(AP2017) Mnywasele, Bandit King of Unyanyembe (c.1861)

[Furt]

Don't get dispirited Plynkes - these are amazing!!

Here's to many more mate! 

[Dr Mathias]

Seem to have forgotten most of what I knew, and it hasn't helped that I've had to come up with an entirely new method for painting African skin tones, as the paints I previously used have now run out or dried up, and most of them are no longer available.

They look damn good to me!

I know what you mean about taking a break and coming back to it. Seeing a pot of a favorite paint dried up can be a big hurdle.

Keep it up, it will feel great at the end

[Plynkes]

Don't get dispirited Plynkes - these are amazing!!

They look damn good to me!

Thanks, guys. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, it's just that I'm finding the process of getting there slow, laborious, not particularly enjoyable and most pointedly - mistake and fuck-up ridden, something that saps the enthusiasm. But nobody likes to hear grousing and whining so I shall speak no more on the topic.


Or maybe I shall indulge myself in playing the struggling, tortured artist! Oh woe is me!



Anyway, on the painting table right now is Manua Sera himself and a few of his bodyguards. Hopefully they'll be up next. After that we'll start looking at doing some conversions for the various other allied tribes. Doing little bits of conversion work is something I'm rather enjoying (two of the bodyguards are conversion-jobs), more so than the actual painting. So I'm quite looking forward to that.

[Keith]

So pleased that this thread is a thing! 

[Hu Rhu]

You're too hard on yourself.  Your painting is really very good, certainly up there with some of the best. Nice buildings as well as some great photography.

[Corso]

Very food work mate, especially the flesh 

The fact that you struggled to do them gives you twice the satisfaction of having done the models.  Well done!:D

[majorsmith]

Wow, nice painting on these!

[gamer Mac]

I hate people who say they are struggling with painting and then produce stunning paint jobs like these
I only wish I could be so bad at painting but I am just a poor human not a god of the paint table like you

[Hammers]

For the man himself, I am going to use this fellow from North Star, as he does have something of the air of a pantomime pirate about him...



Interestingly, the image this figure was inspired by has come to represent the archetypal Ruga-Ruga, and yet the picture wasn't of a Nyamwezi Ruga-Ruga at all, but of a Nyasaland slaver.

Very cool. He has Zeze of Lion King fame nesting on his head.

[Malamute]

You're too hard on yourself.  Your painting is really very good, certainly up there with some of the best. Nice buildings as well as some great photography.

I second that

Excellent work, keep it up, it will be worth it in the long run.

[Plynkes]

It's more about not enjoying the process so much any more than being unhappy with the outcome, really. I'm not going to moan any more. Sorry, guys.  But actually, being perpetually dissatisfied with my work is how I have got better at it over the years. So I reckon in a way it can be a good thing.


Not got much to report at the moment. Haven't felt much like painting (it's been really humid and sticky around here lately - and air-con isn't really a thing here - which kills the urge a little) so have been mucking around with conversions for the allies. Lopping off heads, hair-styling, making tiny penises out of the greenstuff. You know, the usual. Will post pics as soon as I have anything worth showing.


Speaking of Greenstuff, I've tried out the brush-on kind that GW sells and I'm loving it. Wish I'd known about this ages ago, it's really handy for certain things.

[Hupp n at em]

Speaking of Greenstuff, I've tried out the brush-on kind that GW sells and I'm loving it. Wish I'd known about this ages ago, it's really handy for certain things.

Is this what they sell as "Liquid Greenstuff"?  What is it handy for?

[Plynkes]

Yeah, that's the stuff. I'm finding it much easier to use for certain jobs than the regular kind of Greenstuff or Milliput. For example, I was trying my hand at some Wagogo crazy hairstyles and wanted to add a row of spiky braid-type things to a figure. I drilled holes in his head and inserted wire, then painted a couple of layers of the Greenstuff over the wire until I had nice soild-looking spikes of hair coming out of his head. It would have been just too fiddly for me to achieve this effect with regular putty, but applying it with a brush to the wire was absolutely easy.

You can also run it into cracks to fill gaps where you have joined pieces, and again it is much easier to control than normal putty. I also used it to apply, er... pubic hair to a naked figure who previously was a baldy. Just paint it on and then texture it a bit. I'm finding new uses for it as I go.

[nightgaunt]

Your Watuta unit looks great, Plynkes! Did you scratch build those shields or are they supplied with the Copplestone figures? I'm working on a Hehe army, and have been totally inspired by your Hehe mods and scratch built shields, but find the prospect of scratch building an armies worth of shields a bit daunting. If those are Copplestone, I may be able to use some of those and scratch build fewer. Any advice appreciated!

[Plynkes]

Thanks, Nightgaunt!

The Watuta shields come with the figures. Those same shields come with all three of the Copplestone Ngoni warrior packs. You get a random mix of big and smaller ones (mine are all using the bigger ones). One of the packs (AFU5 Elite Ngoni Warriors) has a random mix of figures in feather headdresses and zebra mane ones. The zebra mane headdresses were used by the Hehe, so those particular figures are a pretty good starting point for Hehe conversions or head-swaps. Unfortunately I don't think you can get just the zebra mane guys, they come in a random mix.


The very large Hehe shields in the picture in the first post are scratch-built from plastic card.