Friday, 4 May 2012

Defenders of Rorke's Drift

The Defenders of Rorke's Drift - An Expirement with Dipping!

Winter is finally over up here in northern Canada!  Work has slowed down and now I can spend my summer getting some painting completed.  I was a little upset with myself that I never alotted more free time (what little there was) to paint during the winter. 

My main goal is to get my monthly entries in over at www.bugmansbrewery.com and also complete a project for my dad for Father's Day.  I recently received a large order of Britsh Infantry from www.blacktreedesign.com of their Zulu Wars range. 

I grew up watching the movie Zulu with my dad, even to this day we still watch it about once a year together.  The film tells the story of roughly 130 British infantry at Rorke's Drift,  defending a small Mission against 4000 Zulu warriors.   The Battle of Rorke's Drift was a true story (hard to believe!) where most of the Brits survived and of the survivors 11 were award the Victoria Cross.  The film is a true epic in every way and is still one of my favorites to this day.

As a gift to my dad for Father's Day I decided to get 130 British Infantry and paint them up in the colors of the 24th Regiment of Foot that defended the Mission.  130 miniatures is a pretty daunting task so I decided to cheat a little and picked up a tin of Army Painter Dark Tone dip.  My experience with dip in the past hasn't been great, I learned pretty early that you have to really 'dumb' down the paint job.  I dipped a AoW Slayer that I had spent about 2 days on and completely killed my paint job and never touched dip since. 

I should have taken a before and after picture of the dipping process because to be honest I spent absolutely no time on these and the pre-dipped minis looked like complete shit lol.  After dipping, drying and spraying with Army Painter Anti-Shine here are the results of my first batch.  I painted these up in less than 2 hours and I am really impressed with the results.  Enjoy.