So, a little about me. When we were all young and stupid and playing 40k because miniatures were less complicated than girls, I was by far the worst painter of our little bunch. I mean, I was not a good player by any stretch either, but that was far outpaced by my atrocious painting. Manu was always good, and Dimitri progressed fast, but I was the one who basically slathered my minis in thick coats of shiny stuff and it had to do.
Now it's twenty years later. I haven't played 40k for decades. I haven't painted a mini since I did a small lizardman Blood Bowl team five years ago. And as I said, I was never that good to begin with.
So what do I go for? Of course when the bug bit me again I would go for THE hardest to paint army in the whole game: Eldar Harlequins.
This was basically suicide. But then my partner, Agnès, came up with an idea. Now Agnès can do anything. I mean, anything. She has mastered sewing, tatting, crochet, papier mâché, nail art, felt-making, and above all, polymer clay (check her out
here and
here ). She excels at taking a technique developed for a medium and applying it to another.
So when I told her about the harlequins' notorious freehand patterning, after she took a pitying look at me, she said: "you know nail art people do this all the time, right?".
And indeed, there is a method called
stamping which seems like it would work. Of course, it's designed for flatter surfaces than your basic harlequin, but it looks very promising. So you'll see me try to apply it on this blog.
To tide you over, here are a few (low-quality) pictures:
Some tests for the patterns. I ended up choosing the Briar Wood polish, from
a-england, along with a triangular/square pattern.
Jim-Bob, my first test subject. An old pewter mini, stripped and repainted as a test before I move on to the plastic Death Masque set.
Jim-Bob's legs demonstrating early tests of stamp applications.
See you soon for the next step - I just bought my Tamiya base-coat spray.
