Browsing Category

Work-in-progress

Everything before it’s done.

Lizardmen – Chakax

Posted on November 2, 2014

It’s been a while since I painted or posted – after a frenzy of Malifaux stuff, I bought Civ: Beyond Earth and have been playing that. 😛

But it’s been even longer since I bought this model.

Apparently released in 2009, I bought the model almost immediately because it’s so damn cool looking. I assembled him, then started to paint him…and something else got in the way.

He sat on my shelf for most of the intervening 5 years, until I was stripping my horrors for my daemon army and I decided to strip him as well, since I was doing it anyway.

I signed up for Foodhammer Fantasy, after realizing it was on a Sunday, and special characters are allowed and why not continue my reign of making terrible Warhammer choices by including a character who is wickedly overcosted and doesn’t provide that much benefit! Yay!

I’ve lost one of his horns, so I sculpted him a new one. Also, the original flag posts he comes with are awful, so I replaced them with spear poles.

Work-in-progress

Rotten Belles

Posted on October 27, 2014

These models are brilliant in Malifaux, and if I’m going to play Ressers I’m going to need to have access to one or two. Angry Andrew was getting rid of his Malifaux, so I bought an old metal Seamus and metal Nicodem box from him for $5. I took 2 of the 3 Belles (because the 3rd one is hideous) which I liked the models for, and gave the rest away.

You can see I’m trying to solve my complaint about manufacturer bases here. I sculpted these based on the Secret Weapon bases I’m using on my Ressers and am hoping it looks similar enough. I used the standard milliput here, and I’m going to need to buy more of that stuff considering how much I’m using it. After it dried, I used the Vallejo Oxid Paste to create sand/dirt piles, as in the original bases.

I think that making my own bases made me love these older metals more. Instead of just gluing them together and saying “hey, they are filler”, now they have something custom on them, which makes me feel more ownership to them.

Work-in-progress

Masters of the Path box set

Posted on October 24, 2014

Well, most of it. Chiaki is good for potential Ten Thunders stuff, and the Ashigaru can be summoned by Toshiro or taken when Tara is a Resser.

Yan Lo and the Soul Porter stayed on the sprue for now, I don’t need another Master to learn quite yet. 😛

The bases are Secret Weapon. The more I use these, the more I hate being tied to manufactured bases. When I run out, I have to get more shipped to me, and that sucks.

Technique Work-in-progress

Malifaux – Toshiro – Freehand

Posted on October 12, 2014

I wanted to do some freehand on Toshiro’s back, seems like a decent place for it.

I put a question up on A Wyrd Place on Facebook and got some ideas of how to find an image to use — “japanese mon“. I picked this crane image because it was kind of cool, and not overly complicated. AWP recommended I draw it out a bunch, so I started big and worked my way smaller. Then I swapped to using some watered down black paint on the paper, getting smaller so I could somehow figure out how to put this image on a teeeeny little back.

I started painting with the beak, because it felt like it was in the most difficult place under the rip in his cloak. Because the paint was pretty wet, I had to to be sure to get most of it off the brush so it didn’t run. I did a couple layers of the black to make it show, and then went back with the Warpstone Green after in places to clean up the work.

I think it looks pretty good, although maybe not so much like a crane. 🙂 Wondering if there’s anything I can do to make it a little bit more obvious, or maybe I’ll just leave it.

Work-in-progress

Malifaux – Some Ressers. Or Ten Thunders.

Posted on October 6, 2014

I bought Toshiro on sale at Wet Coast earlier this year and haven’t had time to put any paint to him. I bought him originally to try a new Mei Feng list that involves her, him and Komainu, but I couldn’t find any Komainu proxies that made me happy so I wasn’t certain where that plan was going. One day while setting up to play a 4-way game against some friends, I noted that they’d all declared Ressers (filthy Ressers…) but I’d declared Arcanists. I had an epiphany — I could declare Ressers with Tara and Toshiro and summon Ashigaru!

That was fun, so now I’m building up some models to play Tara as Resser. I picked up the Masters of the Path box for the Ashigaru and Chiaki (and as a bonus it comes with Yan Lo…).

These are the first models I’ve painted in months (since well before the summer painting contest) that didn’t have a deadline attached to them. It’s freeing and fun. I’m putting paint on models and I don’t even care what colours I pick. So Toshiro is ending up in a Resser green. The Crooligans are getting the leftover paint — I’m not focused on them right now, but thought I’d based coat them since they were getting many of the same colours as Toshiro.

His clothing is Warpstone Green, an absolutely love colour. Blazing Orange for the shirt under his robes. Some P3 colour called Rylth Flesh (or something like that) because I didn’t have a GW flesh colour light enough. Ushapti Bone on the bamboo, Mithril Silver on the sword, Codex grey on the clothes of the Crooligan in the back.

Also, I’m playing with using Stegadon Green as a base layer for the stone. I’m wondering if it will give it a different hue, to separate one set of stones (front) from another (back). We’ll see!

Work-in-progress

Lizardmen tokens

Posted on September 30, 2014

In playtesting my most recent Lizardmen list, I discovered that I needed a few tokens to help keep track of things.

3 markers for Wyssan’s Wildform and 1 Blot “Stalker” Toad marker. I’m doing the ground starting with Stegadon Scale Green, then mixed that with some SW Heavy Body Black and then just the Heavy Body all over.

Work-in-progress

Another Old Blood – basecoat

Posted on September 27, 2014

This is the state of my latest Old Blood model, 2 days before OFCC.

I don’t feel as though he’s going to be the shining star of my army. >.< If I’m lucky, he’ll get a quick wash to bring down the garish tones, but I also don’t want to get him to close to “done”, in case I forget that he actually needs finishing.

Actually, I think a quick black wash over most of the model, and some drybrushing over the Agrellan Earth will help the model at least not stand-out among the rest of the riders.

Here are some colours:

Cold One: Shadow Grey
Cold One belly and all the bone and spikes: Ushapti Bone
Straps, wooden bits: Snakebite Leather
Metal: Dwarf Bronze
Old Blood skin: Codex Grey
Old Blood scales: Mephiston red

It’s pretty old hat at this point.

Work-in-progress

Ripperdactyls – Shading

Posted on September 20, 2014

Started with Secret Weapon Flesh Wash. I mixed this 1:1 with water. In the end, it went all over every part of the rippers, but it wasn’t slapped on randomly. I worked to pull the paint from the highlighted areas to the shaded areas. The hope is that when it dries this way, that there will be a semi-translucent gradient from highlight to shade. It won’t work out this way, and will require specific work to highlight, and then specific work to “mid tone”, but it’s a good start.

This dried slightly glossy (ugh) and occasionally in a little to much of a strong edge, where I wanted a smooth gradient.

Then I mixed the SW Flesh Wash with Snakebite Leather to make a slightly less translucent paint and again went over the parts with those strong edges to smooth them out, and to darken more.

(also did just a simple black wash:water 1:1 over the skinks, because it’s really messy and is part of the “simple” method of painting my skinks. Wasn’t going to highlight-up-glaze-down on them.)

The spots are Snakebite Leather, with less water than the glazes to make it slightly more opaque. Then I mixed that with Rhinox Hide to get an middle layer, then just Rhinox Hide. Still trying to paint the middle of each spot/layer so that it looks a little more blended than just “brown on orange”. I was trying to emulate this photo a bit, but I’m happy that the wings are a lot darker than that reference image.

I still have a little bit of shading to do on the undersides of them.

Next I’m going to do some highlighting – raise up the body/limbs a bit in tone, and the edges of the wings. Once that’s all done, it’s onto the skinks (who should be relatively easy compared to painting 24 of them…).

I’ve got one more painting project to get started on before OFCC, but I think that at worst he’ll just get a basecoat and then hidden in the ranks somewhere…>.>

Work-in-progress

Ripperdactyls – …basecoat?

Posted on September 17, 2014

I was in a rush and forgot to post the colours I used for the basecoat of these guys. I don’t really post this stuff for you to read, because I’m sure it’s the most boring thing. You come here for the photos, I know you do.

I actually write about colours for two reasons — because it helps me reason out what I did and what I should have done, and also so that I can remember in 2 years what on earth I was doing!

The ground is just drybrushed Codex Grey. It’ll be drybrushed Fortress Grey in a bit. The skink has a base of Codex Grey, with Mephiston Red feathers, shield and spots, Dwarf Bronze metal stuff and Snakebite Leather strap stuff.

The rippers started with white primer (I’m 90% white primer these days) and then a “glaze” of Blazing Orange. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have “glazed” it…but when you have a dried up pot of paint and need that colour, you add water until it works. Which wasn’t as strong a pigment as I’d have preferred. It doesn’t matter, because the skin on these guys is going to have a lot more layers than the base-highlight-wash-highlight of the 24 skinks. I added some Snakebite Leather to the orange with still a good amount of water, and added that to the front of the wings, and the recesses. Then just plain Snakebite.

I forgot to do this next part before taking the photo, so it isn’t shown. The tops of muscles and back of the wings I did a coat of Blazing Orange mixed with Ushapti Bone — it turns out that this is a pink colour. That was a happy accident, because it turns out that this looks pretty good when done in small doses! I did another layer of just Sunburst Yellow with water, again on the highlighting areas.

I say that this is all “basecoat”, because it’s all pretty slapdash at this point. The shading and highlighting phase will clean up the colours and edges a lot.

No photos this time!

Work-in-progress

Ripperdactyls! Basecoat

Posted on September 14, 2014

I’ve been working on these guys all day. I thought about going with a darker colour scheme, as with the rest of the non-humanoid lizards in my army, but I was just so drawn to the bright orange on all of the marketing material and I had to do it.

I love the little hats on the skinks! I hate the little collars on the rippers…

Also depicted here is the movement tray I built for them and will paint at the same time as their bases for efficiency. 🙂

Older Posts

Newer Posts