fantasy

Two posts today, and one tomorrow, and the AdeptiCon coverage will continue in an incredibly rapid pace once I get back. (I have 3-4 posts backlogged already for AdeptiCon).

We cut a backdrop for the display board. The theory still being that taller is better and that a solid piece of something in the back would draw more attention. (And damn, does it look good!) I don’t have any photos of the completed piece, but I will definitely do so once our armies are set up on Friday!

I pulled the airbrush out again, figuring that it would have gotten over our dispute from the other day. I started with an Ice Blue, and mixed up a bunch of layers with Kantor Blue and Altdorf Guard Blue.

The airbrush worked out perfectly! gaaaaaah! It painted a nice, solid blue line where I wanted it to.

More blue, and I added some Mephiston Red at some point to head into purple.

I took a photo of my PSI at one point. I spent most of the time painting at this pressure, and it gave a nice solid line. I put it down to 30 at one point, and put a less solid line of the red around.

The final piece! It looks great on the display board! You’ll also notice some spots at the “top”, these are magnets which attach to the back of the board. We did this so that we didn’t have to transport a 15″ tall thing, and could instead pull everything off and transport the tall pieces separately. 

I put some newspaper down, put on the Game of Thrones commentary and started painting.

Just some broad strokes to start.

And when that dried, I did a ton of drybrushing.

And then even more drybrushing.

There’s still sections that need another highlight, and we’re going to wash down the cobblestone to give it more contrast, (and the pencils need just plain painting), but it’s definitely coming along!

I lost track of the part number, and they don’t matter anyway.

This thing is now more Oxid Paste than anything else. Here’s a photo from after I took off all of the heavy objects. It’s glued to the hardboard fairly well.

We got together again tonight and I worked on a backing while Patrick carved out his castle some more. The castle is amazing. Just you wait until you see it!

We took it and my airbrush downstairs and started to spray it black. We had been looking for a product called Krylon H2O that Kas had recommended, but we couldn’t find it in the city so we decided to just spray with acrylic paint and hope. Most of the board is covered in texture anyway.

I have a confession to make. My airbrush is expensive, full of effort and more often than not doesn’t do what I wanted it to do. I can count 3 times when it succeeded at the task I gave it. My ork plane, some terrain I was spraying random earth colours on, and this one time I sprayed Jamie’s tanks. Every other times, the paint is to thick, or to thin, it runs all over the place, gets clogged up in the nozzle, or I’ve lost a part and didn’t know it or it just gets everywhere. It takes a while to take out, and a while to clean up and put away. My airbrush embarrasses me.

The problem this time, was that even once I had a decent mix of the paint, there was no coverage. It was either doing solid thin lines, or transparent medium-sized lines and there was no way we were going to cover the board with it.

I know you can get different sized needles and nozzles for different applications, and I’m wondering if I have a particularly thin set up right now.

We quickly adjusted, putting the airbrush down, grabbing a container lid and our largest brushes and got to work painting black everywhere. In the morning I pulled out my spray primer and went outside to cover up the areas that we’d missed.

We’re ready to put some colours on this thing!

Patrick and I got together again and made a pact to focus on getting this display board done. We leave for AdeptiCon in 4 weeks, and that’s much to close for my tastes! (At least it isn’t 3 weeks…which is what I thought it was until I looked just now!) (Also, this post was written on the 6th :))

Our last work on this thing has been sitting around for many weeks, while we both prepared for other things and I think I went to Mexico in the mean time as well.

We each got to work building the “tall thing” on our respective sides of the board. We had decided last year that “tallness” was a property we wanted, as tall things stand out and are looked at in more depth. A tall thing says “Come over” and it says “look closer”. It is a form of advertising that short things do not have.

Patrick is building a tower/castle/gatehouse thing with pink foam. I’m building the entrance to Tzeentchs’ crystal labyrinth, a part of the fluff that I’ve always though was super cool. Like Tzeentch has a Fortress of Solitude. I stole the pencil idea of Mark/Mach_5’s Rasputina crew, and apparently he stole it from someone else.

Board in progress.

PENCILS FOR THE PENCIL GOD

This is going to be amazing.

The taller elements are removable, for both ease of transport and also re-usability. We’ll be getting together again soon to continue, as we have a lot of work to go!