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Craig

Musings & Meta

Painting Motivation

Posted on June 9, 2010

Ok, so I’ll be honest with anyone who reads this – most of the content you’ve been reading over the last couple weeks was back-logged. Immediately after starting this blog I went into a frenzy of crazy painting action and back-logged a weeks worth of posts. It was glorious.

But now it’s hot out and I’m tired and I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing to make these Deff Koptas look good, and I have 3 tournaments I need to paint for (2 in July! I need to finish the Temple Guard for the 9th of July! Oh good god that’s only a month away…) and I haven’t painted much of anything in about a week. >.<

I think what I need is to get rid of the Deff Koptas. They are a bottleneck in my motivation.

Work-in-progress

Deth Koptas 1

Posted on June 8, 2010

This is another “oh, I’m mostly done” sort of post. I promise this is the last one – I’ve run out of projects that I’ve been meaning to finish! Everything from here on will be from the start (except for my battlewagon…which is partly assembled)

Paint Scheme

  • Bloooooo. These guys follow my Ork vehicle paint scheme of Regal Blue base, Space Marine Blue highlight. It’s a Space Marine theme’d Ork army.
  • The metal is just Boltgun Metal with a Chaos Black wash (remember, my Badab fails).

Conversion

  • I was trying for a long while before assembling them to figure out some awesome conversion I could do. In the end, I just added some extra metal plates and called it a day. They are like…6 piece models, almost snap together, and there wasn’t a lot of room for cutting and pasting.

I’m honestly not to certain where I need to go from here. It looks like there are a lot of little details on the models that need finishing – the straps on their hats, a highlight on the green meters, some extra colour on some of the little knick-knacks around the model. Little things.

Then the bases. Need a little bit of flock, since that’s the thing I’m doing for the Orks.

Lastly, the rotor blades need some colour. Likely a blue colour. I could also do that yellow/black hazard striping, since I put that on some of my vehicles as a strong contrasting colour, to ensure that they weren’t entirely blue. Slightly unnecessary here, as the orks themselves (and the large amount of metal) keep it from being a sea of blue, but it is nice to be consistent.

Work-in-progress

Lava

Posted on June 6, 2010

Photography+internet is a little odd to me. I feel like, if I can look at a picture, I should be able to distribute that picture. I mean…I’ve got it already. It’s on my hard drive, being displayed by my monitor. And yet I get the feeling (was unable to confirm) that it’s probably against the rules to take those photos on your computer and to use them directly. (This can be contrasted with movies/games/music, where you have to actively search for them to get them onto your computer, so you can steal them.)

Did you know that “smoldering lava” is the name of a particular card in the Molten Core raid deck from the WoW:TCG? I didn’t, but now I do, since that’s a good portion of what a Google search will bring up.

Annnnyhooo. I decided to link to the source instead. So click this link and lets talk about lava: http://english.cctv.com/20091130/103250.shtml. The link has 6 pages of photos, with 2 photos a page. So I’ll be talking about them like that.

Page number:

  1. This page didn’t inspire me.
  2. The first photo, with volcanic lightning excited me. I want to add volcanic lightning to my models. Seriously. That’s like two of the most badass natural events bound into one tight little package. Volcanic lightning. If you aren’t tittering yet, go look at the photo. But ahhh…I think I’d probably fail >.<. Any ideas on how I could incorporate this?
  3. This page has no pictures of lava on it…which is entirely useless to me.
  4. The first photo has a little bit of what I’m looking for. Notice that it’s a completely dark photo – grey, dark blue, smoke, rock, black. With strong highlights of this eye-piercing orange. Although this isn’t ideal for the Temple Guard, it’s getting close. It’s a little bright still.
  5. Here’s the money shot. First photo, magic-mud lava (I’m sure the scientists have a better name for it :P). Dark, black red in the center, with a slightly brighter dark red on the edges. This is how the TG should be done. Downside: the scales on these guys are tiny, edging will be a pain >.<
  6. Just a mountain here. Lame.

11 photos, 3 ones that have anything to do with my project, 1 that is probably “the one”. Success!

Work-in-progress

Lizardmen Temple Guard 2

Posted on June 4, 2010

I worked on these guys scales a bit. (I showed up at 6:30 at GW, tables were all full :P)

Scab Red, with a Chaos Black wash on the scales. My other lizards have a vibrant Blood Red/Blazing Orange/Sunburst Yellow scheme on their scales, imitating lava. These guys I hope to have similar fiery colours, but much more muted. Maybe I should look at some pictures of hardened lava to see if it gives any inspiration.

For some reason, whenever I paint Badab Black it ends up shiny. I hate it. My other washes don’t do that. Which is why I’m using watered down Chaos Black as a wash instead.

    Featured Images

    Tyranid Hive Guard 3

    Posted on June 3, 2010

    Last post on this guy, since I’m calling him done.

    Since the last post I added:

    • A 1:3 mixture of Hawk Turqoise and Scaly Green to the top edges of his skin, and every opening.
    • Goblin Green base rim, and some flock on top of the grey gravel.

    It’s funny…looking at the photos, the pink and the green highlight are really stark. But sitting at my desk, while I’m painting them, they are relatively calm.

    I’m wondering if next time I should paint the HT+SG highlight directly over the original SG base, and then wash over that. I worry that the highlight will get muted by the wash, and also that the skin will be ridiculously shiny (it will be – just a question of whether it’s bad or good ridiculous).

    Looking at it now, I’m pretty happy with the green rim. When I was painting it I was thinking “Oh god…goblin green rims…how old is this army anyway?” It’s been years since I painted with the goblin green. But I think it’s a nice colour to go with the yellow and green of the model itself.

    I’m really happy with how his armour turned out. More of that in the future.

    Links to the other two posts, for ease of reference:

    My next 40k project is to finish the Deff Koptas! That will be another project where I start writing when I’m already 3/4s of the way through, but there’s still some work to be done.

    Work-in-progress

    Tyranid Hive Guard 2

    Posted on June 2, 2010

    I worked on the Hive Guard weapon a little bit. I’m not 100% on it right now. It looks pretty good…but it’s too much…bone. Too plain. Probably good, but not my usual style :P.

    • Bleached Bone base coat.
    • Devlan Mud all over.
    • Bleached Bone effectively dry-brushed over raised areas. Protrusions on the left, all of the holes on the shaft of the gun. This is a really light coat, subtle is the name of the game.
    • Solid Bleached Bone on the “spears” that it shoots, followed by a very watery coat of Skull White. Watery mostly because my White is almost dry…but also so it’s more subtle. Looking at this photo…maybe to subtle.
    • Dwarf Flesh on the cables, followed by a light touch of Tentacle Pink. Interestingly, it’s a lot more of a “light touch” in reality than it is in this photo :P.

    I also (not photographed) brought the Bubonic Brown further up on the top-most ridge of his back armour. I realized that it was silly to have a highlight that didn’t start at both ends of the scale. Looks a lot better now.

    The skin is next and then it’s done! (oh, and a little work on the base…)

    Work-in-progress

    Lizardmen Temple Guard 1

    Posted on May 31, 2010

    Lizardmen are my current favourite Fantasy army and, even better, the first army to have had an updated army book that didn’t ruin the army for me (O&G, Chaos both ruined…).

    I was reading the Warseer forums one random day, and came across a some random person commenting on how he was thinking of converting up some undead Temple Guard. This idea just latched onto my brain and wouldn’t let go. I picked up a Lord Kroak model and painted him up, purchased some Temple Guard…who then sat there on my shelf for several months waiting for me to do something.

    You see – I’ve never worked with green stuff in any significant way. I’m more of an Orky sort of converter – grab some random bits and glue them together until it looks mean and green. This project would require slightly more finesse.

    I asked a friend of mine to show me how to putty up some bandages – his work is brilliant. He took one and did it in about a minute, and it looked gooooood. Damn him and his crazy skillz. But you know what? It turns out that making fake bandages with green stuff is a lot easier than you would think.

    I’ve been working on these guys really slowly for almost a year (rough guess). Most of that time was puttying one model at a time, once a week at the local GW if I couldn’t get a game in on Fantasy night. They are a long-term project so far…but I’m planning on using them at a couple tournaments I’m going to this summer, so they need to be finished “soon”.

    Paint Scheme

    • Codex Gray drybrushed, with Fortress Gray overtop on the skin. The point is to make them look old and dusty. My other lizards are a similar shade, but darker.
    • Graveyard Earth bandages. No idea what I’m doing from here, but biege is the plan.

    Conversion

    • The bandages were relatively easy. Roll out a line of putty, flatten it and then wrap it around various body parts. Make sure you keep your putty tool wet (I use saliva…despite that being a potentially unhealthy idea). Once it’s wrapped, draw lines in the putty with the knife edge to make it look wrinkled. Rinse and repeat. A lot of work, but not hard.
    • While transporting, the banner fell off of the banner-bearer. About a year ago I had been working on a hand-drawn design for a banner. I took this as a sign that I should put this design on this unit. We’ll see if I have time.

    Photography

    Photography?

    Posted on May 30, 2010

    I have an ok camera. At least, it was ok 4-5 years ago when I first got it. It has a 12x zoom, aperture priority, shutter priority, manual focus, up to 1600ISO, up to 2200x2something resolution. Everything I barely knew how to use at the time. At the time, everyone was jealous of me, and I thought I was the king of the camera-related world.

    Now…the world has moved onto DSLR and I have a point’n’shoot with a big pointy zoom on it.

    Since I’m planning on taking a bunch of pictures of models for this blog, I looked a bit into improving the quality of the photos I’m taking. A couple easy pieces of advice came out – lots of light, get a tripod, make sure you use a white background so the model stands out, use the highest aperture you can – great ideas, and very shortly I’m going to implement all of them, so that anyone reading this no longer has to look at the state of my painting desk when I take a photo :).

    One piece of advice stood out though – buy a macro lens. Which, given the nature of my camera, would require me to purchase a DSLR with interchangeable lens.

    You can purchase a DSLR for about $500 these days, which is about $4-600 cheaper (for the cheapest) than last time I looked at them. But do I really want a $500 DSLR? Am I buying crap? I’m not the kind of person who likes to buy crap, I tend to look at the “middle of the road” when it comes to purchases of this nature. But then you’re looking at $800+, and then getting more batteries and the right lenses and then you’ve spent $1000 on it.

    I spent $1000 last month on buying a new engine part or two for my motorscooter. I use that 3-4 times a week. Before I started taking pictures for this blog, I used my camera twice a year, somes less. In the last few days I’ve pulled it out every day to take a picture of something on my desk (you just haven’t seen them all yet…).

    So I think, for right now, I’m going to leave it at the less expensive pieces of advice. But maybe…if I end up with a couple hundred in gift cards for my birthday (coming up in a week and a half), maybe I’ll look a little more seriously.

    Featured Images

    Ork Flash Git

    Posted on May 29, 2010

    I didn’t paint this one, but I wanted to share it and it’s tale anyway.

    There was an auction at my local Games Workshop a couple weeks ago, along with some mini-games for prizes. They had as prizes some mail-order only models, and I knew there were about three things I wanted as prizes so I went down to see if I couldn’t make it happen.

    I lost every single game. Poop.

    Towards the end of the day, one of the local kids won a game and upon looking through the box of prizes realized that there was nothing he wanted. I was standing around and he asked if there was anything I wanted, and I sort of sputtered out “Oh yes!” and picked out the Ork Flash Git. I’m amazed – I’ve been known to give prizes that I don’t care about to kids, but that’s because I have a job and I can really afford to buy just about any model I happen to desire. Good kid.

    At the auction, the last three things put up for auction were staff paint jobs, as they usually do, and there was one particular staffer who’s work I admire. I bid $10 on him up from $1 and won his work without a fight. As I paid my $10, I tossed the Flash Git at him, saying “I play Deathskulls”.

    (At the end of the day I also purchased the Animosity Orks, so look for them in a painting/modelling project soon!)

    Paint Scheme

    • I really have no idea, but I wanted to point out a couple awesome things he did.
    • The squig is my favourite part. Tiger squig! It also has a targeting reticule for an eye. Awesome.
    • The skin is incredibly well highlighted, I can’t even begin to figure out how many layers and what colours he used.
    • All of the metal has been painted it’s primary colour, and then has a little splotch of some metallic colour painted in random locations, where the paint has chipped.
    • He used a similar highlight scheme as the skin (with different colours) to paint the gun-barrel wood grain.

    Work-in-progress

    Tyranid Hive Guard 1

    Posted on May 27, 2010

    For my first post of this blog, I choose a model that I spent most of Sunday working on – sorry I can’t start with a blank slate!

    This hive guard has been sitting on my desk for a couple months, assembled and beautiful. We played some Apocalypse on Saturday, and it got me really hyped up to paint some models. Unfortunately, I left my Orks (my current priority project) at my friends place, so I had to suffice with what was on my desk – a lot of random things.

    Paint Scheme

    Right now he (it?) has 3 colours:

    • Bubonic brown, washed with Devlan Mud. Highlight with Bubonic Brown, followed by Sunburst Yellow. I think this layer is done.
    • Scaly Green, washed with Badab Black. I think this colour went out of print some years ago. This guy belongs to a larger Tyranid army that I started maaaaany years ago, and I made sure to purchase the colours before they were discontinued. Thankfully it’s still liquid. My favourite part about this combination: he looks disgusting. Shiny dark green. Gross. I may end up highlighting to a combination of Hawk Turqoise (another OOP colour?) plus the Scaly Green. But not to much – I like the darkness.
    • Bleached Bone, washed with Devlan Mud. This combination went on his gun and every spike. I’m not certain what I’m going to do from here, but the gun definitely needs some attention to stop it from looking plain.
    • Base is a simple gravel/sand mix, with Codex Gray and Fortress Gray dry-brushed. Goes with the rest of the army. It’ll have some greenery on it at the end.

    A few thoughts

    • I have no idea how I painted without washes before. It’s ridiculous how awesome they are. Like that gun – better looking after two sloppy coats of paint than a lot of models that I see regularly. This kind of tool can only make people feel good about their painting (thus they paint more?)
    • Hive guard == badass. All armoured and awesome. I need more of them.
    • In hindsight, another layer of a mix of Bubonic and Devlan would have been a better idea before heading straight to the Bubonic again. It’s a fairly stark transition.

    Thanks for reading!