I've completed the first steps, which was the preparation for colour.
And I've learned a few things:
- Slapchop is likely harder to do on 15mm than 28mm.
- I overdid the zenathal spray so that there was too much of it. This meant that there wasn't actually too much left of the black. In my defense, I was trying to do it quickly because I was spraying in a garage that was only just above freezing and poorly lit.
- I went with a brown (actually a bit more of a red-brown than brown) but it is likely far to dark. I chose the brown because I thought it would work nicely as an undercoating tone for the skin of the Zulus, but I think I'm not going to get a lot of the benefits of the mid-tone zenithal spray.
- The paint I chose as the highlight colour is probably knackered. I had to thin it out to get it flowing and, as a result, I didn't get a nice consistent dry brush. My intention was originally to just highlight the top surfaces but I changed plan and just went for highlights everywhere.
Here's the results from the zenithal spray showing that I was too heavy handed:
Even though I didn't end up using it for the dry brushing, I bought a cheap makeup brush from the dollar store. I hacked it down to a quarter of its length using a pair of scissors at about 2mm or so for each trim. So now I have a drybrush ready to go and, as a bonus, some brush fibers I might be able to use as static grass. I didn't use the brush for this initial highlighting because it was a little big for picking out some of the details on the body and my paint was misbehaving.
