Iron Painter 2011: The Aftermath With everyone now fully recovered from a 24 hour painting marathon that FlamesCon 2011, we thought it would be good to talk to everyone and see how they finished up. If you missed out on the first part, avoid the spoliers below and start from the beginng. Iron Painter: The Forces Gather...
Victor's Brandenburgers

I'm going to claim a 65% completion. My trucks and jeeps have all the body work done, and some of the tyres, but I didn't even get started on any stowage and the crews got left behind.

The infantry however are completely done.I was planning to do the vehicle crews at the same time, but at about 3am I realized I needed to give up on the vehicles to get the infantry finished. I'm really happy with how they turned out, mostly thanks to James' colour advice.

I continued a little after 12 just so I could get the infantry finished as they were so close. I figured it was just making up for the time spent on socializing, painting judging, and packing up and travelingbetween locations.

So once I finish the trucks, paint up 3 crusaders and 3 AA half-tracks, and do my custom ride for my Ace, my Brandenburger raiding force will be complete and ready to hit the sands. ~ Victor.

Chris's Compagnia Mitraglieri Despite some pre-event jitters I was feeling confident once the weekend arrived. Everyone was based and ready to go - although I was feeling the after effects of an early start as I'd voluntieered to be at the venue by 7am to help set up. Kicking off at midday I should have guessed after 30 minutes that things were not going to go to plan (yet I was still blissfully ignorant) as I was still putting the basecoat on. I thought I would start with my AS37 platoon as it looked really cool and I thought it would be a quick job. I was really happy how they turned out, but I did not get them finished till around 6 or 7pm - at least two hours behind schedule.

Moving on the infantry I realised that not completing a couple of test models was going to cost me dearly. I had painted some Italians last year, but there is a difference between painting a few figures and trying to knock out 21 stands to a level that you would be happy with in the 16 or so hours remaining. My turning point came in the early morning when I decided to finish one stand and make sure I was happy with it. A 30 minute "crisis of confidence" set in shortly after as I was not happy with the result.... I pep talk from the rest of the guys and a little extra detailing got me back on track and I quickly punched out the artillery battery (minus the table).

Heading home for a shower around 6am (and to let my wife know I was still alive) I made the fatal mistake of sitting down... 45 minutes later I awoke and made a move to re-join the team at the venue feeling very much worse for wear. Turning the infantry I decided to forget about some figures and try to get one Mitraglieri platoon completed. As the clock hit midday I put the finishing touches on... And noticed that I had forgotten the 47mm AT gun... Nevermind!

This left me with a small pile of figures partially finished, but also left me feeling pretty happy with the accomplishment, and definitly ahead of most of the guys in the Studio who are still putting together their armies for some Christmas Raiding Aces action! ~ Chris.

James's SAS Squadron I decided to paint my SAS Squadron in a night-time colour scheme, complete with Object-Source Lighting effects - something I had never tried before. How hard could it be? I painted a test model to try out the concept, and it looked OK, so I felt confident it would work. The test model was a little rough, and I felt as though something was still missing, but I was sure I could work out a few tweaks and improvements as I went. Of course, this theory proved somewhat misguided, as I tried to refine my process while applying it to the unit en masse.

'Eureka!' I thought. 'The palette is too simple - it needs more colour variation. Oh, and the illusion of directional moonlight.' This clearly demonstrates how, after 14 hours of solid painting, wisdom and common sense become somewhat rare and elusive commodities. If a task is overly ambitious, you don't solve the problem by adding additional complexity.

In the small hours of Sunday morning, I was not feeling optimistic. Comparing the essentially grey Jeeps to an unpainted resin model made me wonder whether I had slaved all night to little or no effect. Was I Arnold Rimmer, repainting Red Dwarf's 'ocean grey' corridors in indistinguishable 'military grey'? But I persisted. Adding the muzzle-flash effects to the command teams helped, although they still need some more work to really 'sell' the effect.

Incidentally, in case anyone is curious, the flame effects were made from small shreds of clump-style foam flock, solidified with a little cyanoacrylate (super glue). You could use any colour - it's usually green, obviously - but I used the yellow stuff from the Gale Force 9 Autumn Clump Foliage (GFS015), to make it a little easier to achieve an intensely coloured, flamey finish. I used a pin vice to carefully add a small metal rod to the end of each gun, to help hold the flame burst in place. Without this, it would probably be knocked off quite easily.

	The end result? The Jeeps were close to being finished, but most of the infantry was barely started, sporting only an undercoat. In short, I got nearly halfway to my goal (and that's being generous). Next time, I'll remember to do the maths: 24 hours; 28 teams.
Can I really paint 1-and-a-bit teams an hour? Maybe, but probably not well! And certainly not in some hinky, half-imagined nocturnal colour palette. But, like Edith Piaf, je ne regrette rien! I look forward to finishing the unit, though - hopefully to the standard it deserves. ~ James.

Wayne's LRDG The Iron Painter 24-hour painting marathon was a lot of fun and we even managed some lucid moments between the hysterical cackling. However, I must say the end result wasn’t my best painting. I think it came of trying to do too much during the period of our challenge.

I started off by using completely the wrong basecoat colour! The struggle was up hill from there. A one point, in a fit of rage and disappointment, I threw all my half-painted crew in a small tin and shock them around until the paint fell off. Those particular miniatures are dead to me now. I’m not sure quite what went on with actual painting of my trucks, but they have definitely come out a different colour to my older patrol I painted a few years ago. Hopefully I can recover them in time for our Raiding Aces campaign! Grrrr… ~ Wayne.

Stay tuned to our You Tube channel as next week James will be taking us through a brief video diary of what went on over the weekend!