Siege Equipment: Painting the Mighty Fortress. Part 5 - Back with a Vengeance

Part 1 - setting up and overcoming nerves

Note:Part 2 and other updates are found below.

Now that I've completed the build of my Mighty Fortress comes the job of painting it.

Some time ago I was given an airbrush and compressor set-up for a birthday present by my wonderful wife, Anna.

My airbrush and some black paint I've mixed to base-coat with)

My compressor

My work with it so far has been sparse, sporadic and not entirely successful. As such I've built up a bit of a hesitation about using it, but have decided to use this project as a back-breaker. There's a lot of castle to paint (this is only *most* of it):

My two mighty fortress sets.

The speed of application from an airbrush should be a boon as long as I can really work out how to address the problems I always seem to face. In a nutshell, they are all to do with paint - thinning it to appropriate consistency so that it shoots without spatter or blockages and covers well.

Part 2 - slow going...

It feels like I've made very little progress in the last couple of weeks. My work on this project is confined to early mornings, before the rest of the family gets up. That means getting up earlier than normal myself which I don't think many of us wargamers are good at :-).

As a result I've only been able to put a few hours work in since I last wrote about painting the castle, and a lot of that has gone into getting used to using the airbrush. As a result, I was able to write a detailed post on Overcoming Airbrush Problems, but have not made as much progress painting the castle as I'd have liked.

So far I've managed to get a basecoat of black on all my wall sections and my ruined tower:

But I've still got all the remaining towers to do:

Part 3 - Hiatus... Over!

Well, if you've been following this post's progress you'll know it's several weeks since I posted an update on it. There's a very good reason for that: MY AIRBRUSH BROKE!

Well, sort of.

What actually happened was that when I was cleaning it, the nozzle (there's a schematic on my "Overcoming Airbrush Frustrations" post which will show the part I mean) broke in half as I was removing it for a clean. The conical front piece came away from the thread that secures it into the brush, leaving the thread stuck inside.

Getting replacement nozzles was simple enough and very inexpensive, but getting the threaded section out of the brush proved trickier (I finally managed it by removing the back end of the airbrush handle and the chucking nut then using my pin vice to grip the blunt end of the needle and using the needle to unscrew the broken nozzle from inside the brush).

If truth be told, all of that is an excuse. I have another airbrush (a siphon-fed single-action model). It's actually better suited to this "basecoating large models" kind of a job. If you think of the gravity-fed dual-action airbrush as a scalpel, then the siphon-fed brush would be a sawn-off shotgun. Lots of paint, quickly. I avoided using it for the early part of this job because half the point was to gain confidence with the dual-action brush. I got so "into" working with the dual-action that when it failed it never occurred to me to switch to the single-action brush.

Anyway, after kicking myself up the butt I've managed to get myself started again. Using the single-action brush I've completed the black basecoat of all the castle towers over the last two mornings. My intention next is to mix up some grey paint and using start layering up the stone colour so this thing starts to look more "Old World" and less "Mordor".

Part 4 - Hiatus... Over! Well almost...

I've had another progress slump on the painting of the Mighty Fortress. My self-inflicted kick up the butt only lasted a few days.

I got the spare parts I needed for the airbrush (nozzles, and I also ordered a spare needle) and then managed to lose the nozzle-cap o-ring whilst fitting one of the new nozzles. Then I noticed something odd: my airbrush needle was protruding a long way out of the front of the brush which wasn't normal. I finally worked out that the new nozzle hadn't got the inner lining of paint that the old one had accumulated and also that the old nozzle had been abraded by the passage of air and paint over it. This had slimmed it down and allowed it to push further through the brush. Combined with the missing o-ring, this added up to a very annoying couple of day's effort as the paint just wouldn't "flow".

I can't easily get a replacement o-ring but am muddling through without it by carefully adjusting by hand the position of the nozzle-cap.

So far I've managed to complete the airbrush-work on about two-thirds of my wall sections. The remaining third and the towers are yet to be started. This is the sort of effect I'm going for:

Wall viewed from front

Wall viewed from top

You can make out the "mottled" effect I'm looking for in the stonework from the "front" view above (you can also see the join line where the battlements can be removed for replacement with a damaged rampart section). In the bottom picture you can see my attempt to create a "worn" look to the rampart due to centuries of footfalls.

I'm not done with the paint effects here - I'm planning to go back over these sections (and all the others) with some light "sponge painting" work to brighten up the bricks a bit with some lighter greys and possibly some reds. This will hopefully add some texture to the bricks and also deepen the effect of the shadows between them. Another bit of airbrushed darkening will be applied along the base of the wall (to simulate some "rising damp") and along the bit where the rampart joins the walkway and in overhangs etc. to create some emphasized shadows.

Once all that's done, the plan is to attack the whole thing with some weathering powders, which will be another "first" for me.

Before I wrap this post up, I've not been completely idle on this project as I have completed all the painting on the castle's "wooden" components (doors, gates, hatches and ladders):

Doors

Hatches, ladders and gates

More news as it comes in.

Part 5 - Back with a Vengeance

I've finally managed to get myself back "in the zone" on this project.

I've overcome my technical issues with the airbrush and got my "visualisation" on how I want this castle to look (which is "Dark, menacing and the sort of place my Chaos Warriors might want to hang out") firmly in place.

It's amazing how quickly you can make progress with an airbrush when you're not struggling with it. I've gone from my previous post to this one in less than 2 hours of "work time" with the airbrush and about 30 minutes of drybrushing (which has just been used on the "broken" sections of the walls to pick out damage. No drybrushing has been used on the walls or towers otherwise. I'm therefore very pleased to consider this my first, proper, major airbrush success.

Shown below is a selection of snaps I took with my phone. It was done immediately after the aforementioned drybrushing and so only the the sections I had to hand at that time (i.e. damaged wall segments) are shown. Shown is anything with damage: from a shipped rampart-corner to a totally shattered tower (which, incidentally in case you've not read all the posts above is completely home made) or collapsed wall section.

For the photos I'd arranged the pieces in a simple four-sided layout, 1 segment of wall per side. I'd also put the doors and gates in place.

The photos only show a small proportion of the pieces I've actually prepared. All told I have:

• 7 Intact Towers
• 1 Damaged Dower
• 1 Destroyed Tower
• 2 "Gate" wall sections
• 8 wall sections
• 3 collapsed/detroyed wall sections

All are currently finished to the same standard.

And I'm not done yet! My airbrushing experiment (varnishing aside) is done, but I've decided to take this a stage further and experiment with weathering powders. I've never used them before so it's another step into new territory. Wish me luck!