Quarmy Project Log

[Mattias!]

The upcoming K47 club campaign is the excuse I'm using to finally finish painting the Quar army that I bought way back when the club first tried playing K47. To document the process, I'm starting this here project log.

Here's what I have.
The whole-ass force:

Here are the HQs (actually a 10 man squad in their own right, but for the purposes of K47 i've split them up into my Lieutenants):

Three sets of Lieutenants with accompanying soldiers, so that I can run up to three reinforced platoons (and therefore up to 3 tanks or walkers). The lone guy is my forward artillery observer, which I get for free if I use the British list.

Here we have all of my heavy weapons teams:

There's an MMG team and a light mortar team, of course, but the rest are a bit more open to interpretation. I think the big tracked gun at the back probably makes the most sense as a light artillery team, but the team at the front is a bit more fanciful. I think it could either represent an AT rifle team, or a PIAT team, or a sniper team. Likewise the little suitcase gun could probably also represent either an AT rifle or a PIAT.

A squad of 8 regulars here (actually 10, but two have been peeled off to fulfill the artillery team requirements)

And my kitbashed hovertank, made with a fun 'Super-deformed' tank kit, some trash and gundam bits, and a lot of sculpting putty:

I'm not very pleased with the body, it doesn't look 'armor-ey' enough. I'm going to attempt to fix that by adding some armor plates made of EVA foam.

I'll likely either run this as a Churchill or as a Centurion MK. II, depending on whether I want to emphasize the armor or the armament.

Here's one of my favorites, a 9-man squad of irregular guerrillas ('inexperienced infantry' for the purposes of K47):

A squad of 5 commandos here:

And my other favorites, these goof cavalry models:

There is a cavalry special rule in K47, but no cavalry units in the core rulebook. I don't have any desire to invest more in this game, so I'll just be running these as Royal Marines; but I do love how evocative the models are.

And last but not least, there's this little fella. I'm not sure what to run it as yet. I could see calling it an M5 Stuart possibly, but could also see usin git as an M10 Achilles or even a Staghound Mark I Heavy Armored Car.

I actually primed all of the models a year or two ago, and even painted a couple squads, but the rest went back into a box. I got them all back out again to evaluate what needs doing.

First thing was that I had a lot of the figures pull off of their bases (they had been sitting on the double-sided tape I used to secure them for priming all this time, and they were only glued to the bases with superglue and sand, so were pretty fragile). I reattached those with a good bit of strong PVA and sealed the edges with a mix of 'crustard', i.e. a mix of pva, paint, sand, and baking soda. Step 1 complete!

Here's the list of steps as I see them:

• Reattach damaged bases <-------COMPLETE
• Repair damaged models (namely that artilleryman who is missing a head)
• Finish the hovertank armor and reprime that model
• Block out all the metallic areas with silver acryllic
• Drybrush everybody with yellow and white oils to complete the underpainting
• Establish shadows with heavy oil washes of dark brown, black, and magenta, and clean to leave them only in the crevasses. (These are also the main colors of the bases)
• Once the washes are dry, block in spot colors using oil glazes and heavy filters. (Dark brown for leather, Blue or red-brown for uniforms, dark grey and khaki for bits and bobs, bright colors for Quar skin)
• Highlight with off-white oils to finish.
• Finishing touches and black lip on the bases
• Make banners

Easy right? I count 50 models total--though I certainly don't need all 50 to run a 1000 point K47 list. Want to see if I can do it? Stay tuned!

[Eilif]

Fantastic stuff man.
That is really coming together.

[Mattias!]

Fantastic stuff man.
That is really coming together.

Thanks! I'm feeling the excitement.

I've been able to put in a few hours work in the late evenings and I've got some cool work to show for it! First though, I wanted to give an updated picture of the full force including the two units I've already painted:

This is minus the walkers though—I didn't feel like digging them out.

Here are the two painted squads. We have brown squad:

And pink squad (which still needs a banner):

On to the progress. First off, I dug out a new head for our headless artilleryman. I just primed it with gesso as it's too small to justify re-spraying the blue paint.

But where I put the most time in the last few days was into the hover tank. I went and got some 2mm EVA foam from Michael's last week and I spent some time fashioning it into armor plates.

I started out by trying to use PVA glue, but quickly found that superglue was the way to go for achieving a quick hold on these curving shapes.

I worked in strips layering from back to front to get a kind of isopod-like plating effect:

Once the original hull was covered in plating, I trimmed the excess from around the bottom to form the 'skirt'.

This foam is so soft and flexible that it can be cut, shaped, and trimmed with a pair of scissors. It can very easily be shaped into curves as well, as long as you have a fast acting glue to tack it into place as you go (either CA glue or hot glue, basically).

It also holds impressions pretty well, so I used a metal tube to add a couple rivet indentations (just a couple, though; this isn't a steampunk contraption but rather more of an Ma.K type of deal where the emphasis is on smooth, organic lines). I also added a couple other nicks, dings and impressions, as well as a little ladder.

The last thing was to add a little height beneath the undercarriage to make the tank look like it's hovering. Simply achieved with a spare base and a big washer (so this guy will stick in a magnetized box if I want):

And that's that for tank modifications! It's not perfect, especially with regards to precise symmetry, but I am mega chuffed with the result all the same, especially when I consider that I'm unlikely to encounter anything quite like it on any tabletop. It's my own baby.

Further, the color-match I managed to find on the EVA foam may mean that I can skip re-priming the model. I'm going to try to use a mix of PVA and varnish instead to stiffen up the foam, and then skip straight to drybrushing and oil washes. Fingers crossed that it works!

All of that leaves the updated to-do list looking like this:

• Reattach damaged bases <-------COMPLETE
• Repair damaged models (namely that artilleryman who is missing a head) <-------COMPLETE
• Finish the hovertank armor and reprime that model <-------COMPLETE
• Block out all the metallic areas with silver acryllic
• Drybrush everybody with yellow and white oils to complete the underpainting
• Establish shadows with heavy oil washes of dark brown, black, and magenta, and clean to leave them only in the crevasses. (These are also the main colors of the bases)
• Once the washes are dry, block in spot colors using oil glazes and heavy filters. (Dark brown for leather, Blue or red-brown for uniforms, dark grey and khaki for bits and bobs, bright colors for Quar skin)
• Highlight with off-white oils to finish.
• Finishing touches and black lip on the bases
• Make banners

[Eilif]

That is a weird and wonderful tank.

[timlillig]

Some of the in pregress shots look like you are making a fondant tank. I'm really enjoying your progress.

[Michael S.]

Hi Mattias,
Wow! It all looks great. The Quar soldiers look tough and cute at the same time. I like that you can use them for K. 47’. I see that you are using them as British. I was thinking that you could use the British force rules, but for background fuff they could be aliens who come through the rift created by the atom bombs.(Just a thought.) The tank looks fantastic, I love the look of the gun and other design items on the turret. As Tim wrote, I was also thinking of fondant tanks. My wife made a cake using fondant and I noticed the similarity in the look of the material. I hope the plans you have for painting it work out. I look forward to seeing your army on the table top.
Michael

[Mattias!]

Thanks so much guys! I'm glad y'all are enjoying the updates.

The tank DOES look kind of fondant-like doesn't it? The EVA foam wasn't taking the paints quite as nicely as I wanted, so I've decided to re-prime and go a different direction--but I think it's going to look really cool.

More on that later though. For now, here's what I've been working on:

First off, I fashioned a little removeable tank operator for the hover tank:

This way I can run the tank as a Quar specific tank or I can remove the operator and run it as a generic tank for other games/scenarios.

Next, I applied metallic silver to all the guns, helmets, and bits n bobs on all the models (thanks for lending me the paint Karl!):

And with that, it was time to finish up the underpainting step with a couple of drybrushes. I used cadmium yellow first for some color modulation, then titanium white to establish the highest values. I used oil paints applied with a cheap makeup brush for the unparalleled smoothness of drybrushing they provide.

Here's a pic of the guerilla unit before drybrush for comparison:

And here's what they look like with just the yellow drybrush:

And here's a commando so you can see how nice a modulation of colors you get with the translucent cadmium yellow tinting the existing spraycan gradient beneath. It establishes volumes really well:

Next was the white drybrush. So you can see the comparison, here's the commando squad part way through. The rightmost has been drybrushed white, while the rest still only have the yellow:

Here are some shots of everyone with their drybrushing done:

Each drybrush step took perhaps 20 seconds per model. Super fast, super easy.

Now it's time to really get into the oil painting with the heavy washes. The idea with this step is pretty simple. I use heavy washes of quinacridone red (a very magenta kind of red), dark purple, reddish brown, and black all over each model:

As you see, this makes the model look like a goopy mess. But that's okay! Because these are oil paints, they dry quite slowly, especially when applied thick like this. I let them set for 5 minutes or so before using makeup sponges to wipe away the excess on all the raised surfaces:

I work this like a zenithal highlight, wiping with the sponge from the top of the model down. The effect is that on the raised areas, the underpainting comes through only slightly tinted by the washes, but the washes remain in the recesses and shadowed areas. It is in fact a lot like the effect of dipping, except you have a lot more control over color variations in the shadows. And just like that, all of the darkest values are established!

Now I'm only going to work on these two squads until they're finished before moving on to any of the others. This is because the next steps (spot colors and then highlights) work best if they are done on top of the oil wash layers that aren't fully dry yet. But at this point I was done with painting for the night, so I put the two in-progress squads under a bell jar to keep any dust or cat hair from getting on them, and called it an evening.

I'll post more updates with the progress on these guys soon. In the meantime, here's the updated checklist:
[list=]
[*]Reattach damaged bases <-------COMPLETE
[*]Repair damaged models (namely that artilleryman who is missing a head) <-------COMPLETE
[*]Finish the hovertank armor and reprime that model (Uncomplete, decided to reprime after all)
[*]Block out all the metallic areas with silver acryllic <-------COMPLETE
[*]Drybrush everybody with yellow and white oils to complete the underpainting <-------COMPLETE
[*]Establish shadows with heavy oil washes of dark brown, black, and magenta, and clean to leave them only in the crevasses. (These are also the main colors of the bases)
[*]Once the washes are dry, block in spot colors using oil glazes and heavy filters. (Dark brown for leather, Blue or red-brown for uniforms, dark grey and khaki for bits and bobs, bright colors for Quar skin)
[*]Highlight with off-white oils to finish.
[*]Finishing touches and black lip on the bases
[*]Make banners[/list]

[Eilif]

Incredible stuff. Those cavalry in particular are great!

[Mattias!]

Those cavalry in particular are great!

Then boy do I have an update for you! I've finished the cavalry unit AND the commando unit, AND I've also reprimed the tank.

I have a lot of in-progress photos, and ink to spill on the oil painting process, so I will probably have to break them up into individual posts just to keep myself organized.

Going chronologically then, commandos first:

We left off last time having applied all the darkest tones as heavy washes, then wiped them off of the raised surfaces. What I did next was: apply the main spot colors one at a time for leather, boots, uniform, and skin as even heavier washes; then blob on some mid-tones and highlights; then hit the whole area with the blending brush to smooth it out. In the photo below, left is the before and right is the after for this process:

Here you can see the highlighting in action. The uniform is covered with a heavy wash of pink mixed from quinacridone red and titanium white. The mid tones and highlights are mixed on the palette in a gradient from pink to white, and then are splotched on, using the shadows and highlights from the underpainting step as a guide. It's almost like a coloring book.

Then stippling with the blending brush causes those colors to blend on the mini, giving you an instant gradient.

Doing this takes a lot of feel. Too much stippling and you overwork it, too little and the brushstrokes can be too obvious (especially when your still learning the nuances of applying the paint).

Another angle here for the uniform highlights before and after stippling:

Here's an example of the highlighting process on the face and hands. Highlights are blobbed on. You can get away with big marks with the brush if you are working with a big highlight.

For smaller areas like the fingers you only try to leave tiny dots or lines of paint. This sounds hard, but isn't really; it's just a glorified edge highlight, but with the added benefit of being able to use the blending brush to soften or manipulate the highlight afterward.

I really like the buff leather color I got using cadmium red as the shadow and yellow ochre as the mid-tone.

A closeup of that first finished model.

Here are three more finished:

And the rest of the unit:

[Mattias!]

Tank update now! I decided to go for something a bit more 'out there' for this one.

First, I reprimed with dark red spray paint:

Then a zenithal of this light orange:

Then using blue tack, I masked off a camo pattern:

Then sprayed with light green and a zenithal of light blue:

With the blue tack removed, it looks like this:

These are the same colors I used to prime the infantry. My idea is to have to complimentary color schemes: the pink shirts and the blue coats. Because the schemes are complimentary, they can be used as either one unified army or two opposing ones. The tank could then be part of any of these configurations.