Yeh...I got a little carried away. But hey its all good fun.
Having seen a little about these I quickly wanted to get them for myself and see if I couldn't make all my figures look as good as the pictures. After trawling the internet aimlessly for a while I managed to grab them all relatively cheaply at about $31 AUD each including shipping.
And they're well worth it.
What's great about these books is that it saves hours trawling the internet looking for help on how to paint your figures up to a pretty darn good standard by providing help on many different techniques, styles and all the colours that went into making them. I know I've spent ages hunting through the google machine to find painting guides for all my different figures.
I apologise for the crappy photos, I was trying not to burn dinner at the same time
These are the current 3 books that have been released, and it looks like two more will shortly follow (being Napoleonic British Infantry and the Spanish Civil War)
The first issue (and probably my favourite period) is the WW2 German army done by "Heresybrush"
It's a quality production with nice paper and stacks of high resolution photos to show off the work. It includes a step by step guide of virtually everything you need from painting faces to individual insignia for rank within the branches of the Wermacht. It also includes the guides for all those painfully difficult camo and non camo uniforms including the relatively common splintermusters, various SS and even Italian camouflage used by the germans. It also details how to paint winter figures.
It contains about 36 individually painted figures (mostly from artizan designs along with a few warlord figures) which cover a large range of german forces.
I'd highly reccommend this book for anyone interested in painting up German figures to a decent standard.
The second issue is the Napoleonic French Army by Archiduque. Again a very nicely produced product with plenty to offer from the French Army. What's interesting when reading this compared to the previous issue is the different styles employed by the different artists and all three are fairly unique.
I've only included a few (poor) photos for the sake of brevity but you get the general idea. The book covers all different types of infantry, cavalry and even how to paint french artillery. Both Line and Guard figures are covered. Most of the figures are Foundry ( I was hoping for a couple more of the Perry Miniatures figures but I'm biased towards them)
There are a whole bunch of useful horse painting guides for those of you who are stuck looking for colours to add depth to the cavalry
The only annoyance I found in this particular issue (and to a much smaller extent in the other two) is that it lacked a little proof reading, meaning that several phrases didn't quite convert well from Spanish to English and some of the colour recommendations had actually been left in Spanish entirely (all colour references provide the Vallejo number as well so its not a big deal). I now know how to translate shadow, base and highlight in Spanish. Win. I think a proof read by a few native English speakers would've ironed out the kinks and definitely improved the feel of the publication.
Despite this I'd still heartily recommend the book for painters and enthusiasts alike.
Last up is the latest release being the Japanese and US forces. Done by Claudia Zuminich it once again provides an excellent resource on uniforms and painting the period. Claudia's style is quite different to the other two in that she tends to blend and glaze far more which produces more subtle colour transitions and slightly more realistic looking models.
As with the other two there are plenty of guides on painting individual pieces of kit and uniform, including webbing, jackets, helmets, Japanese cloth etc etc. It shows off some pretty impressive techniques to really dirty up your figure and give it some real battlefield personality using materials from AK interactive like rust streaks to simulate dried blood.
So after a fairly long winded but hopefully helpful post I'd thoroughly recommend these 3 books to anyone who's considering churning out figures of these periods and wants a little bit of help and guidance of the spoon feeding variety to get them on their way.
I'll certainly be looking at these publications in the future when they bring them out. By the looks of it they have a lot planned covering most major and several minor conflicts.
Enjoy!
