A greenhorn entering the wild west (Update April 10 2025)

[Malebolgia]

June update! It was a good month for me for my wild west stuff. I painted three tough gunslingers, my first civilian and three more buildings for my ghost town. That gives me enough suitable buildings to make a nice game in a ghost town.

[CapnJim]

Good stuff there.  Well done!

[metalface13]

Great looking minis and scenery!

[tomrommel1]

very nice project

[Malebolgia]

It’s been ages since I painted anything for my old west project, but I got the itch again so it needed to be scratched! First off I painted two more models, a cool legend from Dead Man’s Hand (is it John Wayne?) and an old Mexican bandit I had in my stash for about 20 years. Always great to have these oldies painted.
And I also wanted to do a train station for my train & rails. It took me a while to find the right one, but in the end I found the one from Black Scorpion Miniatures. Unfortunately it was a tad too big for my printer’s print bed, so I had to cut it into two pieces and do some work to get it ready for printing. But the print went really well. The original 3d model comes with a nameplate for “Tombstone”, which is useless for me as my town is Snake Rock. So with the help of Tinkercad I made a new sign and the printer did the rest. Painting was straight forward, but I used an interesting colour for the primer. I used Vallejo’s “Parched Grass”, which is a bit greenish. At first I thought it looked really off but I went with it and the end result looks quite interesting. It’s a desaturated brown with hints of green.
I also wanted to do the interior, so I printed some furniture and used my inkjet to print some wallpaper and a carpet. This finishes off the piece nicely. A nice project to do and it didn’t even take that long

[Tom Dulski]

 I really dig your painting style

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

I trust we can look forward to Bad day at Snake Rock in due course. I'd be interested the know who makes/ made the fat bandito, if you remember.

[fred]

This is a really great thread - enjoyed reading through it.

The latest additions are cool - always good to see interiors of buildings - I've thought about the wall paper idea a few times, but never actually got around to it.

On some of the MDF buildings on earlier pages, adding a simple card strip along the roof line helps hide the angled join of the MDF, and only takes a few minutes to cut and add.

[Malebolgia]

I really dig your painting style

Thanks! It's mostly a combination of Contrast paints and fast highlights. I have been using this method for some years now and it lets me paint quickly and get a vibrant look I really like

I trust we can look forward to Bad day at Snake Rock in due course. I'd be interested the know who makes/ made the fat bandito, if you remember.

haha! Never heard of that one, I'll put it on the list to watch. The miniature is an old one...but I can't remember who made it! I think a company like heartbreaker Hobbies or Harlequin Miniatures. But I can't remember which one it was.

This is a really great thread - enjoyed reading through it.

The latest additions are cool - always good to see interiors of buildings - I've thought about the wall paper idea a few times, but never actually got around to it.

On some of the MDF buildings on earlier pages, adding a simple card strip along the roof line helps hide the angled join of the MDF, and only takes a few minutes to cut and add.

Thanks! Wallpaper was an interesting one, while searching for wallpaper patterns that matched the 19th century, I found it wasn't used a lot commercially until the old west period was about over. Hmmmm...oh well, I think it just looks nice
And for the MDF, good tip! The stuff is nice, but sometimes the mdf look is a bit meh. But sill, I got most of them for free, so I can't really complain.

[fred]

Free is a good price!

MDF work pretty well for old west as it is representing wooden buildings. I find a few extra bits of cardboard or even MDF off-cuts work well to remove some of the flatness which helps the look.

[Tom Dulski]

 If you don't mind my asking what exactly are "fast highlights" and how do you achieve that?

[Malebolgia]

If you don't mind my asking what exactly are "fast highlights" and how do you achieve that?

My main tools for painting are:
1. Contrast paints. I really prefer Citadel's variant, especially the thick and gloopier ones. These have great depth and are easier to control.
2. Wet palette with acrylics. For these I prefer AK paint nowadays, although I use all sorts of brands. The great thing with the wet palette is you can easily thin paints and mix paints. This make it easier to get those fast highlights done.

I first coat about everything with Contrast paints, a good solid thick coat. This gives the shadow and main colour. Next I pick acrylics that are suitable for the colour to be highlighted and apply thin coats for strong highlights. Although I state "fast highlights", it varies a bit how many layers. By using thin layers you can sometimes do it with 1 coat and other times with 3 or 4. But they are easy to apply and dry fast. So I can do these very fast after one another to build up the light.
Finally, if the highlights are a bit too strong or stark I thin down the Contrast to a wash and then wash the whole colour with it. That helps to soften the highlights.
That's mainly it!

[Tom Dulski]

 Interesting technique, thanks for breaking it down. Im always interested how differently we all approach the same thing.

[Malebolgia]

And a new update, one I had a lot of fun with!

I got this building from a mate, who printed it for his old west village. But he thought it was 10% too big, so wanted to print it again. Thus I could have it for free! How could I say no to such a wonderful offer.
The building is the Sheriff's office from the town of Valentine in the game Red Dead Redemption 2. But I already have such a building for my town! So I decided to turn this building into a bank. The cells made sense too for me as they would be ideal to house the safes to store money, gold, etc.
Painting the building was mostly straightforward with a lot of drybrushing. But for the inner walls I wanted something fancy. So I created wallpaper in Adobe Illustrator, printed it and glued it to all inner walls. That also gave some more colour to the whole thing. For the red bricks I used the method to first paint all bricks in one brick colour, then use two different colours to pick out individual bricks and finally use thinned wall filler to get the cement between the bricks. That last step is so simple, but gives such an awesome result. It really makes it feel like actual bricks. I also added some green moss with Dirty Down to give it a bit more colour.
Then it came down to furniture. I downloaded all kinds of free furniture files, printed them on my Bambu A1 mini and painted them. I used some printed stuff I got from my mate to decorate it further, adding more detail and bringing it more to life. Adding the poker cards to the table was a bit of a hassle, but I think it looks very cool.
So all in all quite some work for the building, but also a lot of fun to do. And I'm very happy with the end result.

[Tom Dulski]

jeez even the brick wall looks amazing