I’d been working on Ramos off and on for a while before I declared him done. I wasn’t super excited to paint him, which is unfortunate since he’s tons of fun to play. š
I still hateĀ painting human skin. >.<
He needs a new coat…
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Craig
I was trying something new, painting with alcohol mixed with the Secret Weapon weathering pigments.
The alcohol took all the bristles from my brush, and removed them.
And the end result of the paint job wasn’t that good. Kind of just like taking opaque paints and applying them. So…fun experiment ended. š
Finished Johanna. I’ve been not happy with her paint job for several hours, but have to put it down.
I think I’m unhappy with the colour choices I made. The blue is to light, but making it darker is making it splotchy. The red is to close to her skin tone,Ā so there’s bad contrast between her chest and the shirt around it. There’s a spot on her inner right thigh that is refusing to hold any more paint, so making shadows is proving difficult. I had a face that I liked, but then I started to paint eyes and I completely botched the face up. And the base looks like a pile ofĀ shit smeared on a bunch of poorly-scaled mechanical parts.
Sigh.
In the end, the paints are pretty decent, and the shirt is pretty decent, and the face is pretty decent, and the eyes are pretty decent.
I added some foliage to cover up the shit-smear base. I black lined the shirt/chest edge to create more contrast. I let her dry upside down to try to get paint on that inner thigh part. And IĀ finished the eyes and then went back to fix the face so it’s alright.
She’s a part of the Outcast faction, but since she has such synergy with M&SU, I don’t think she’ll ever appear in an Outcast crew for me. Both Ramos and Kaeris are M&SU with a lot of good M&SU models, so she’s a really solid support choice for those crews.
The Burn in Designs windmill continued to cause me some issues – it looked like it was designed so you could rotate it, but without having enough parts to actually be able to rotate it. I still couldn’t figure out what the little sticky uppy bit was! I drilled and pushed the nail into the smaller round bit, then glued the larger one on to hide it.
Used a tiny little plastic screw and a lot of glue to provide just a little nub to give some traction so it doesn’t slide off. It didn’t have to be tight or solid, just keep the top of falling off if you brush it.
The solution isn’t perfect, as the nail isn’t long enough or heavy enough to hold it in the box. Maybe if I put another piece of wood on the end of it?
This is another piece that confused me to as to how to build it properly.
I got this far without trouble.Ā There are stabilizing pieces inside theĀ center of the tower to help put it together, a feature that was very much appreciated! Same in the cylindrical tower – pieces that look almost like garbage are actually there to hold theĀ vertical slats on (you can see them better in the next photo, top left).
But the final build has a thing sticking out of it. And while I have no problem seeing how it’s supposed to attach, I don’t see how it’s supposed to not get ripped off after a moment in my terrain box!
I solved this problem at roughly the same time as my windmill problem. I used my pinvice to drill holes into the triangular pieces, and also the rectangular “faucet”. Then I took a nail from our hardware bin in the closet and made it fit.
So now I can pull the nail out to remove the faucet when storing it!
I finished this guy up just after GottaCon, and I’m stoked with where he ended up!
I did a lot more with this guy than I originally thought. I used theĀ Drakenhof Nightshade wash in the recesses. When it dried, it looked like a “skin” over the model, so I used ‘ardcoat to re-shine it, successfully. I put the Secret Weapon snow on, which I still love, but I think I used too much. š Then I drybrushed white on top and over his face and called it done.
Until I saw a post on A Wyrd Place talking about re-varnishing over the white drybrush…
The LED isn’t as noticeable in these photos, because it’s a photo, but it’s really cool in person. š
I picked up Kaeris at Kippers Melee at my first Malifaux tournament and left her in the box for almost 2 years. Now that I’m trying to expand my Arcanists so I can have a better arsenal for tournaments, I thought I’d paint her. š
I ended up really happy with her, despite my human skin woes. Really close to the colours I wanted (thanks Oso!) and I love the OSL, particularly where it meets the rock. I finally got something that looks like a “pool” of fire and she’s pulling it out of the ground.
While at Gottacon I walked through the vendor hall, because you never know what you’re going to find. I love the cosplay and costumes and leather, the indy board games, the giant board game stores, the minis, just all of it.
One place I walked past was crewed by a lady I met at Magic Stronghold a little while ago while playing Malifaux, and she was sitting in front of the most brilliant (lighting-wise) product I’d ever seen, so it was easy to stop and talk.
This is actually a super crappy photo, the lighting is not good, but those flame markers are the most amazing neon colour ever.
Token Factory is a local company to Vancouver, they look relatively new and they’ve got some awesome laser-based product. My only complaint is that I wish the measuring widget was 1x2x3x4x5, as the 6 isn’t really useful and a 5 would be good as that’s the most used Wk value, along with 4.
(I received no free product for this post, which looks like an advertisement, but is still just me being excited about hobby stuff :P)
This cute little building doesn’t fit into my existing architecture at all. These wood sprues came with so many little extras that I had no idea how to put it all together. It even came with little jutty out windows that might sit on the roof. I didn’t put them on, because there’s no second floor.
I signed up for the Wyrd Iron PainterĀ competition. It’s rough – 5 rounds, each round there is a random theme you have to model to. You are randomly matched against another contestant, and you have to beat them in a score out of 20. 5 points for Theme, 5 points for Technical Skill, 10 points for Aesthetic.
Here’s my entry (click to open in bigger view)
Here is my opponent’s entry. The Theme wasĀ Fools Gold.
Each round is 2 weeks, and this round ended AprilĀ 19th at midnight. It started on April 3rd. I had 1 day before I left (mercifully, my fiance was out wedding dress shopping for half the day…) and a day and a half of sick and jetlag to do this.
I’m pretty damn pleased with myself, given those constraints! I did have a number of potential models out and available, and I lucked into the fact that I was planning to do Willie soon, so I had a decent idea of how I wanted to do his base, and that he worked well with the theme.
The sickness and jetlag has taken all of my ability to remember more than 30 seconds ago, so I’m really having a hard time recalling what colours I used. I know I used Tallarn Sand forĀ the first layer of his skin, to see how it went, but there’s very little actual skin tone remaining.
Things I’m not happy with:
- Using pure white was a miserable idea. It doesn’t get shaded easily, it just gets dirty looking. So his pants are off-and-on in places.
- The shirt I was trying to make look like a black checkered mesh over skin, but the skin is dirty and messy as well.
Things I’m pretty damn happy with:
- The layered base.
- First use of Army Painter tufts. Super easy, and awesome.
- The gold. I really wish I could remember if it was Vomit Brown base or Sunburst Yellow base. But it was easy after that – I usedĀ Dementor Yellow to make the yellow more yellow, then a very light drybrush of white on the top of it for some shine. Seraphim Sepia is lightly placed into some of the crevasses to separate the dynamite out from each other piece.
- The blending on the wheelbarrow edges.
It’ll be a miracle if I make it to round 2, but at least I’ll have most of the entire 2 weeks to work on the piece! Results for round 1 are said to be available April 23rd, round 2 starts April 24th.