More miniature painting - Wild West cowboys

Work in progress.

We're not even sure that these guys all belong in the same "gang". We've yet to even begin to think about how the rules for an (electronic) Wild West board game would play. So while we're trying to work it out, here's a shot of some western style miniatures, all painted exclusively using the Army Painter/Quickshade system.

Here's a few things we learned along the way:

• Subtle highlights are no highlights. There's no point highlighting a dulled down grey with an almost-the-same-but-slightly-lighter grey. True, it creates a really natural, subtle effect. But in the world of miniatures, big, bright and bold is better - unless you're an expert painter, putting in days (and even weeks) into each model, emphasis and exaggeration make for a decent paintjob, quickly!
• Leaving the basing to the end causes it's own problems - particularly painting glue and drybrushing around the feet. In future we're going to base our models first.
• Every paint stroke needs to be bold and look intentional. A thin, wobbly, wispy line may pick out a raised ridge, but it'll always look either half-finished, or it was an accident. Make each line obvious and deliberate and the miniature will look all the better for it (even if it's not quite in the right place!)
• Keep the number of different colours to a minimum, to keep a consistent colour scheme running through the miniature. Different shades are fine (in fact, necessary, to highlight details) but a limited palette gives a much more dramatic effect - especially if just one or two smaller details are picked out in a completely different colour
• Freehand painting patterns and shapes on large areas really improves the look of a model - provided you make a good job of it. Badly painted lines (like the stripes on our sheriff!) add nothing and actually detract from the rest of the paintwork!

 water down the PVA glue too much and the basing material just falls off when it's dry!

 even when glued down properly, go easy with the drybrushing, else you'll just scrub all the basing material off the base!

leaving the PVA too thick results in a similar problem - the basing material clumps together and leaves bald patches on the base

finally we got the glue consistency right - a nice, thick, well-covered base, drybrushed and finished to a half-decent standard.

With these miniatures based, we're going to call them finished and move on to some others now.

So far we've got a number of different genres identified for our electronic board game so there are plenty more miniatures still to paint!