Painting 6mm figures – for Chalons

Well the armies are now ready; 13 units of infantry, 16 units of cavalry and 12 units of skirmishers.

Two of us painting, John Holroyd and myself. It took about three weeks and it has been a long time since I last painted 6mm figures so I learned a few tricks. All the figures used were from Baccus Miniatures.

Paint consistency is vital, since you are using only a small amount of paint at a time, it dries quickly and becomes too thick to be of use. So a small pot of water near-by is handy to dip the brush into to keep the paint flowing. Very thin paint used as a wash can look very effective in this scale. Remember to keep the colours a shade lighter than you would use for larger scale figures.

You need good eye-sight, we both wore our glasses and used magnifying visors for extra vision.

You will make mistakes and splash areas you have already painted or did not intend to paint. Really its up to you, to either go back and touch that area up or ignore it and carry on.

Most of my painting was simple; undercoat the figures white and then paint over them, to create the effect. But for the commanders I used a brown ink wash over the undercoat and then painted in the areas between the ink (after it dried). It certainly does improve the look of the figures but takes a great deal more time. Since we were in a rush, the simpler technique was used for the majority of the figures.

Painting regular troops is easier, mainly they are the same. For the irregulars its a matter of mixing the colours and for this a bit of maths is handy, since the figures come in strips of 3 or 4, don’t use multiples of those numbers, instead paint every 5th, 2nd or 7th figure with a different colour for cloak or trousers. The result is a nicely ‘random’ looking unit.

So how did they come out?

The Roman army

The Hunnic army

The Roman division of the Roman army

Close up on a unit of legionaries

and a close up on the auxlia

all the bases are standard mdf 40x20mm magnetic bases. Once the strips (or individual figures in the case of cavalry) are on the bases its a matter of putting on the flocking gel, letting it set and then painting the base. For details see this post.

So just the commanders to finish off and we will be ready to play the battle with fully painted armies.