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Stegadon – Final

Posted on July 5, 2013

Some photos of the completed Engine of the Gods!

“Completed” – I want to darken the skinks a bit more, and do something to make the priest stand out more. The skinks are a wildly different colour from the skirmishers I run (because of the white primer…) so I’ll probably just wash them down a bit.

The priest is supposed to be brighter and a bit green from decomposition, but he has very little contrast on him. I’m not certain what I want to do, but I’ll start with the same as the other skinks and see where it goes!

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Work-in-progress

Moar Temple Guard!!

Posted on June 25, 2013

I need another 4 Temple Guard to make my unit 24 – a 6×4 unit, and enough that in 8th edition (which we’ve been playing for years…) it has enough staying power to not wither and die in seconds without a Life Slann.

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This has been a learning experience for sure…my painting style has changed so much in the last year that trying to re-create this paint job has been challenging. The primary problem — the white primer! (and I didn’t realize how much of a problem it was until tonight).

I went back and re-read all of my articles on painting Temple Guard from a few years ago to get a sense of what was going on. The first problem – all of the skin needed to be black so I could drybrush two layers of grey on top.

Solved that and put some more paint on, no problem. I got all of my base colours on and this morning I did a quick wash of a few colours to bring it down – my goal for OFCC (in 3 days) is to have them looking like they could hide in amongst the other 20, not necessarily to be done – and they need to be darker for that.

This evening I came home and they were bright. Hoooly. Bright. Really nice looking colours, Scab Red in particular is gorgeous with a darker shadow behind it and the white primer, but…no…these are dark models. I only had a half hour to paint tonight, so I slapped another coat of Badab over everything and tomorrow morning we’ll do some more hoping. 😛

White primer, it giveth and it taketh away!

Work-in-progress

Crew and Priest

Posted on June 13, 2013

I finished the smaller front part of the howdah tonight. No photos, it’s less interesting than the big section. 🙂

Started work on the crew and priest shortly after. Stuck to a piece of foam with blu-tac, they were painted Codex Gray and washed with Badab Black…to soon. Mephiston Red on the scales and Dwarf Bronze on the metal. I kind of want to wash the entire model with Badab…so now I wish I hadn’t done it to the skin already.

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Work-in-progress

Howdah – Final

Posted on June 10, 2013

Today is my birthday!

I spent the day inside, painting, since I celebrated yesterday. 🙂 Finally screwed together the courage to finish the main part of the howdah for my stegadon!

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The brass is Dwarf Bronze and Runefang Steel. The stone is Dheneb Stone, glazed with Bestial Brown and then Fortress Grey to bring the grey back in. The vines are Snot Green, glazed with Umbral Umber to try to make them a little bit dead.

The planets are a random assortment of bright colours, with other colours badly glazed on. Planets are messy things!

The black pillars I’m surprisingly happy with. I thought for sure this was a bad idea, but it worked out pretty good. I ended up following the “shiny stone” guide in the Skorne Hordes book. It says to paint all black, then mix some Coal Black in, which is a little bit green. Then mix in Menoth White Base, which is similar to Ushapti Bone. And then use Menoth White Highlight, or…White, to paint little dots around. After that, I painted ‘Ardcoat to make it shiny.

As a last step, I used some of the Secret Weapon weathering pigments to dirt up the place a bit. I used Green Earth and Sewage Muck on the stone, and dabbed some of the Sewage Muck onto the pillars, an attempt at growing moss and lichen.

Lastly I dullcoated the whole thing to try to fix the pigments. I’ve used the MIG pigment fixer on my tanks, and I usually end up with big tide marks. The Forge World Masterclass 2 claims that they just varnish over the pigments, so I gave that a try. Not bad! I had to re-apply the ‘ardcoat on the pillar a bit, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

I still have the front howdah bit, the ceremonial headdress for the steg, 4 crew and the priest to paint. Then 4 more Temple Guard and I’ll be ready for OFCC!

Work-in-progress

Howdah – Base Coat

Posted on June 1, 2013

Forgot I had this on my phone. 🙂

Finished the base coat of the howdah. Brown/grey stone for the slabs, a wooden brown for the connecting pieces, “obsidian” for the poles, brass for the engine and some bright planety colours for the spheres.

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Work-in-progress

Howdah – Beginnings

Posted on May 28, 2013

I had to edit this photo…it was so badly cropped and colour balanced, I couldn’t leave it. 😛 Still pretty orange though…

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We last saw photos of the howdah from afar a month ago. It’s been entirely white primed since then while I focused on one piece at a time.

I made a bad bad mistake here. Duke came by last week and said “that looks pretty cool! Does it come apart so you can paint the inside?” … $#$@!!. I wasn’t going to take it apart, so I did my best.

The inside is very quick paint job, to get it over with. A solid layer of Mephiston Red (still watered, just not that much). Then a couple layers of Lamenter’s Yellow to make it more orangey in places. Then a very messy top layer of black. Mr. Wappel is doing something similar with his Rock Golem – in his case it is meant to show that the outer layer is cooling and the inner has a lot of molten rock. Mine doesn’t look anywhere near as nice, but I’m hoping to gloss over that…

The sculpey has a layer of Dheneb Stone on it, but you wouldn’t be able to tell. I’m planning to darken this with glazes of some medium browns.

I’m thinking of making the side pillars obsidian. I think it would contrast nicely with the greens and browns of the rest of the howdah, but also give it an “other worldly” look. This is technology, folks, but it’s old and dusted over.

Work-in-progress

Stegadon – Mostly final

Posted on May 26, 2013

A few photos of the steg body, mostly done.

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I say “mostly” for two reasons.

  1. Every time I pick it up, I find something else I want to touch-up on it.
  2. I showed it to Patrick and he said that the feet looked awkward.

The scales are still not where I wanted them to be. The top scales look great. They are this beautiful orange colour, mixed with some slight yellows and reds to give them an organic look. The side scales aren’t there yet, but every time I look I’ll apply some more Lamenters Yellow, which brightens them. Then they get shiny, so I have to do something to bring the shine down. Then they get darker, so I apply more Lamenters. Rinse and repeat. I wish I knew how the top scales ended up looking so perfect. The sides are getting better though, but I suspect they’ll bother me until I put a giant thing on top of the model to draw my eye away. 😛

When I modeled the base, I built it up and then put the steg on top to see where it sat. I puttied the base up until it fit mostly, but since I didn’t glue it on until recently, it wasn’t a perfect fit. All of the feet were off the ground in some way and Patrick noticed, so I fixed it. This was easier than I had thought!

I puttied messily under the feet, just stuffing it in there to fill the gaps under each foot. After that dried, I took the oxid paste and spread that around the edges of the putty. Wash on black to get the recesses, then drybrush codex gray to get the highlights. I’m probably going to glaze some oranges and reds to bring back the “heat”, but I’m mostly happy with how this fix job went.

Work-in-progress

Stegadon Body

Posted on May 21, 2013

I evened out that stark highlight I had in the mid-section. Watered some codex grey and fixed that up. Patience, and solid brushwork were needed – you have to push the pigment where you want it to be while it floats in the water.

Lamenters Yellow continues to be a great colour for me. I put it over the red to make an orangey-fiery thing. Some of the scales (left of the first photo) they are really dark and not fiery at all. Added some watered Mephiston, some watered Ushapti Bone, more Lamenters, and lastly really watered down some chaos black and painted that in between the scales. That’ll give them more “pop”! 🙂

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I think the moment I started to feel better about the model was after I painted the bone. I had started to do the glazing thing again, and it wasn’t working and was creating another horrible patchy mess when I decided to screw it. Layered highlighting had gotten me this far in life, and I wasn’t going to put it down yet. Moments after I started, I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders. When I was done, the model had the sort of characteristic brightness that I like in my models. It was that simple – a few simple spot colours cleaned up and instantly it looked much better.

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A bit of work here and there on the ropes, some more cleaning up and that’s where I got to tonight.

Only two more things need doing here — the metal bits, and for me to accept that it’s a good paint job. I could feel something resembling obsessive perfectionism sneaking in today while I worked the skin back and forth trying to reduce the chalkiness. Perfect is the enemy of done, and of good enough.

After that, I glue this sucker to his base. Pretty excited about that!

Work-in-progress

Stegadon Flesh – Glazing

Posted on May 20, 2013

This one is actual glazing. The light is Fortress Grey, the dark is Codex Grey mixed with P3 Umbral Umber and some Chaos Black. (All mixed with the matte medium and lots of water). The Umbral brings some warmer (“red”) tones in certain places while the rest of the skin is very cool (“blue”), which gives some tonal variation in the skin.

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After the fiasco the other day, I found some foam and blue-tac and now I don’t handle my model anymore.

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I don’t like the belly section on this side. It’s too stark, but every time I try to fix it I end up to stark in the other direction. I think I need to take a mid-tone and even out the muscle shading a bit.

But you can see that the horrible chaos of the last post has been fixed. There is still some mottling in places, but this is good since it’s a dinosaur skin. Painting on the layers of light and dark has given a certain amount of order to the chaos, so it no longer looks like the dogs breakfast.

The other thing I’m trying, is a bit of OSL, (Mr. Wappel) which is why there is some orange and yellow on the underside of the model. Can’t say I’m succeeding, but it should be good enough when I’m done.

That’s the biggest part of the model done, and because it’s a simple model there is really only 4 more colours to paint – gold, the scales, the ropes and the bone. I think I’m going to try to finish this part this weekend and glue it to the base so I can stop calling it my Stealth Suit Stegadon…