Shed Wars: First Pirates come ashore...

When I start out on a new project my first priority is getting the figures painted this is before I start with the fun bit of building the terrain.

This is always the most time consuming aspect of any activity and to be frank I am not the best painter in the world. My style can be best described as rapid.

To begin with I base (on 25mm washers from B&Q), grit the bases with sand and then prime. Because I want the colours to be quite vibrant on these pirates my choice of primer this time will be grey.

Rather than paint one figure at a time I typically paint in blocks of a dozen figures at a time and go through the set one colour at a time.

First up will be the base. With the pirates I have deviated from my standard scorched brown and light drybrush, I have plumped for a lighter base colour. Because these boys will be shipboard and in the town it’s unlikely that they will get a treatment of static grass.

Working by the numbers the flesh will get painted first followed in this order shoes & boots, trousers, shirts, jackets, hats. Once all the clothes are painted I turn my attention to hair (I hate this bit). Only once all the core elements of the figure are painted do I turn my attention to guns, swords and other accoutrements. To keep the time down I do very little shading – unless it is a big area (eg a cloak). Once dry the figure gets a wash of Army Painter dip and allowed to dry/cure for 24 hours.

I estimate that the 13 Pirates (A baker’s dozen) shown below took about 3 solid hours to paint. This works out around 15 mins per figure. By working in blocks you can churn through quite quick. The more detailed characters remaining will probably take much longer.

Not to self - sort out lighting on camera shots