The Army Painting list at Yahoo also does a Christmas miniature swap. This year I poured through my stacks of lead and came up with what I thought was a cool idea. The results of my labors are shown below in the mini-diorama "The Cowboy and the Kid" using miniatures from Artizan Designs. 

Some miniatures are to game with, some to look at. I wanted these to be the former. I mounted the cowboys on round GW 25mm bases as suggested in Legends of the Old West (LoTW). In their base, I placed a couple of magnets (<ad alert> I sell these at my store which will be reopening after XMas - http://www.Wizards-Workshop.com</ad alert>). These are terrific magnets and work well as mounting pieces or for holding arms and such on to systems you want to give the ability to swap out.

Here's a picture of the look of the diorama.The bottom piece is just a square of Airplane plywood that I got from Litko for another project. I used Reaper Master Series Paints on these and I can't sing their praise highly enough! Drat, one of the things I *did* forget wsa to enter these into my painting journal. Derek Schubert suggests that you record paint colors, techniques, etc. in a journal so that if you have to come back to a miniature or do another, you'll have a reference as to what worked and what didn't!

I have posted some of the pictures of the individual miniatures below. The Cowboy is meant to be an old timer - a veteran of the Civil War. The Kid is an upstart and I like the way they sculpted the face on him, as if he's ready to get started!

I  used Liquitex Resin Gel on the bases, GF9 scatter grass and Woodland Scenics Clump Foliage. The gel is not my preferred basing material, I like parakeet grass better but the gel dries fairly quickly. The gravel gives a nice rough texture that dry brushes better.

The final diorama is shown in more pictures below.

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites