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Hordes – Agonizer

Posted on November 8, 2015

Painting this guy was really neat. I did a really thin wash of Codex Grey over his entire body, and had planned to highlight up and shade down…except that because of the white primer he was already pretty contrasty.

I started from there by mixing SW Amethyst with some Golden matte medium and water and painted that into most of the crevasses and under him. The matte solves the problem I had of the SW washes being overly shiny in some places.

I used a wash of GW Abaddon Black, then the Waywatcher Green glaze in places to mix it up. Then highlighted back up with Codex Grey and then Fortress Grey, then mixed in some SW Amethyst to darken a bit, then mix in Dheneb Stone for the last highlight.

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Hordes – Immortals

Posted on October 27, 2015

These guys were fun to paint and relatively quick, but I feel like they need something more.

I did some image searching to see what other people were doing with these models, and found this guy’s painting log photo of his Immortals. Jade Immortals, I like it.

I started with a base of GW Caliban Green, then shaded down with SW Heavy Body Black mixed with the Caliban, then just the black in spots. Went up again with the Caliban plus some Skull White, then more Skull White in the mix. Then drybrushed with GW Fortress Grey since it was out when I was doing the bases, then another drybrush of just the Skull White in places.

The problem with them is that they’re very bland. There’s just this dull green, with a dull grey base. And sure it’s good looking, but nothing pops out. I feel like I should have painted their armour in the gold+verdgris I’ve been doing on the Titans to give it a little bit of umph.

I also had to re-figure out the bases, since I haven’t written about them at all during this project. Drybrush up with Codex then Fortress Grey. Watered down Abaddon Black all over. Then Guilliman Blue and Waywatcher Green glazes. I did some Nuln Oil in the recesses to deepen them a bit, then drybrushed up with the two greys again.

Then glue some Army Painter Tufts onto them. 🙂

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2 Rings

Posted on October 11, 2015

I got married yesterday!

No photos of that here, because that’s someone else’s hobby, not mine (Miranda hobbied the shit out of this wedding), but I took this photo a couple days ago of the two rings in a ring box. Obviously the one on the left is the two rings that I made for Miranda. The one on the left is one that Russ and Shane have been working hard on making for me!!

It’s a Mokume-gane style ring, where the smith repeatedly heats and smashes different types of metals together (in this case, stirling silver and nickel silver) until they are bonded together. It’s used to create almost a wood-grain effect.

They also included, at my request, a band of red that visually links it to Miranda’s ring.

This thing is absolutely incredible!

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Hordes – Morghoul

Posted on September 29, 2015

When I started painting Hordes again, I felt I should paint up my warlock first.

This guy was super simple in the end. White primer. 2 layers of Bloodletter glaze made him really orange, so I went in with SW Red Black to darken it to an actual red. Dwarf Bronze and Mithril Silver for the metal. Seraphim Sepia. Waywatcher Green in places to give an extra colour.

Skin is Dheneb Stone, Vallejo Game Ink Skin Wash, Dheneb Stone.

I’m really liking painting these guys — detailed enough to be interesting, but most of the model is tending to be a few simple colours that work well together. It lends itself to being relatively quick to paint, but also satisfying to finish and look at when I’m done!

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Blood Bowl – Lizardmen Display Board

Posted on September 19, 2015

Last time I wrote about how I intend to win the best painted award in my Blood Bowl league. This is my clincher, if the terrific paint jobs on the rest of the team don’t work enough.

I had an idea that I’d taken from reading an old post of mine from Adepticon 3 years ago. This guy had made a display board for his team from mouse pad material. But how to get a logo to put on it?

Enter Fiverr, a marketplace where you can buy anything for “$5”. I looked around and found a guy who would do sports mascot design. I paid him $5USD (like $7.50CAD…) to do a line drawing for me. If I liked it, I’d upgrade. I sent him a link to my team photos from years ago as inspiration. He wrote back a couple days later with this.

I liked it, although obviously he could use a tail and a left leg. I contacted him to upgrade my logo – this service cost much more than $5 to do, but given that I knew it was going to be quality work I didn’t mind paying. After some revisions on the line drawing, he came back a few days later with this.

Pretty damn good! But I wanted brighter, poppier and more colourful! It’s something I’ve always worked into my paint schemes from the very beginning of my painting journey with my night goblins — bright colours bring people over to look at them. We had a couple more revisions back and forth, until we got to this drawing.

Not exactly what I’d imagined when I saw his example art. But just because it wasn’t what I would have drawn, doesn’t mean it isn’t great work!

Then the easy part — I paid the gentleman, made a 1900×1600 version of it and sent it off to London Drugs online to be printed on a mousepad. I’m ridiculously happy with the end result!

(I forgot to put the newly finished apothecary into this photo…he was still drying on my desk as I was taking photos!)

I’m going to destroy this painting competition! 😀 😀 😀

P.S. When I had initially contacted rafatha, he was actually the second person I’d asked about doing it. The first person I did an order for $7.50CAD, and then noticed their order queue was ~40 orders and they were going on vacation in September! I’m glad I found rafatha, since his work was much more in line with what I actually wanted done!

At the same time, I should point out the work of this other person, because it’s damn good! This was one actually just $7.50CAD, rather than requiring an upgrade to the base order. This logo may find it’s way into my team literature somewhere, because it’s pretty amazing!

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Blood Bowl – Lizardman Priest

Posted on September 15, 2015

Really happy with how this guy turned out! It was a lot of little painting sessions that added up to a lot of good shading and highlighting. My Blood Bowl league is counting down to the Finals in October and the league commissioner has put a bonus out for “best painted” and man, do I intend to win that!

This model is the most recent model I finished, after having focused since I last wrote. There’s about 2 weeks of “final” posts upcoming that have actually been done for months, but haven’t been photographed until this evening. 🙂

I took a lot of inspiration from my posts on previous skink paint jobs for my Warhammer army.

The base was looking pretty terrible at one point. It was a layer of watered down Snakebite, I think, followed by drybrush of Codex Grey which looked just awful. I did a few spots of glazes to try to make it “interesting” instead of “terrible”, but in the end had to Seraphim Sepia the whole thing to get it to good. I think it really worked in the end, because of the variety of hues under the Sepia.

The feathers are my first time using a Vallejo Game Color Fluorescent Yellow. I like it, but it’s a careful tool to wield. I had to use a lot of glazes to bring the colours back down to a more natural colour!

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Guild – Fransisca

Posted on July 11, 2015

Unlike the rest of the last few posts, I wrote this one when I took the photos. So I don’t quite remember what I did here. Something with the Mournfang Brown and some glazes.

I took the Miss Terious model and gave Lady Justice the coffin to stand on, and gave Terious a little bit of a base extra and BAM instant Fransisca. Perfect.

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Ten Thunders – Oiran Final

Posted on July 8, 2015

Not super happy with this model, but I want to be done.

The dress is a strange blue/green combo, when what I really wanted was just that one green. The hair is shiny, and it’s not bad, but it’s not right either. The base is a muddled mix of glaze colours over white, and when I tried to bring the colour back to the greys I’d been doing for my Guild crew, it looked absolutely awful.

Anyway. Leaving her alone.

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Guild – Scales of Justice

Posted on July 5, 2015

This guy turned out pretty damn good…except for the flames.

The skin was similar to Lady Justice, with the Dheneb Stone layers, but I used the Vallejo Game Ink Skin Wash instead of the SW Flesh Wash. It’s a lot less yellow and a lot darker, so it needed re-highlighting after with more Dheneb+Ushapti, but I’m getting a lot happier with it. At one point I had to decide whether to leave it super dirty, or bring it up a bit, and I decided to bring it up and I wasn’t disappointed.

The cloak is a few layers of Sepia and Waywatcher Green. I’m finding the Blue or Amethyst to strong against the red, but the Green is a really great shading colour for it.

The flames are where it started to fall apart. I made the foolish mistake of highlighting my ethereal green flames, instead of lowlighting as you should for internally lit sources. I had to go back in with a strong yellow in the cracks to pull the lighting back down, but unfortunately I didn’t do “lots of thin layers”, so I filled some of the detail here. Then, yellow->green wasn’t great looking, so I used the Waywatcher again to green up my yellow…then I had to highshade (not a real word) with the Elysian Green, which is not a good colour for me to have continued with. It was ok for the base layer, but I needed something more poppy to go back up with. Something that I don’t have in my paint box and couldn’t figure out how to mix. The last layer here was some really light bits of Guilliman Blue glaze at the top – because “flames” get darker at the top. But they usually also get warmer (ie, red is “warmer” than yellow), but it’s a green flame so…do I add brown or red to make it warmer? Blue? I don’t even know anymore…

The worst part is that I had the same flame problem on the Death Marshals as well, so we’ll see how they turn out. They’re lower on my Guild priority list, as I already have 2 painted for my Tara crew. But 5 Death Marshals sounds amazing…or terrible. Very swingy. Possibly an NPE. I’m going to try it. 🙂

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Guild – Lady Justice

Posted on July 2, 2015

This model was scaring me for a few reasons. I’ve never really been happy with my painting of Mei Feng, who should be the visual center of any crew she’s a part of. She was my first Malifaux model I painted, and I’ve since found that the details on most Malifaux plastics are a lot smaller and harder to paint. I felt like Lady J was another moment of “do it right”, that I shouldn’t mess up. Also, she has a lot of skin, and I haven’t gotten the hang of painting skin yet!

She turned out ok.

The skin was: Dheneb Stone, layered up with a mix of Menoth White Highlight. I thought it was Ryn Flesh…but no, Menoth White. The Dheneb stone is interesting, as it’s a pinky-grey colour, and not just grey as it looks in the bottle. Mixing it up with the MWH turned her skin much to light and washed out. I used the SW Flesh Wash next, but this turned her skin yellow which I wasn’t overly happy with. So I did another mix of the Dheneb and Menoth to re-highlight over the Flesh Wash, and I think it looks pretty good! Not to bright, not washed out, not chalky.

SW Amethyst over Mithril Silver is pretty great, I used this on her greaves and heavier on her sword.

The hair was odd. I started with Codex and Fortress grey, then SW Amethyst, which turned it purple with whiteish highlights. Seraphim Sepia turned it brownish and with whiteish highlights still. Then I applied some Ushapti Bone in single strokes, then that Dheneb Stone+MHW mix from her skin in single strokes, making sure to maintain the depth created by the earlier layers and I like it.

Similarly with the coffin, brown basecoat, Sepia, then a couple single-stroke sections to give it some variety.

Last, I watered down some Abaddon Black and lightly applied it into some sections that needed a bit more contrast. I’ve been finding that after “finishing” a model, I’ll look at it and find a few distinct sections that seem to blend together more than they should, and all they need is a quick line between them to create a larger difference. Lots of ways of solving this (including painting them contrasting colours to start with…) but this simple black line is working for me.

This Guild crew is coming along!

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