up slightly darker areas across the shakos, muskets and boots of these ethereal entities.  The cross belts and facial features were picked out in white, helping to make the rather wonderful details of the sculpts pop.  There was something particularly satisfying about watching them gradually emerge from the original white metal.

For the bases, I kept things deliberately simple and darker in tone.  Brown earth, subdued tufts and the occasional dead leaf helped to suggest that the ground over which these spectral soldiers passed had withered and died; it seemed only appropriate.  The whole process proved great fun and, once I had established the colour scheme, remarkably quick to complete. There is always something satisfying about finding a technique that does precisely what you hoped it might, particularly when it involves rescuing a few long neglected paints from the back of the rack.

With October now on the horizon, I am beginning to wonder whether I might be able to contribute to Zomtober; that wonderful time of year when a little love and attention is given to the undead inhabitants of the pile of shame.  This seems particularly appropriate, given that I have a number of revenants still waiting to be completed for the second Silver Bayonet solo mission.  For now, however, with the weekend finally in sight, I am looking forward to spending a little time at the painting table.  More importantly, I am looking forward to a leisurely trawl around the many weblogs that I have come to enjoy over the years.  After all, there is still plenty of hobby out there to discover, even with the distant chime of the school bell still ringing in my mind.