Quick post today as it’s not really much new for the Cazadors. Given the rate at which I normally complete projects, I’m legitimately impressed that I’ve nearly got two viable demo crews painted to what I would consider a relatively high personal standard. Unfortunately, I know that the last steps are usually the ones where I falter, so I’d like to make sure I stay locked in.

To keep up with these daily posts, here’s the latest mini I’ve finished for my demo crews.

Cazador Guard #2: This Time, With Leathers!

Shockingly, not a huge departure from the first Cazador Guard I painted. All of the typical stuff follows the processes I described in the first post, although the leathers were done using the method I worked out for the Comadreja rather than whatever I did for the first one of these guys.

I think I have a relatively stable NMM steel recipe now, as well – start with a black primer, then initial highlight with a mix of P3’s Coal Black and VMC Medium Sea Grey, followed by successive layers of VMC Medium Sea Grey, VGC Wolf Grey, AK Ice Yellow, and finally up to Ivory and White, with glazes to bring the intensities in line. While there’s areas that could use more refinement, I think it’s a simple enough recipe that works for these models, especially given how bright I’ve ended up getting the steel/ferracero.

I’m trying to be a bit more conscious of the eyes of my models, which wasn’t helped by today’s exercise in “how do I paint the right half of his face given the halberd in the way?”, which led to several instances of repainting until I finally had something that kind of looked all right. This is definitely a situation where I’m going to get better at eyes over time, so I think it’s important to keep practicing and see how much I can improve over time. We’ll see how that goes, but I’m anticipating “slowly” as pretty much all of my painting is done with an increasingly-worn W&N Series 7 size 2 brush. Who knows, maybe it’ll give up the ghost at some point and I’ll need to figure out where the hell I can get something like it in the US, which is probably gonna be a whole thing to deal with.

Hobby Progress

I painted a Cazador, obviously, but more importantly, I got some recommendations from friends on what to do after these first two crews are done. As per the recommendations of others, it’s going to be Pirates and Goblin Pirates as the next “paired” crews I’m working on – partially because I’ve already done some work on several models that would be part of the Pirate crew, and partially because they’re some of the original models that I bought for Freebooter’s Fate.

Unfortunately for me, the demo list I ended up settling on needs a couple additional models primed, and while my Goblin Pirates are assembled, they also need priming before I can do anything with them. On the plus side, it gives me a chance to get a few more miscellaneous models primed and ready (mostly ELTC and Amazons).