Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Painting with My Four Year Old

A week and a half ago I loaded my seven year old son in the car and headed to Seattle for their annual model show.  My four year old daughter was sad to be left behind, but I promised her I would bring her back a present.  I picked up a box of 1/32 scale Marian legionaries from Italeri for her.  We spent the past few days painting up our first figures.

These figures are soft plastic, so model cement would not work on them.  I attached the pila and scuta with five minute epoxy.  I then primed the figures with flat white Krylon plastic primer from a rattle can.

I guided my daughter through block painting the figures.  First she watched me paint, then she copied what I had just done.  It took a few days, but she did a very tidy job blocking in the figure.

We then brushed on some Minwax Polyshades Tudor Satin and gave it a day to dry.  The stain did a very nice job shading the figures.  Then we painted on some flat clear acrylic paint, dullcoated the figures, and based them up.

My little girl is pretty pleased with how her figure turned out, and I am awfully proud of her.  My figure is on the left, and her figure is on the right.  They don't differ very much from each other, do they?




She has painted 1/72 scale plastics, but they did not turn out this nice!  I think some 1/32 scale skirmish gaming is in our future.  Do any of you know of some good rules?  Saga might adapt well to Caesar's Gallic campaign.

15 comments:

  1. Very well done - to both of you! My suggestion for rules is Lion Rampant. Yes, they are for the medieval period, but are quite easily adapted to ancients. You can do the same with Ronin as well. Very inexpensive on Amazon.

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    1. Oh, that is a fantastic idea. I hope a copy of the rules on my shelf!

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  2. A chip off the ole block! Great work to the both of you! A father/daughter hobby not often seen. How is her speed?

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    1. Eh, pretty good. Once I get her painting in bulk, she will get faster.

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  3. Your daughter has talent, that is the least I can say! She did a wonderfull job on that figure, and I'm looking forward to more of her work!

    Greetings
    Peter

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    1. She had a blast painting it. I was actually using painting time as a motivator for her.

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  4. I am about to tach my 13 year old how to paint. He wants to learn. I hope he can do it half as good. I have played Pig Wars with a friend and his son. More medieval skirmish but kid friendly.

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  5. When my kids were that age, we started by focusing on movement and melee only until they comfortable with measuring and dice rolling aspects, which they were quickly.

    The first couple of times through we did a simple D6, higher roll wins. Then we quickly graduated to the more complex rules involving troop types, saving throws etc.

    Once we were past the basics I found it useful to put modifiers etc on a whiteboard in the room for easy reference.

    Looks like she's off to a great start painting.

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    1. We may do that. Once nice thing about trying out "Lion Rampant" is that my seven year old son has been dying to paint armies for "Dragon Rampant," so we could learn two rules sets at once!

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  6. Oh come on now. That was painted by a FOUR YEAR OLD?! Scott, I hated you already for your insanely crisp, cartoony painting style, and now you have a four year old prodigy who paints better than I do? Ridiculous.

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    1. She is pretty proud of these. I walked her through each step.

      And I doubt she paints better than you do. :-)

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