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Craig

Temple Guard Banner 1

Posted on July 16, 2010

I mentioned that the banner for my Temple Guard snapped off in the process of transporting them around. I also mentioned that I took it as a sign. There’s a reason for that.

Last year sometime I had another brilliant idea. I would make a custom banner for one of my units (not the Temple Guard at the time) – I had a book of mythical creatures, I had a computer drawing tablet, I had the ability, I could do this!

Unfortunately, reality set in. I couldn’t figure out how to get a drawing from a computer into reality. Paper was a bad idea, and any sort of plastic/laminate I’d need to see a specialized printer to get done, and none I looked at would do anything quite so small!

So I gave up on the idea, after having some some effort into drawing something that looked pretty good. A year (or so, time flies…) later, banner snaps off and it’s time to bring the idea back.

I have some fabric lying around that I used to make my Ork hut. I cut up a regular Saurus banner pole, stuck a spearhead on top of it, and then puttied the fabric onto the pole. A paper clip pin on both ends, and we’re ready to go.

I did a few sketches, after measuring out about how much space I was going to have, and managed to drawing something that vaguely resembled a Quetzalcoatl – a mythical South American creature that apparently taught the Aztecs how to do agriculture. Who knew? It’s a snake with wings, essentially.

After I’ve painted the image on it, I’m going to use white glue to stick it into a more dynamic, waving position. But for now I’m happy that it’s flat and relatively stiff, so I can paint on it.

Featured Images

Lizardmen Temple Guard Final

Posted on July 14, 2010

I don’t recall when I started working on these guys. It was last year sometime I think. Actually…I could probably look this up, since I bought the unit shortly after the new temple guard were actually released. Looks like it was around February of 2009. So going on a year and a half.

However, at long last, I present…

Tournaments

ConquestBC Tournament

Posted on July 12, 2010

Bah!

I had planned on writing about the finished Temple Guard tonight. But I took about 30 pictures and only 3 turned out good, and those three weren’t a complete set of angles. So I’m going to wait until tomorrow to take some more.

Then I was going to write about some more photography stuff, but I can’t really write anything useful without referring to the pictures of the Temple Guard…which…I don’t want to post until I can post all of them.

So instead I’ll write about the tournament I went to this weekend.

This will probably be long, so if you care, hit the cut and keep on reading.

Continue Reading

Work-in-progress

Lizardman Temple Guard 4.1

Posted on July 6, 2010

So close…I finished off the scales last night, thanks to a clever colour tip from Patrick that I wouldn’t have thought of. A watery coat of Bleached Bone over the watery Blood Red that was painted only on the edges – it highlights the edges without making them bright like the Blazing Orange that I used on the regular troops.

And then a quick highlight on the various straps.

Todo:

Hanging dead heads. There are 4 of these that need a different colour.
Eyes. Whoops, forgot the eyes >.<
Some greenery on the bases.
The musicians drum.
…the banner. Which won’t be done this week, I suspect. If you remember, the banner snapped off and I took it as a sign that I should do a cooler banner…well that hasn’t happened.

No photos this time, but next post should be a finale (except the banner…which I’m considering a new project :P)

Photography

Miniature Photography

Posted on June 25, 2010

I’ve got about 7 photos to show here, so I’m going to put it behind a cut to pretend to save peoples bandwidths.

The topic for today is “playing with miniature photography”. As I mentioned, I went to my dads and his camera is a lot nicer than mine, so we got some interesting photos. My dad decided to take a bunch of photos in a row, with some different settings, so we’ll take a look at some of those photos and see about what difference those settings do.

Work-in-progress

Lizardmen Temple Guard 4

Posted on June 24, 2010

I went to my dad’s last night to make use of his nicer camera. We played with the settings and lighting a bit, and found some cool things (which are easily found elsewhere on the internet) (which I will be writing about in a later post :P).

But THIS is a Temple Guard update!

Last we spoke, I’d finished the bandages and then put a base coat on everything. I’ve done a lot of work on these guys since then, but there is still more to go. If you remember my last post, you’ll see a lot of that technique here.

Finished the metal parts. I started with Tin Bitz, then mixed that with some Boltgun Metal (which completely overpowered the Tin Bitz…it was not like mixing colours at all). Then did a highlight of just the Boltgun Metal. Lastly I washed all of the metal with Devlan Mud.
The bone is done. Started with Bleached Bone, washed with Devlan Mud (I bought a lot of the mud recently…) and then did a really gentle highlight/feathering with Bleached Bone on the raised surfaces.
Started a very tentative highlight process on the scales. This is Scab Red with a very watery Blood Red gently placed at the tops of the scales.

The scales are scaring me a bit. I have a few ideas of how to do it, but the model as it stands right now is much to bright, even while before I added the Blood Red it was much to dark. So I did a test piece to see if I could think of what I wanted to do. I think I have a plan, but I’m worried that it will look terrible. So I think I’m just going to do it on this one guy to start, and see how it goes.

Scab Red with the Blood Red, as you see below.
Blazing Orange in the tiniest amounts possible, while still looking orangey.
Baal Red wash over the whole thing.

If you head back to my Lava post, you’ll remember that the goal is deep, dark red in the middle, with a glowing brightness at the edges. This is beyond my skill, and the first step in producing something that will look good is to admit that :). The scales are too small, my patience too small, and my eyes prefer bright colours so I tend to over highlight.

The plan I’ve got will let me paint up to a colour that is bright, and then wash down to mute it a bit, while re-darkening the middle of the scales. I choose the Baal Red over more Devlan Mud, because the Mud doesn’t look red enough! The Baal maintains the red tinge I’m looking for.

After that, there are some straps that need a little bit more brown, and a couple heads that need some ugly colours, and then I’ll inspect each model to ensure it doesn’t have any colours over the lines. Lastly I need to paint the blasted drum of the musician >.>.. Annnnnd then I need to start thinking more about the banner that I mentioned I had planned.

Later!

Technique

So this is why I had a backlog…

Posted on June 21, 2010

I noticed this evening that 7 days have gone by without me posting anything. Thankfully, it hasn’t been 7 days since I painted anything, but I somehow felt like there wasn’t anything to write about. I’ve made significant progress on the Temple Guard – only 2 more “major” layers to go before I start looking for mistakes/tiny details, but it doesn’t look (from afar) like I’ve made any progress. More on that later.

Tonight while painting I had a thought to post a few tips/tricks that might help someone reading this. Or might not. Since no one posts comments, I have no idea who my readership is or what their skill level is (maybe a poll in the future? :))

Water

Water is surprisingly important in painting. For years (decades…) I thought you could open up a paint pot and just start taking the paint and placing it on the model. Well…you can, but you aren’t going to get to smooth, even highlights without water.

The easiest process I can suggest looks like this:

Put a colour on a palette. Add some water – enough that it flows, but not so much that it goes on too patchy. Patchy is ok, just not toooo patchy.
Put that paint on the model. Make it sloppy, just waz it all over the place. You’ll clean it up later (you will clean it up, won’t you?)
Find a wash that fits over it. Badab Black (unless yours sucks like mine) and Devlan Mud are common washes. No need to add water here. And again, just a sloppy coat over everything.
Grab that first colour again and do the water thing again on your palette. You may even want it really watery, like patchy “that won’t cover anything” watery.
Put only as much as you need for a single edge onto the tip of your paint brush. And with a gentle touch, apply that.

I can’t really say the amount of water I use. Last time I started with 2 brushes of Bleached Bone and then two brushes of water. Over time it dries and you add more, so the consistency I started with wasn’t the same as what I ended with.

If you get it right, what you’ll get is: 1 shit coat, 1 washed awesome coat, and 1 smooth beautiful highlight. The wash does half of the work for you, and if you want to leave it there you can. But just a little extra time can take it to the next level.

Variations

If you take this process and play with it a little, you can go a long way. A few variations:

Skip the last highlight entirely. I almost did this on my Hive Guard gun it looked so good.
Skip the wash and highlight by hand. The wash is a wicked easy thing, but it looks washed (duhh, because it is). If you do this highlighting by hand it’ll look way nicer (and people will be more impressed!). I did this with my Ork flesh – start really dark, then mix that dark colour with some black and a LOT of water (almost making your own wash, but not quite the same). Then start adding another lighter colour and highlight up. This is, as far as I know, what those really fancy amazing painters do. If you do this, you’ll want at least 1 base, 1 shadow, and then 2 highlight layers. But the more highlight layers you do, the more awesome it will look.
Feathering. Similar in concept to a dry-brush, but where dry-brushing you tend to do a heavy coat, feathering you take the smallest amount of paint and just apply it in tiny little lines at the edge. This is an attempt at fooling the human eye into believing that the base and highlight colours are mixed, when they really aren’t. (no actual mixing occurs though – I tried wet on-model mixing once and it didn’t work out so good…yikes).
You can take feathering even further. I really watered down the last layer and I’m apply it thicker at the tips and edges, and then drew lines outwards from there towards the base. You can see some what I’m talking about on almost any ‘Eavy Metal bone painting (The linked model cheats by having actual lines on the horns, where I’m painting those lines on) (Chakax will be featured here in a few months. He goes with the Temple Guard unit, but I’m not painting him with them for a few reasons).

(If you want more details, like exact colours and such, on these variations, just ask and I’ll write.)

Thanks for reading!

Musings & Meta

WordPress Upgrade

Posted on June 20, 2010

WordPress 3.0 apparently came out sometime this last week. I upgraded. It happened without a hitch. Lemme know if you see anything “weird” that needs fixing. (or hell, if you think something looked bad on the site before the upgrade let me know :P)

Photography

Posted on June 14, 2010

My post titles are so descriptive and original…

So I bought a Photo Studio in a Bag from ThinkGeek a week ago in an attempt, as promised, to increase the quality of the photos that I’m posting (without spending a lot of money).

You can see the first attempt at this already in the Temple Guard 3 post. A few things to note:

Having 2 lights does not absolve you of needing to have the 3rd light – oh, like, say the freaking sun – to make it look good. Taking photos at 11:30 at night isn’t a good plan.
To try to solve this, I took the default setup of having the two lights diffuse through the mesh and just aimed them into the big hole of the white box directly at the model. The first photo was taken with them diffusing, the second with them aimed directly. I like the second better (still needs the sun or more light…).
The tripod was next to useless. It’s too tall! The macro mode on my camera requires that the object be directly in front of the lens, not a foot away. In macro mode it would only focus as a blurry gray thing against a white background. In normal mode, once you got close enough using the zoom it would still be a blurry gray thing. So I had to bring the model closer to the entrance of the white box, and then hold the camera. Feels like it needs a pedestal or something.
Curious cat is curious. Keep the cat out of the white box!
The white box is folded up and kept in a black nylon case in a very clever manner. If you’ve worked with well-read computer programmers at all, you may know that clever is a euphemism for “we’ll never figure it out again”. It’s a 3 mesh panels with solid metal frames holding their shape. Those metal frames fold into a space about an eighth their normal size. I fold origami dinosaurs regularly, and this just continues to blow my mind.
Something else that just occurred to me. I need a macro mode that also has aperture configuration. I was wondering why, in the sample photo, you can’t see the background. The reason is that when you set your aperture high, as you are supposed to for models, the background becomes blurry and the object you are focusing on becomes offset from the background. But since I have an Aperture Mode and a Macro Mode on my little point’n’shoot of awesomeness I don’t have the choice of both.

Thanks for reading!

Work-in-progress

Lizardmen Temple Guard 3

Posted on June 13, 2010

Last we spoke I had become determined to finish off the Deth Kopta bottleneck so that I could move onto other projects. I added another few details onto them and then realized that my next tournament is Fantasy and it’s happening in almost exactly a month from now, and that 4 nights of painting (each Thursday night for a month) wasn’t going to cut it.

So I re-arranged my priorities and started focusing entirely on the Temple Guard.

Now, my fear with these guys is that I’ll screw them up and they’ll end up looking horrible. I’ve put a lot of work into puttying them, and a failure at this stage would be disastrous. So hear me when I say good god I hate the photos I’m about to show you.

Part of it is the lighting. Part of it is the half-finished nature of the bone, which is glaring and hideous. But right now, neither of these facts is salving my fears.

Added since last time: Tin Bitz on all metally parts, and bleached bone on all boney parts. The Graveyard Earth of the bandages was highlighted up using Desert Yellow, and then finally with a 3/2 mix of Desert Yellow and Bleached Bone.

Some kid at the store asked “so you’re almost done?” and I looked at the models disparagingly and had to say “No, I have a lot of work still.”

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