Featured images.
I still hate painting humans…
A new mercenary called Sue. Nothing about this paint job really makes me happy, so I’m kind of glad it’s over with. Right now, as I write this, I’m considering coating his coat in Badab Black and being happier with that. Or maybe I’ll sleep on it and see how I feel in the morning. 🙂
This guy is like an entire series of painting seminars in one model. I painted a Force Weapon design, based on some Grey Knight swords. I painted some NMM, while trying to make the robotic hand look entirely different from the well-used bronze of the rest of his metal. I painted OSL from the strange orb in the middle of his palm. I finally got Mr. Wappels shaded basecoat working out ok on his base. It’s glorious.
Here’s some photos!
I used the same technique on his scales as I did for my Blood Bowl Kroxigor. Mephiston Red, Badab Black, Blood Red edges, then Ushapti Bone (watered) edges, then Sunburst Yellow (watered) edges. In the middle I went over it with Lamenters Yellow to try to make the Ushapti slightly yellow, and the red slightly orange and I think it’s ok. Part of the problem is that the scales should look worn and old, but there is a very fine line between worn, and just crappy looking. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don’t. 🙂
The yellow was really simple. After I had finished darkening the green, I painted some Sunburst Yellow into the cracks. This was probably the wrong way to go about it – since I stood the dangerous chance of painting straight yellow on my nice dark rocks. But it worked out, and then I watered some Blazing Orange to glaze over, and it worked great!
This was a lot of work. And I almost gave up at one point because it wasn’t working, and then, suddenly out of nowhere, it started to come together. Back and forth. Back and forth. I’m disappointed in how the photo makes the edges look, but with eyes, even from up close it’s pretty nice looking! (Actually, I bet the photo is just shadows on the wrong spot…could probably have solved it by shooting from a slightly different angle).
I’m not certain I got NMM correct, but I did an ok job and it had the effect I wanted in the end.
The OSL is…Warpstone Green, then lighten that with Ushapti Bone. Then water the crap out of my last highlight colour and be very careful not to let the colour pool in any area. I also used the GW Glaze Waywatcher Green, but I’m to impatient for that…I think I’d need 6-7 layers of that stuff to see a difference.
I’ve been sitting on that carnosaur rider model for a few months, and Pete’s been telling me that I should have my Old Blood on a Cold One for years, so here we are. Finally a model worthy of being the Chief Lizard of my guys!
Finished my Rail Crew this weekend! Also, found some time to take some photos and do some editing, a good weekend! Next weekend I’ll be in Nanaimo for Kippers’ Melee, a multi-system event in it’s second year. I’ll be playing 5 games of Fantasy for the first time with the “brand new” Lizardman book, and Malifaux with…
Malifaux uses a ton of markers. Your models drop Corpse or Scrap Markers when they die, and other models interact with those markers. You can use a (1) action at any point to drop a Scheme Marker. Sometimes these markers are used to score victory points. Sometimes they are just used to make your opponent think you’re trying to score victory points.
I wanted to make some specific to my crew since I had a ton of 30mm bases kicking around and it wasn’t that much extra effort.
These are done with the same basing technique as the models. Instead of drybrushing Fenris Gray over the Rhinox Hide (as I did for the Emberling), I drybrushed Bestial Brown and then Zhamri Desert. I like it a lot more! It left the dirt red, but brought a lot more yellow into it which I feel is a lot more realistic and good looking.
I’m a little concerned about the railway ties right now. I know that I just did Vomit Brown followed by a Devlan Mud wash, and I know that I feel like that isn’t enough paint. But they look ok with just that…
In some places it also just looks like a dirty mess. I’m not a huge fan of that, but it probably looks ok/great to other people. Urge to clean…
The promised Emberling post.
Before starting painting the crew, I wanted to see what others were doing with them. It’s like…if others are painting their orks in green, you don’t want to paint them pink. Unless you’re deliberately doing that. Have to know the rules before you can break them.
I found this guy who had painted two Mei Feng crews and a ton of other Malifaux stuff as well – that thread is an excellent resource! I liked his Emberling and wanted to copy it. I
I’ve been trying to do the lava-look on my stegadon base, but I was never really happy with it. Mr. Wappel has an example of a fantastic looking lava model, as well as a ton of lava bases that he’s painted and I’ve always wanted to get that look right. Here’s what I did on this guy:
I’ll try to get a better photo of this guy when I finish the rest of the crew, since this one was rushed.
I was at PAX last weekend, a great spectacle of video, card and board gaming. If you haven’t been, you really should, it’s intense.
One of the many things I did while there was stop in at the Reaper Miniatures Paint’n’Take. They have a box full of Bones minis, you take one, a cup of water, a piece of paper towel and a piece of parchment paper and sit down at a table with inadequate lighting, and a variety of colours and go at it. There are no washes, no glazes, no clean water (after you clean your brush once it’s dirty), your brush doesn’t make a fine point, and if you like your brush you’re potentially kissing every other person at the convention.
I picked a model that looked badass. As I looked it over, I tried to imagine how I would paint it, given the conditions I knew I would face ahead. Enough details that I could make it look good, but not so many as to be intimidating. A small selection of colours, since there is a line-up to paint and you can’t take forever. I choose…
This guy.
Bones is said to not need any primer. They lied. Whenever I tried to put paint on the model, it shrank away and pooled in certain spots. Someone at the table had a paint-on primer, and I was thankful for being given that minor convenience.
After my first layer, I was panicking. (Frequent readers will have heard this before…) It looked like ass. I’d covered all of the model in paint, but since I’m doing a white-primer there were lighter splotchy parts, the coat wasn’t even, some crevasses were white. I was not an Elite Miniatures Painter. Worse, I’d been caught bragging a bit to my painting compatriot earlier in the day about my painting blog – doomed, I was doomed I tell you!
After the first layer. This is particularly bad lighting though – the harsh highlight is because I used my phone’s flash.
“Never give up, never surrender!” — good advice for any project.
I had done the first layer quickly, so that I could get to the real meat of the work. I fashioned myself a black glaze/wash from the black paint and a loooot of water. Because it didn’t have the pooling properties of GW washes, I had to be careful about how I applied it – any pigment that was “hanging around” had to be spread out, or redirected into a crevasse. I alternated between this and a brown wash on most of the model before I felt like I had fixed enough of the original problems.
Then I did similarly with the red that I had originally started with, except that I used less water. I mixed it partially with some yellow, but not so much that it was yellow, just enough that it got a bit brighter. I tried to differentiate the inner clothing from the outer cloak by using only black-based washes on the outside and only brown/yellow-based washes on the inside. This involved a lot of back and forth, since the pigment wouldn’t stay where I wanted it, so I would paint on a brighter colour and then immediately have to darken parts of it, and then have to re-lighten, etc.
The crystal was a yellow, with white liner on the edges. A brief experiment with OSL on the staff top went well.
2 hours later I left feeling pretty happy with my work. And it wasn’t until 3 hours later when I pulled the model out that I realized that the skin was absolutely horrendous. I hate painting human flesh. I’m so bad at it…hence the Lizards and the Orks.
I gave him to my girlfriend, because she loooooves red and because we have a tradition of bringing things back for each other when we go away. 🙂
Kelly Kim posted several weeks ago with photos of some of his older models. When I read it, I thought this was a great idea and wanted to post mine too, but for me, none of my good looking models are much older than 3-4 years ago – I only started caring about painting that recently!
I’m moving next month so I need to get rid of stuff I don’t need and that includes a bin of ancient models that I’ll never use again. Before giving them away on Facebook, I took some photos.
This is an indication of how much you can improve if you try. I painted these models about 14 years ago, maybe 15 or 16. I had a GW standard brush, a paint set of 8-10 colours, and no idea what I was doing. Last weekend I won a trophy for Best Single Miniature (obviously, not for these models…). You too can do it, with practice, patience and perseverance!
A unit of 20 witch elves. I remember being really proud of the red haired lady in the front.
These spearmen decided to *cough* swap sides. High Elves from the ooooollld High Elf vs Goblin box set. My brother played the Orcs and Goblins when we first started! You can see the old Armour Wash on their chainmail!
Dark Elf Sorcerer! I don’t remember being proud of this model, but looking at it now, I think it’s the one that I would most be able to fix up without to much effort.
Double bolt thrower! PEW PEW!
These are pretty hideous models. At the time, harpies were flying beastmen with T4 and W2. I had no idea how to use them, but they didn’t die nearly as quickly as the rest of my elves!
I think this is the model I spent the most time on, although you’d be hard pressed to tell. I was so excited to finish my Dark Elf Lord on Cold One that despite (probably) dying every game, he was in the list every time.
You can do it!
I usually go into Astro with a lot of excitement – last year I pre-empted my usual post-Astro terrain building excitement by building some terrain in advance. This year, with a bunch of other priorities sitting over me and not a lot of 40k in my life, I was a little less into it.
Which meant that instead of adding whole new units to the orks, I just painted the flakk gun and built and printed a 24 page book for my army. >.> Here are the photos from my book, as well as a link to a compressed PDF of it – the printed version is over 20mb of PDF!
As always, click on the photos for bigger versions.
One unit of 10 shoota boyz, their power klaw nob and their trukk.
One unit of 11 slugga and choppa boyz, a power klaw nob with their trukk.
A second unit of 11 slugga and choppa boyz, their power klaw nob and their trukk!
My weirdboy.
9 burnas and a looted wagon to carry them places.
My dakkajet.
3 deffkoptas
A previously painted “trukk”. This model was originally a looted wagon with a boomgun. But the boomgun was disappointing, so I took it off and made the vehicle a trukk for a while. This year, because the vehicle already had a top hatch it was easy to paint up and magnetize the flakk gun so it fit and became an Imperial Armor Flakk Trakk!
4 meganobz and their battlewagon, with a dethrolla.
WAAAAGH!
I’ve spent a lot of time over the years on this army, and it’s nice to be able to pull it out and be assured that it’ll get some notice at tournaments. There are certainly are updates I could do to the painting – the boyz are pretty basic, someone mentioned I should light the burnas cigars (which I’d never thought of before) – but the character models are some of my best work and the tanks and plane I’m really pleased with.
Here’s the final book PDF – Dug’s Boyz – Online. I gave a copy of this to all of my opponents and the tournament organizers, and kept one for myself – 8 printed in total. Here’s a couple photos of the book, to give you an idea of what it looked like printed.
The front cover of the book – I grabbed this from the internet, it’s a wallpaper that GW put out and it fit so nicely that I had to use it.
The first page of the book. Big full colour photo of my warboss on the left, and his name and unit write-up and his stats on the right.
I’m really happy with how it worked out – I’d never used Publisher before, but it worked perfectly for what I wanted it for. I think the only downside of the book was…make sure you ask what the unit price is before you get the work done. I thought I knew what it was, because I had started getting the printing done online at Staples, but because it’s a non-standard paper size I decided to go into FedEx/Kinkos to get it done. A trainee took my order, and I assumed I knew the price. Oops.
I’m also super glad that I had the terrain lying around my house, and the photography skills to make these photos look real nice. This book was pretty big, but it was relatively easy since I knew what I was doing at almost every step!
I assembled a piece of unit filler as a test model for the proposed colour scheme of my daemons.
For the model, I basecoated…
After that, I…
This process has to be quick. I’m painting an army, not a masterpiece. I think that once I get my basecoat lighter, I’ll be able to do this much faster.
After the basecoat on the model and the base.
The completed model.
My palette, partway through. The left is the bottom rock colour and the right is some of the progressions of the slate.
The base was tricky – I was experimenting, and I’m not certain I’d be able to do it again. Hopefully I can repeat the look, but maybe simplify the process.
When done this, I had a really bright pastel-green piece of stone. To bring the colour down I…
The brown rocks were:
That’s my plan. Looking at it again the next day, the Ice Blue needs some fixing, but it doesn’t need a dullcoat like I thought it did last night. I think this might be going somewhere!
If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to write!
Some photos of the completed Engine of the Gods!
“Completed” – I want to darken the skinks a bit more, and do something to make the priest stand out more. The skinks are a wildly different colour from the skirmishers I run (because of the white primer…) so I’ll probably just wash them down a bit.
The priest is supposed to be brighter and a bit green from decomposition, but he has very little contrast on him. I’m not certain what I want to do, but I’ll start with the same as the other skinks and see where it goes!
