Browsing Tag

fantasy

Hokey painting and ancient models are no match for…

Posted on August 26, 2013

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!

Work-in-progress

Horrors – Actually Painting The Damn Models

Posted on August 24, 2013

Because I tend to keep a backlog, sometimes the timing gets a little weird. I want to post about painting the horror models, but I’ll be playing with them on Sunday well before you read about it. 🙂 So I’m adjusting my schedule a bit.

Just put a first highlight layer on the models. Mixed some Sotek Green with some Acrylic Medium, Ushapti Bone and some water and went to town. The idea is that I’ll highlight up, and then shade down, so I’m not worried about the recesses right now.

I’ve got 2 of the new models mixed in with 20 of the older ones, and it strikes me how much I like the older ones better. They are twisted and contorted, mouths stretched painfully wide to let another horror out of their gaping maw. They have 2 limbs or 4 or 6, some flailing and some kept close. These are fun models, and it’s more fun than I remember to put this layer of paint on them. I painted these models once a few years ago – well before I started giving a shit about improving my painting techniques.

(Oh, I’m also painting the Flamers at the same time with the same paint scheme. Might give them something to change it up, or might not. In the meantime, it’s “the horrors” painting series. :))

Work-in-progress

Horrors – A Ton of Bases

Posted on August 24, 2013

I’ve join a builder/escalation league. Now I have a ton of models to paint. But it’s ok, because the plan is to use this army at Adepticon next year, for the team tournament and possibly more, depending on how I feel about it when I’m done.

However, the 500 points/month scale doesn’t work for either my schedule, or the quality of the paint scheme I’d like to put out. My plan has been to put 3 colours on each 500 point chunk each month so that I’m tournament legal, and then create buffers for myself along the way.

For the first 500, I’ve got 20 horrors, 3 flamers and a Herald of Tzeentch. My next 500 points has a Daemon Prince that just needs to be glued back together, put on a new base and then raised in quality (he doesn’t go in the final army) and 2 Beasts of Nurgle. Which means that I can spend the next month focusing on getting this bigger chunk of the army up to the standard I like.

Which means I spent the last month painting bases. (and all the other hobby shit I get up to.)

A bunch of bases get a basecoat.

I didn’t like the final yellow of the test model, so I changed the rocks to red. I really like how this turned out – it’s a really strong contrast to the (currently) barely visible difference between the green and blue on the model itself. I tried to keep to the slate look for the top, but it was harder this time to get it to look slate, and not just like green rocks.

Here are some of the worst photos I’ve ever taken, of the current final product. The top photo is a little browner than the bases actually are, but the bottom photo is pretty representative. (I figured out how to make my phone-camera do white balance better…these were wicked orange at one point).

Unit of 10 horrors.

Herald of Tzeentch on the left and 3 flamers on the right.

Another unit of 10 horrors.

When I say something like “glazing watered” or “watered” for any of this, I mean that I took a small brush of that colour, mixed in 2 brushes of Acrylic Medium and then doused it with enough water that it ran around on my palette if I wasn’t careful. The idea is that when you put it on the model, there are spots of black, but that it’s mostly a darker transparent.

Red Rocks

The red rocks went something like this…

Scab Red all over the place, make those rocks red.
Watered Chaos Black, applied all over the place.
Watered Rhinox Brown, applied all over the place but in particular into the recesses.
Watered Charadon Granite. This was a good idea here, but a bad idea on the slate.
Watered Stegadon Scale, mixed with some Chaos Black along the bottom half of the rocks. This isn’t enough to make them green, but gives the bottom rocks a colour similarity to the top.

At this point, the rocks are pretty dark.

Less watered Scab Red to bring the highlights back in.
Watered Blazing Orange on top of the red.
Lamenters Yellow. I pulled this around a bit, trying to create lines of highlight.

The Lamenters dried shiny, I hate that. After I finished that, I did a really light and dusty drybrush of Codex Grey over it. Again, this is to try to create some similarity between the top slate and the bottom rocks. It also hid some of the shininess and lightened the red up a bit.

Slate

The slate started with Sotek Green and followed the same procedure as the test model. I think I may have just highlighted with Ushapti Bone though, which may be why these guys were more green and less grey…

You have to go over this with a lot of watered Black. A lot. Put the paint on the top and then pull it towards the middle. Because most of the liquid you just applied is transparent, you can see the black bits and pull them where you want them to go.
At one point I did a watered Charadon Granite, this was a really bad idea. Instead of the nice seafoam green, it became more Dark Angels Green, which was not at all the colour I wanted. Had to re-highlight with the Sotek+Ushapti. Don’t add anything resembling brown to this part of the model.
Just keep painting black.
I added some watered Codex Grey, but I just blacked over it again.

When I ran out of patience, I did a light dusting drybrush of the Codex Grey. I think this made a really awesome difference, but I’m slightly worried that all of my previous work has been hidden by it (really light dusting!)

Next Steps

Now I have some models to figure out. Also, Patrick will probably have some comments on the bases about something I should change. This Sunday is go time! We’re playing a ton of 500 point games, and we’ll be taking photos for the paint voting!

After that…we begin the next 500 points. 🙂

Featured Images

Unit Filler – Test Model

Posted on August 3, 2013

I assembled a piece of unit filler as a test model for the proposed colour scheme of my daemons.

For the model, I basecoated…

Airbrushed Kantor Blue near the base. For the rest of the unit, I’m going to do a lighter colour so I can shade and highlight easier.
Airbrushed Stegadon Scale Green near the top. Same thing, I think I started to dark.
Airbrushed Sotek Green at the very top and it’s barely noticeable.

After that, I…

Took 1:1 Alaitoc Blue and my Acrylic Medium, and watered it to a thin consistency. I used this to highlight on the top of the model.
1:1 Sotek Green and Acrylic Medium, watered to a thin consistency to highlight on the bottom of the model.
Note that the greens and blues are switched from basecoat to highlight. I’m tricksy.
The model didn’t have enough pop (see above, re: basecoat to dark) so I took some Ice Blue, thinned with water, to highlight further on the top.
This had a tendency to chalk, so I had to be very careful not to let any clumps dry. It was late, and this was difficult.
Ice Blue on the flamey bits.

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.

The base I tried to copy from Wappel again, and I think I did a great job! If you look at his progression, you can see the moment at which I thought “oh hell, there is no way this is going to work” (hint: it’s where the base is this brilliant green colour…)

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.

Mix Sotek (or was it Stegadon? I forget >.<) with..
Fortress Grey. This was way to bright!
Mix in some Codex Grey to darken it. But couldn’t get it dark enough to cease my worrying. Went with it, and painted that on the model.
Added Ushapti Bone into this mix to highlight the stone out from the center.

When done this, I had a really bright pastel-green piece of stone. To bring the colour down I…

Mixed half a paintbrush of Black, 2 x Acrylic Medium and a bit of water to create a very thin mixture.
Same with some Rhinox Hide.
Paint these two on in very patient (*cough*) steps to darken and tint the base. I’m hoping I won’t need as much patience when I’m painting bases on 20 Horrors.
A bit of Waywatcher Green glaze in some spots, but while it looked neat when I did it, I felt like there was to much green already so I stopped.

The brown rocks were:

Snakebite Leather. This was way to bright, and still is.
Mixed some of the green/grey mixture into it and tried to shade.
Used the Black and Rhinox mixtures to darken this section as well.

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!

Work-in-progress

Masking horrors

Posted on August 1, 2013

Just noticed this draft sitting here…

Used masking tape on all of my bases. I airbrushed blue and green on the models, and wanted to maintain the nice white base that I was starting with on my bases.

Work-in-progress

Horror unit

Posted on July 31, 2013

I’m taking part in the WCP Escalation League for the next few months. I usually avoid these sorts of things like the plague (har), since I prefer to paint on my own schedule. But I figured it would be good motivation for a bit, and after I saw the scoring scheme that Dan had cooked up, I was inspired. I <3 games, and he’s just made painting and converting into a new one!

Here’s the unit. Two pieces of unit filler, the one on the right is the same base as the last one, but with 3 horrors on it instead of tentacles. The Herald is in the front of it.

I had a unit of horrors in my Warriors of Chaos army many years ago, and despite painting them in a (bare adequate) rainbow of colours, they still looked like a uniform, ranked, Warhammer unit. I’m hoping that the staggered 50mm bases will break up the uniformity a bit.

The unit.

I really like the older horror models, but had to use a new one for the musician. Downside of the older metal is that they have tabs, and I was making my own bases. I was holding the two pieces in my hands when I had a brilliant idea – sculpey can be cut and sculpted! So I made my own slotta-bases!

After gluing the sculpey to the cork, I glued two different sizes of hobby rocks to the bases first with super glue and then a layer of watered down white glue. When that dried, I painted the oxid paste over the bases to get rid of any flat areas, except for places on top of the sculpey.

Custom slotta-base, old metal horror and a bare base.

Next steps:

Tomorrow I’m going to do a colour test on the tentacle unit filler. Hopefully it looks great. >.>
Glue 3 Flamers to another 3 bases that I made.
Start painting!

My plan is to airbrush 3 colours onto the models so I can start playing some games, and then get working on the details.

Work-in-progress

Daemon unit filler

Posted on July 27, 2013

I was going to assemble some horrors tonight from the models I stripped the other week, unfortunately my bitz box had other plans. Today I learned that while I have a large number of bases, I have only a single spare 25mm one, seen in the photo below.

My only spare 25mm base. A few chunks of baked sculpey for horror bases. Oh, and what I did tonight instead of assembling horrors.

I took two of the tentacle bits from the Tzeentch Burning Chariot and glued them onto a base such that they became tentacle unit fillers, instead of tentacle chariot bits.

The base is a re-formulation of the one I did for the Herald. I thought he was standing to high up on the base, so I made the sculpey thinner this time. When I mentioned my problem with the sculpey bending, Wappel said I probably didn’t have the temperature right, so I tried it at 250F instead of the recommended 275F. Still bendy, but I don’t have an oven thermometer, so who knows what is really going on there.

I also left some room on the base itself to glue some bits of rock down, to create some interest that wasn’t cork+scupley. The problem with unit filler, is that it’s lazy. The glorious thing about unit filler is that it’s lazy. But you have to put some effort in anyway. 🙂

My hope for my big unit of plaguebearers is to convert them in such a way that they don’t look like plaguebearers, or bloodletters, but could be used as either if the mood struck me. My colour scheme will not be god specific and will be similar across the army, and similarly I imagine that this 50mm square could be put into any daemon unit I put on the table.

After the glue dries, my plan is to re-oxid paste the area a bit, to create more cohesion between some of the rocks. And go buy 25mm bases so I can actually put some horrors together. I think I have like 40 horrors in my house…and only half that planned for the army.

Work-in-progress

Herald of Tzeentch – Chaaaaange!!

Posted on July 26, 2013

I’ve wanted to do a daemon army for many years, and with the new daemon book out and (…previously…) no hobby projects on the go, I decided to convert a Herald.

Trying out some of the Wappel basing techniques, with the cork on the bottom and the baked sculpey on top and the oxid paste. It seems as though to get the “snap” look on the edges of the sculpey, you have to get exactly the right temperature, and so this stuff just bent and twisted when I tried to get it to look right. A little hobby knife and some paste later, and it’s all good.

With the lizard release upcoming, I feel like this guy and his troops might take the back seat again…

Musings & Meta

New lizardmen!

Posted on July 24, 2013

Hopefully those who care have already seen these photos! New lizardmen are in the latest White Dwarf issue and should be release Real Soon Now(tm)! I’m so very excited! My initial reaction was cool towards the models. The photos didn’t look that good overall, but there was definitely enough there to get excited about a few things – terradons for one, and the bastilidon looked neat with more Old One Technology on it.

But upon seeing clearer photos…I want everything.

Help me, readers – what should I buy and paint first?

Musings & Meta

Temple Guard – AWESOME

Posted on July 14, 2013

This is the most badass drawing in existence. I don’t remember where I’ve seen this before, but I have a strong and currently unfulfillable desire to model and paint this guy.

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