I've been on a bit of a roll with painting recently with some ECW Epic Highlanders and Lucid Eye Elves on the paint table, and in a rush of blood to the head I've had a go at the 1st box (of 3) of the reissued Airfix Ancient Britons.
It's been quite a while since I've painted soft plastic figures and there were a few rookie mistakes with these. I did remember to give them a good wash before I started but then forgot to give them a PVA undercoat which meant some of the paint struggled to adhere to the plastic. Sorted in the end but annoying.
I also tried using Speed/Contrast paints which are pretty much my go-to paints these days. For some of the figures this worked well... the Chieftain and the archers had enough detail for the paint to show up nicely... but some of the figures are quite 'flat' and I needed to go over these with 'ordinary' acrylics and then give them an ink wash rather than rely on the speed paints to do the work for me.
Obviously these are quite old school figures so don't have all the detail that we've come to expect in harder plastic ones so expectations need to be altered, but I was quite pleased with these. 3 boxes will give 70+ figures which should be enough for a large skirmishy style game.
Those look great - considerably better than the 1970s figures I have seen.
ReplyDeleteIf I wasn’t having a clear out and trying to congrats on fewer collections I’d be tempted by the Robin Hood set with the castle
Turned out really nicely. I put mine aside for now as l wasn’t getting any half decent results even. Your splendid work encourages me to have another go…
ReplyDeleteAlan Tradgardland
Those are great
ReplyDeleteTop painting. You can't beat classic figures and the one true scale!!
ReplyDeleteBest wishes, James
Those bring back so many memories. Simon
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show that they COULD have looked like this back in day, rather than the glossy blobs most of us produced in our prepubescent years! I remember the "new edition" WW2 figures that came out in the mid to late 70's, they were as good as anything we get today - if they had just been hard plastic and without some of the "useless" poses, I might never have moved on to metal 25mm!
ReplyDeleteThey have come out really well. I'm amazed how effective the speed paints have worked on such old sculpts, particularly the engraved shield designs. My "barbarians" feature a lot of Airfix figures but they aren't as nice as these.
ReplyDelete