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Veer-myn – Final

Posted on June 5, 2013

Bought some lamps and new lights to replace my old ones this evening. Pulled out all of the photography equipment and here’s what I ended up with!

The entire team! …they don’t have a name yet.

Took 4 photos of each of these models to make a little collage. You can click through the images to see larger versions, as always.

One of the strikers. There are 2 variants of this model.

One of the two guards. There is only one variant of guard.

The paint job on these guys was pretty quick. 3 layers on each area, base coat, wash down, highlight up and it was nice to get back to a workflow that I know pretty well and can do quickly.

After applying the transfers last night, I came back and used the matte medium to flatten out the gloss. Then I took a sponge and splattered on some Boltgun Steel and Umbral Umber to muddy the whole thing up.

Still really disappointed by the damned mold lines. I swear to you, I checked every model for those things and every time I turn a model around there’s another that I missed. There has to be a better way to find and remove them!

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Lizardmen Blood Bowl – Pahaux Flamewalkers

Posted on April 8, 2013

I’m pleased to present the Pahaux Flamewalkers! Hailing from the City of Ash, this team has been sent to win at Blood Bowl by their Slann Relic Priest, for reasons that no one really understands. He mumbled a bunch and the head skink pointed at a few guys and off they went.

The painting of these guys followed a similar pattern to the Krox. After the dark wash, grab the colour that started underneath (or a similarly bright colour). Mix a bit of water and a lot of acrylic medium with it and apply gently to the affected areas to create a soft and sloping highlight.

I’m officially a big fan of the acrylic medium.

Looking back now, I wish I had taken the time to assemble the models better. These are some of the best models I’ve painted in years, and they suffer from rushing through the assembly, as you may be able to see with some of the photos below. However, Adepticon is in 11 days (holy hell) and I’m playing in a Saturday/Sunday tournament with these guys, and they needed to be finished!

Ready to beat people up and think about scoring goals.

I used GW ‘ardcoat on the helmets, finally finding a situation where I needed a glossy coat.

This guy has frenzy, rawr!

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Lizardmen Blood Bowl – Kroxigor Final

Posted on March 18, 2013

I decided to finish the Kroxigor first, since he was a big, centerpiece model.

I wanted him to look similar to the Krox in my Fantasy army, but I failed at that. Those Krox don’t have any yellow on their scales, and most of their back is grey as opposed to the all red that I have going on here. He still looks pretty badass, but he isn’t the same.

After the Mephiston Red base and the “wash” that I did from the last post, I used some GW Lamenters Yellow glaze to see what it did. Woooah boy, did that make things yellow! You can see it in these photos, there is yellow on the edges and in the cracks. Then I took a Matte Medium+Bleached Bone+water combo and gently did all of the edges of his scales. The end result is this sort of yellow, sort of pale off-white, really red, thing. I like it, but I think it’s much to much red.

Working on the rest of the team next, who are also much to red. Worse, the skinks even have red helmets right now…need to figure out what I’m doing with the “team uniform”. 🙂

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Dreadball Humans – Final

Posted on February 19, 2013

It turns out that I’ve been painting a bit in my free time (ie, when not on vacation), but didn’t realize it. Finished off the Dreadball team tonight! And I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.

After I last left them, I put a few sections of Bleached Bone on them as a contrast colour. I probably didn’t place it well, but eh…I think I should have used a darker colour on the chest plates. It’s ok as-is, but I think a strong dark contrast in the middle is a better idea.

Then I painted some metal bits. Wash the ever-living-shit out of them. Devlan Mud (yes, I still have 3 pots of the Mud) over the metal to burnish it a bit and bring the Bone down in shade.

I think the finishing touch was the base edges. After I had finished painting them, I realized what my general problem with the models were – they weren’t flashy enough. Every army I have has some wickedly bright colour on it somewhere, where these guys were all darker green. Some bright turqoise, some white and BAM I have a sweet edge highlight that’s somewhat reminiscent of the electronic grid they play on.

Next project – converting a Lizardman Blood Bowl team!

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Stegadon Base: 3

Posted on December 9, 2012

I thought I was done after the last post. But a few things happened. First – I let it sit on my desk for a few weeks. And second, I’ve been reading Mr. Wappel’s blog daily, and he’s been painting some lava bases. My base is mostly black. It’s not mostly lava. There’s no majesty to it! The combination of looking at it every day, plus looking at a better done one every day, made me come back to it.

The first thing I did was re-lighten the lava parts. Last time I had black washed this section to give it some depth, but it was to dark. So I heavily watered down some Cygnus Yellow and some Blazing Orange and went to town in the cracks. I brought the orange up the edges of the cracks a bit, trying to bring some more light to these sections, since they are pretty small compared to the rest of the base.

The next thing I had to do was to give some variation to the black parts. I had previously painted this with two different colours of black, but this wasn’t useful at all. I took Khador Red Base, Scorched Brown, Cryx Bane Base and mixed them with a lot of water and washed it over all of the black. Then I added a little bit of the Blazing Orange, trying to bring the lightest parts and the darkest parts together. I still wanted those red and ragged edges, but I wanted more!

I mixed some of the Cryx Bane Base and Bleached Bone and dotted my grey rocks with them. The two greys I had previously used were the same colour, but different shades. Now I have little specks of slightly different colours in these areas, and I think it’s more interesting. I took a similar wash, with less Bone in it and washed the black areas with it, trying to get more “rock” out of it. After I’d done this, I didn’t have enough red, so I washed with Khador Red Base and Scorched Brown again.

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Skirmisher Movement Trays

Posted on November 4, 2012

I’ve been following this great blog recently by James Wappel. He has some absolutely fantastic painting on there, regularly, and recently a number of modelling projects as well. He’s working on a display tray for a tournament that he’s going to right now, which is a great read.

I read through most of his archives, and one of the posts was on skirmisher movement trays. I have this problem – whenever I move my skinks, I always end up breaking the laws of physics. I move one model at a time, each no more than 12 inches, and when I’m done, the unit is no longer in anything resembling a formation. Or if it is, I’ve moved several models 18 inches and cheated.

These were pretty simple to put together – most of the materials are at Michaels :). Matboard, cut with an exacto blade. Measure out your models bases with a half inch space between them. Pull apart pieces of cork as spacers and glue them down with hot glue. White glue sand down, and bingo-bango, you’ve got a movement tray. Repeat times 6.

I’m using them for 3 units of 11 skinks each right now, but I did them in groups of 3, so when I decide to play with Chameleons again I’ll be able to take units of 5 easily.

Primer was no problem, although I worried about the cork slightly…if it wasn’t actually cork…that foam stuff melts under primer. Drybrush my two greys, sprinkle a little dead grass on it. Done!

Thanks for reading!

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OFCC Army

Posted on June 20, 2012

OFCC in Portland (or Vancouver…) this weekend! I’ve never played with such a large army before (2800pts), and I’m really looking forward to the event! Driving down Friday with some of my Warhammerz friends, coming back Sunday sometime.

If you look carefully, you can see the finished Scar-Vet BSB in here, but I forgot to take some solo shots of him while I was doing this last night. Another time.

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Second tank weathered – process refined

Posted on May 14, 2012

The first tank was a frenzy of trying techniques out – a slap-dash variety of colours and layers of the dry pigments, maybe a dullcoat layer, some blotted paint, another layer of blotted paint, an attempt at rusting that still needs to be fixed. I require order, and so this was the first tank to attempt to bring the process into something manageable.

The tank body itself got 4 dry pigment layers in total. Dark Earth on all of the sides, and high up. Green Earth slightly less high up. Dark Yellow slightly less high up, and then one more Dark Yellow to fill in where it wasn’t bright enough. Then I did a dullcoat layer – the idea of this was to “matte out” the ugly splotch lines of the pigment fixer, and it worked great! Lastly I did a single layer of blotted Codex Grey with a piece of foam. On the previous tank I felt that a layer of Fortress Grey made it to bright, so I took that out.

A few other odds and ends: two layers of rust dry pigments on all of the metal bits, black exhaust from the exhaust vents, and a few carefully lined places of pure Mithril Silver where the vehicle occupants would have had some recent use of it.

There are a few things I don’t like about this tank, which I hope to fix in the next iteration. I’d love to hear about if you don’t mind these things, and if you think anything else could fix a fix.

The yellow is only really intense on the underside of the armor plates. Is that really realistic?
The Dark and Green Earth is really really super faint and needs more strength to it.
The front plate, I blotted a bit to high up.
Don’t take photos on a reflective surface…I just put that glass in the table the other day and forgot. 😛
If I’m going to take a straight-on photo, make sure the tank is straight. If I’m taking a diagonal photo, make sure the tank is diagonal. That last photo is just irritating me. 😛

Derrick mentioned that the grey/yellow dirt thing didn’t look right, but honestly I’m really liking it. I’m thinking it’s ancient dirt from an ancient world, and new dirt from the new world (all of my Ork bases are grey). He thought that was to much explanation, that I should keep it simple. Problem is…I think it’s a great looking contrast. 🙂 What do you think?

And since my Dukie requested full-on photos, I have a few full-model photos in addition to the macro shots I’ve been taking recently. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

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First weathered tank finished

Posted on April 29, 2012

I’ve “finished” weathering my first tank. It’ll probably never actually be done, and the goblins on top need a little bit more love before I’ll be really happy with it, but I’m happy with the end result of the weathering job.

I believe that the last time I left photos, I wasn’t pleased with how the dry pigments were working out. I fixed that in a really simple way – add more weathering, of a different sort. I took foam bits and splattered on a gray colour, and I think it looks pretty sharp.

What do you think?

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Dark Eldar – Test Model

Posted on December 10, 2011

So, I was at the Throne of Skulls tournament this summer in Las Vegas. Some of you may recall that the Canadian/US dollar was quite favourable at the time for us using CAD. I was weak. I have a rule that I don’t buy models that I’m not immediately going to work on. But…it was such a good deal. >.<

So I have most of a Dark Eldar army sitting in my room. So, so lonely.

This is the first model I’ve painted, trying to find out what I wanted to do for a colour scheme. I’m pretty happy with it! (macro photography, less happy with).

I got the idea for the colour scheme from the book, it’s one of the non-blue, non-purple schemes in there. I know, you have to search to find it.

The red parts are 50/50 Scab Red and Chaos Black, Scab Red (watered), Blood Red (watered) and then Vomit Brown (watered). The non-red black bits are 50/50 Codex Gray and Chaos Black and Codex Gray. The biegey bits are Bleached bone (watered), Devlan Mud (best colour on the planet) then Bleached bone. The base is (really I’m listing these so I can remember for later!) Chainmail then Badab Black, with some gray drybrushed on the rubble nearby.

I know that there’s a hair on his face. I’ve scraped it off since I took the photos…I couldn’t see it at all. One of the challenges of living with two cats. 😛

I think the photos look good, until you open up the larger versions. I feel like the larger versions show imperfection that I can’t do anything about. Maybe I need to get a little further away…oh photography.

Later!

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