Back to the Painting Table

The Philly trip was quite fun - I ate my body weight in soft pretzels, took everyone around to see various sites and museums, places I lived, my favorite place to do laundry, and even caught the Circle Jerks / 7 Seconds / Negative Approach show with some friends.

 

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution. Which, as it turns out, might be a British soldier or even not a soldier at all. Washington Square Park.

 

I never noticed this before on the ground up at Logan Square, which is, to be accurate, a circle, and hence is also called Logan Circle. I probably didn't notice before because WWI was not a focus when I lived in Philly.

 

Me and the little monkey who isn't so little anymore. My phone's selfie camera had some gunk on it that gave this pic the glamour shot look. My shirt, for the curious, it's the "Noise Not Music" symbol - while I do play typical music styles (I'm in a crust band, for example), I really enjoy playing with noise.

 

Upon return, I picked up the brush and started painting again. I've got multiple projects on the paint table now - including an Austro-Hungarian MG team (Well, Germans and a paint conversion), French Foreign Legion, SCS Direct lizard warriors, and Tanitian Light Infantry. 

The latter I painted up in the same way as the heavy infantry, but they just don't have the same impact. I did three in that fashion, but their smaller shields, general lack of kit, and bare legs don't grab the eye. 

So, I grabbed a fourth figure I had started at the same time (I work in threes, but painting a fourth figure solid orange is hardly difficult - it's the multiple coats followed by the black lining and correcting black line errors that takes forever) and decided to do it as Greek black-figure pottery (which is the opposite of the red-figure pottery style I was using as a basis) by painting over the orange and leaving gaps between materials/surfaces:

If you are questioning my beverage choice, it's a Ghost energy drink, Bubbilicious Strawberry Splash.

To my eyes it is much more interesting this way. 

Now, this sample was done in a rush and over the gloss coat I put down before I black line (the pens are easier to use over gloss - he says for the 100th time) so the black paint definitely needs a second coat but you get the idea.

I can speed things up for this method by priming in white, then painting orange ONLY over bits that will have the orange outline - the head gear, weapons, belt and straps (of which there isn't much) and the tunics at the sleeve ends and above the thigh. Everything else I'll leave white. Without the gloss coat, I can cover up everything, white or orange, with black much more easily.

Or so that's my theory at least.

A brief detour to Philadelphia

I had really wanted to do more posts this month, but Friday, I took a trip up to Philly to meet up with some friends to go see a band I had only seen once before, in 1994 or 1995 and which broke up shortly after but which was reuniting to play a special show. Sunday, I flew back to Atlanta (boy, are my arms tired).

As a word of warning, if you don't care for travelogues, there's not much else in this post.

Of course, Philadelphia is full of history, but I lived there for 13+ years, nearly all if it in the city proper, and much of that, within a few blocks of some of the most historic sites, so taking pictures of them seems a bit unnecessary from my perspective. 

That said, the ubiquitous Independence Hall picture is a personal requirement.

This statue ("The Crier", I think is called), pictured below,  is often overlooked by tourists (it's just a statue in a small park/garden after all), and as a result it's a nice quiet spot where you can enjoy your Philly soft-pretzel and a Wawa coffee (as an aside, perhaps my tastes in coffee have changed, because Wawa coffee tastes pretty terrible to me now, but I still drank it because tradition).

The greatest candy in the world was invented as a ration bar for soldiers in WWI and was manufactured in Philadelphia for a long time (now it's made by a Bethlehem, PA company):  Goldenberg's Peanut Chews. Original dark is the only kind worth getting.

It has only recently made it's way to Atlanta at some convenience stores, as individually wrapped pieces, so by and large, I must eat my body weight in peanut chews whenever I visit Pennsylvania.

 

Finally, a picture of the omnipresent blue signage used by the city to denote historical locations and the personages who lived there. Why this one? No real reason other than I lived in this neighborhood when I first moved to Philly in 1996.

I've been home a few days but aside from sorting through my unpainted plastic pile - perhaps I'll ramble about this in a subsequent post - nothing gaming related has occurred. I look forward to getting some painting in tomorrow night however and possibly a game of some sort this weekend.