Tale of 3 Painters: All good things must come to an end...

The title says it all really, I've finished Hoffman, and I'm really, really pleased with how he looks:

The copper metalwork has come out well, just Tin Bitz, shaded with Nuln Oil, then highlighted with Dwarf Bronze and Mithril Silver.  I'm starting to appreciate Nuln Oil much more now, especially the really dull finish it gives.

A quick shot from the back - I like how the shiny copper colour contrasts with the dull steel and the dark grey.

So that's him done!  He was an absolute joy to paint - I love it when miniatures almost "paint themselves" I just have to guide the brush a bit.  I'll do a final check over on him and the watcher to make sure I haven't missed anything, and then they will be shipped back to Mike at The Dark Templar ready for the group shot pictures and preparation for the auction.

This project has been loads of fun - the mutual support from the other two guys, the support from those of you that follow me, and knowing that we're doing this for a good cause - it's just a shame that it's over already - hopefully we can do this all again soon!

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Michael Awdry's awesome two miniatures for the project can be found here, and be sure to check out his other projects, his Terracotta soldiers are fantastic!  The rest of the Tale of 3 Painters project will be well documented by Mike at The Dark Templar - check out his blog for details of the auction, his equally awesome two miniatures, and the charity details too.  Mike has done some sterling work to get traders on board with the project, so the final auction will be for much more than just the miniatures.

Tale of 3 Painters: Watching Me, Watching You...

We appear to be on the final straight!  I'm actually on course for an early finish at least a few days ahead of the deadline, which would amaze the people at work, not to mention the guys at the Ancible... 

The Watcher actually is finished, and I'm definitely happy with the result:

I had something of a minor panic with this chap as the spray varnish left a chalky finish - usually a second coat fixes this, but this time it didn't!  Thankfully a glaze of the new GW Bloodletter Red Glaze fixed it, and I need to carefully apply another coat of varnish to seal that in. I hate it when stuff like that happens, but very glad to have the wherewithal to fix it.

The base, a fantastic addition by The Dark Templar was fairly easy to paint (stone usually is to be fair) - a base coat of Charadon Granite, shaded with Nuln Oil, then dry-brushed with Adeptus Battle Grey, Codex Grey, Dheneb Stone, and finally white.  I then pooled Thraka Green or Gryphonne Sepia in the recesses of the rock to add some colour and variation.

Having applied the glaze fix, I decided that the lenses would benefit from a little gloss varnish - I think it works, what do you guys think?  With the Watcher finished (aside from a nervous final varnish) it's time for Hoffman to step into the limelight:

Hoffman himself (sans harness) is finished, the shirt, was actually a little easier than I thought it would be (I hate painting white), just a base coat of Dheneb Stone, and then adding increasing amounts of Ceramite White (which is fantastic I have to say) until a final pure white highlight - simples!  The goggle lenses may need a little more work, I'm not sure yet. 

A quick shot of the back shows the leg braces - I cheated a bit here, a base coat of Leadbelcher was washed with Nuln Oil, and because it looked so good already, I left it like that.  The base is simple grey washed with Nuln Oil again and dry-brushed through the greys up to white.  I may just use a little Gryphonne Sepia and Thraka Green to add a little colour in places.

The final picture is a little WIP shot of the harness:

It's still early days here, and it will need some more work, but I think I'm close to the effect I'm going for - I'm trying to keep it fairly neutral so it doesn't draw too much attention away from Hoffman himself, but have enough variation to stop it looking dull and bland.

As always, comments and criticism are very welcome!

Michael Awdry has completed his two models (he's a speed merchant), and they look bloody fantastic check - them out in all their glory here

The Dark Templar is matching my pace (thankfully) and done some fantastic work with a difficult colour, yellow.  His latest post is here

Also check out the Dark Templars blog for details on why we're doing this, and how you can contribute to Cancer Research UK

Tale of 3 Painters: Waistcoats and Watchers

Evening all.

A quick update tonight - I've been making some good progress, particularly on the Watcher, but first up it's Hoffman's waistcoat:

Same recipe as for the Watcher's body, so nothing exciting there, but he now has his required Guild red, and I've done a little to neaten up the face.  I've also done a little more reading on how to use my camera, so hopefully the pictures are a little sharper.  Next up (this weekend) is the shirt and tie, and then the goggles to finish him off.  The harness is progressing, but I don't have any pictures yet.  It's a little tricky to work with, but soon it will be transferred to a pin vice, so hopefully will get some pictures soon.

So on to the Watcher:

More about the wings in a bit, but first I'll talk about the copper rings and lenses(?).  While our brief was to paint things our own way, there are a few bits that seemed best to keep consistent - one of these was the power source.  Originally I'd gone for a green to compliment the red, but having seen that both the Dark Templar and Mr Awdry Esq. had gone for blue, it made sense to follow suit.  I glazed this with Guilliman Blue Glaze to get a deep blue colour, then used Ultramarine Blue, Ice Blue and Astronomican Grey to create the bright centre.  I deliberately let the blue glaze spread on to the copper to give a little OSL effect.

The face lense was re-base coated with black, then from the bottom upwards I blended in Mournfang Brown, Deathclaw Brown and Iyanden Darksun.  I know it's a bit weird using the old foundation paint as the  final highlight, but it was exactly the colour I was looking for.  I'm really pleased with how it looks and I think the colour works well with the rest of the colour scheme.

...and now the wings:

A mix of old and new for this one, starting with a base coat of my old favourite Khemri Brown.  This was washed with a new favourite, Agrax Earthshade, which worked fantastically well - you'll have seen the results of just that wash in the previous post.  This was highlighted with Khemri Brown, and then mixing in more and more Dheneb Stone, until pure Dheneb Stone was added as a final highlight.  I'm really pleased with the leathery, creepy feel to the wings and I think it works well with the red - in fact I'm much happier with the red now that the wings are completed.  I just have the two brown straps on the tops of the wings to do, then we're on to the base.

As always comments and criticism welcome!

...and please check out the progress of The Dark Templar and Michael Awdry - DT's Guardian and Michael's Hunter are fantastic works of art and I'm seriously having to up my game to keep up with them both!

On the Dark Templar's blog he has a couple of other ways you can contribute to Cancer Research UK, so please help if you can.

Tale of 3 Painters: All mouth AND trousers...

Fresh from celebrating the great Mo Farahs victory in the 5000m final, now seems a good time to post a couple of WIP shots of my contributions to the Tale of 3 Painters:

First up is the metalwork on the Watcher, a Leadbelcher base coat, shaded with Nuln Oil, and highlighted with Chainmail, and a little Mithril Silver.  This was a little shiny, so I glazed it with some watered down black paint to tone it down a bit.  To more sensibly achieve this effect, my co-conspirators are using Vallejo Matt Medium, which is definitely on my shopping list!  I'm not totally happy with where I am with this yet, so there may be some more work done on the steel, before he (it?) is varnished.

The steam(?) power pack was based with Tin Bitz and shaded with Nuln Oil, then highlighted with Tin Bitz and Dwarf Bronze, with a little Mithril Silver mixed in at the end

On to Hoffman - as you can see the skin is pretty much done now, and I've got the trousers and strapping done on his legs.  I fell back on an old favourite scheme for the trousers - Charadon Granite (there are 3 pots of this stuff left in my local HobbyCraft, I'm resisting the urge to buy it all...) was shaded with Nuln Oil, which I'm growing to like, then highlighted with the Granite and Dheneb Stone.  The leather was based with Dryad Bark (my new love), shaded with Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with Dryad Bark, Snakebite Leather (I can't let go) and Dheneb Stone.  I haven't started the harness yet, that might happen tomorrow.

Flushed with success, Olympic spirit (without the ability or stamina) and copious amounts of tea, I cracked on with the red.  Pictures of Hoffmans waistcoat to come in a future post, I'll concentrate on the Watcher's body here:

Mechrite Red is shaded with Agrax Earthshade (a better fit for red than Devlan Mud in my opinion), then highlighted with the base coat, Blood Red and my latest new paint, Deathclaw Brown.  I added some Dheneb Stone in to edge highlight the scratches, which hopefully are visible from the picture.

You'll notice in this picture the wings are base coated and shaded - that too is for a future post.

As you may be aware I'm the smaller of 3 cogs in this project - follow The Dark Templar's progress here, and Michael's progress here.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!  As we're aiming to make as much money for charity as we can, anything you can suggest to improve things will be warmly received.

Tale of 3 Painters - Here we go!

Just a quick one to say I'm off and running with the Tale of 3 Painters challenge!

These two turned up in the post - I'm lucky that I got the smaller two of the models, but damn, Mike wasn't kidding when he said Hoffman's harness was flimsy!  While it's attached here in the picture, it's not glued, so I'll be painting it separately.  One of the rules for this challenge was to include "Guild red" somewhere on the model.  I've pretty much decided that this will be Hoffman's waistcoat, and the central "core" of the Watcher.  I was tempted to make the wings red, but I want to do them a leathery colour (a little skin-like), to give it a slightly creepy feel.

Undercoat next, then we're onto the metallics!

Lucius, the full group and a pedestal

I'm back in the land of the living, and the Malifaux crew are finished!  Still messing about with this photography malarkey, the first picture is the result of using a .NEF file (RAW apparently, I still need to read up on this) rather than jpeg to mess about with.  The resulting photo is quite nice, it's just a shame I can't seem to get them to come out right for the rest of the shots.

As you'll know if you've read this blog over the last couple of weeks, Lucius was the last of my small crew to paint.  He's pretty much followed the standard paint scheme, the only difference really being the jacket, where I went for a richer red, rather than the dirty red of the other figures.

I used a Mechrite Red base, applied in several coats to ensure I had a solid block of colour, which was then washed with Devlan Mud.  I used Mechrite Red as the first highlight, then gradually mixed in Red Gore, and finally some Squig Orange.

I'm really pleased with the way these guys have come out, and I reckon they're some of my best stuff so far. Yep they're quite dark, but intentionally so, and I think the sewer bases really help with that look.

Moving on...

I've been talking to the rest of the Ancible team recently about terrain and buildings and the best way to create them.  I've been looking at not just terrain pieces but display aids/background pieces for my miniature cabinets and photos.  For a few years I've looked at Hirst Arts (not to be confused with Damien Hirst Art, which would just be weird...) moulds and wondered what they would be like to use.  The team already have several moulds and had cast up plenty of bits already, so I nabbed a few bits, to see what they were like to put together.  

Jez had used some artists plaster with some additives - the pieces are quite heavy but seem durable.  The bits glue together nicely, and the PVA glue helps fill in any gaps, with some liquid Green Stuff to finish off.  It all sands down easily enough (one of my main concerns), and you can get a nice smooth finish

As a test to see how it paints up, I created a little pedestal for miniatures to be photographed/displayed upon.  Two bottom sections for a column were glued together, filled, sanded and then sprayed with matt grey primer.  The material seems to accept the primer well, but for larger pieces I'll be tempted to go to B&Q and get some exterior wall paint as recommended by the Hirst Arts site.  The piece was washed liberally with Badab Black, then dry-brushed with Codex Grey, a 1:1 mix of the grey and Dheneb Stone (to give it a slightly more natural stone feel), then a 2:1 mix of the grey-stone and white.  I think it looks really good and "stone-like" - on further attempts I'll add some creepers/ivy/moss for a bit more variation.

The top of the piece is 30mm in diameter, so the round lipped bases work really nicely sat on top of it.  I think the praying knight from a previous post makes a nice example.

So I've borrowed some moulds from Kenny, and pinched some plaster from Jez, so next weekend will be my first foray into casting some building blocks.  All things going well I'll be ordering some moulds of my own, the good news being that Hirst Arts is based in Sedalia where the in-laws live, so Trans-Atlantic shipping may become a little cheaper.  I think the fieldstone range will work for a number of games:  WFB, anything Barbarian based, WarmaHordes, and the Gothic range will do for WH40K, anything steam-punk/Victoriana, etc.  I'm even considering casting up a whole tile-set for Advanced HeroQuest, but that may be a while off yet...

Still a few more ongoing projects to finish up, and then I need to decide what to do next.  I've got the Freebooter Assassins starter boxed set on the way (I hope), and they'll be too tempting to resist.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

A little elegance for the Guild...

The penultimate model of the Lucius Guild crew is finished.  While being a much prettier model than Ryle, the Guild Guard was no fun to paint.  She's very bitty and fiddly at the front, and the coat just wouldn't look right, so I kept having to touch up the blending.

The face was also a bit tricky - the casting isn't great for a start, so getting the cheekbones highlighted properly was a bit of a challenge.  However, the eyes were a dream to paint, and I think they're some of my best eye jobs.

The colours are my standard Guild colour scheme, and possibly my last use of my favourite Charadon Granite colour method - farewell old friend!  The hair was Bestial Brown, shaded with Devlan Mud, then highlighted with Bestial Brown and Squig Orange - it's the first time I've used Squig Orange, and I love the auburn colour I've got from it.

The base is another of the Dark Templar's Malcontent range, which really fit in well with these miniatures - people doing dirty work in a dirty place. :-)

Lucius is up next, and then it's finishing some ongoing projects while I work out what to do next...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Maybe good, maybe bad, DEFINITELY ugly

Not a huge amount to report this week, I've mainly been working on my Malifaux crew.  Ryle is next up - probably one of the uglier miniatures I've painted!  However, despite some early trepidation (i.e. not knowing where the hell to start), he was a blast to paint.  The skin was particularly fun to paint - all that practice with the barbarians is paying off...

He's the standard colour scheme I've used for my Malifaux crew so far (see earlier posts), so I won't go too much into that.  The only real difference is the brass work, which was a base coat of Tin Bitz, shaded with Devlan Mud, then highlighted with Tin Bitz, P3 Blighted Gold and Mithril Silver.  The steel metallic parts were dry-brush highlighted rather than layered/blended to give them a battered/dirty look.

The base was a little bit of a modelling project.  Ryle is quite a bit bigger than the rest of the crew, so sits on a 40mm base.  My Malcontent sewer bases are only 30mm so I set about creating my own 40mm base to match.

The "pipe" is some random piece of plastic I found lying about the house.  I made it roughly semi-circular in cross section by attacking it with a Dremell.  This was probably a mistake as the plastic was a royal pain in the backside to work with (it chewed up unpleasantly rather than sanded particularly smoothly), but it got done, and was glued to the base first.  The paving slabs and metal strips were plastic card, carefully sculpted (OK, scratched and hacked) with a knife.  The rivets were drilled indents with individual "bits" from a Brita water filter glued into them.  This was all then neatened up with liquid green stuff.

Undercoated it doesn't look too bad, and painted up it fits in with pretty well with The Dark Templars professional jobs.  I'm really pleased with the way it's come out, and now I'm seriously considering making more of my own custom bases (for my own use, not as a commercial venture).

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have the Guild Guard completed, and then it's on to Lucius himself.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

After the Lord Mayor's Show...

...or Salute as everyone insists on calling it - OK I was stuck for a name for this post and this was the best I could do.  

I'm not going to do a review of Salute as many people have done a fantastic job of this already.  I had a great day out with some of the Ancible team (Kenny, Mr B, Si), spent a fair amount of money, saw the Frontline Gamer from afar, and caught the Angry Lurker and Ray at the end.    I forgot my camera, so no pictures I'm afraid.  The venue itself was pretty good, but it was a bit of a pain having to get across London to get there - but good for the South East and European visitors I imagine.

Purchase wise, I came away with the following list:

• Feldherr carry case (small) purchased from Wayland Games, Si had a good old chat with one of the Feldherr chaps as he'd reviewed a case for the Ancible in a previous issue
• Azumi by Studio McVey - quite frankly Studio McVey blew me away, the miniatures look fantastic on the website, but those pictures do nothing to prepare you for how wonderful they look up close. O...M...G...  I didn't know which one to get (I limited myself to one), so it was a bit of a random pick, but the pose of Azumi just grabbed me for some reason
• Mizuchi from GCT Bushido - A dragon, for Bushido - 'nuff said
• Big Boris Mk2 from Heresy - Armoured Boris was sold out, but this was my second choice
• Hasslefree: Wolf, Ferrus and Valaska Syn
• MicroArt Studios:  Rincewind, Twoflower and the Luggage, and some forest bases for my stalled  and about to be restarted "Wood Eldar" 40K army
• Plus some other stuff that I can't remember off the top of my head

There were a couple of free miniatures too - A Wayland the Smith miniature because I spent over £20 at Wayland Games (quite appropriate as I live not too far away from Wayland's Smithy), and the Salute 2012 miniature, which I wasn't sold on, but it was free, so didn't need to be...

Now for some painted stuff:

Pretty much the same colour scheme as for the Lawyer.  The coat was the usual Charadon Granite basecoat, for that greenish-brown tone.  I was surprised and rather happy to find a pot of unopened Charadon Granite on a shelf - that should keep me going until I've finished everything I need it for.  A word of warning - despite the GW conversion chart, Stormvermin Fur is NOT a good match for Charadon Granite.  As far as I can tell there really isn't one now, so it's time for me to drop the crutch (let's face it, I use Charadon Granite a lot) and look at some alternatives.

The gold trim was a pain, I really didn't enjoy painting it - I can see now that I've missed bits and it's not as neatly painted as I'd hoped. For the rest of the models I think I might do the trim before I paint the coat.  The gun and axe blade were painted normally, but then I added some Charadon Granite and P3 Cryx Base as extra shading which works quite well I think (feel free to disagree!).

The base is another Malcontent Sewer base - painted in a similar way to the base for the Lawyer, I used some Chestnut Ink for rust on the metal and some Thraka Green on the stonework to change the colour in places.  To be honest I'm as pleased with the base as I am with any other part of the model.

Up next will be some more characters for Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies, a Freebooter's Fate Assassin and the millstone that hangs heavily around my neck at the moment...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Next in line...

Quick post - I love the Easter weekend, a 4 day weekend with not much going on - plenty of time to relax and do some painting...

As you can see, Smerc the thief is finished, I won't go into too many details as he's painted in exactly the same way as the rest of the warband (see previous posts) - another quick and dirty paint job, but he does the trick.  Having searched through the Stuff of Legends website (for ages), I've found out that he was originally a "Tomb Robber" (bottom group on that page).  You'll notice that Ifil Ironwolf from a previous post is entitled "Judicial Champion".

I'm really happy that I've found a use for these old miniatures - they would have stayed in a box unpainted, and that would have been a real shame, The next four are shown here ready for priming:

From left to right:

• Halnir, the final member of Brevik's Marauders for now, a swordsman wearing a wolf skin 
• Albrecht von Krull, mercenary captain, leader of the Shadow Company mercenaries (I reckon this miniature was the inspiration for the Knights of the White Wolf).  He has history with the Marauders and will provide plenty of plot hooks.
• Drago, Albrecht's right hand man
• The Necromancer - heart of darkness, soul of evil, he's going to be a classic necromancer in every way (more undead on the way too).

Also, I've put together my next Malifaux miniature, the Guild Guard Captain, mounted on another Malcontent base:

The colours will match the lawyer from the previous post.  There's also a load more on the go too, which I need to crack on with, as it's only 2 weeks until the Ancible team invade Salute 2012!

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Legal Issues

Something a bit different this time, I finally got myself around to painting some Malifaux.  I bought the Lucius box about 7 months ago, but so many other projects, plus DIY, plus work had meant that I'd not even got round to examining the miniatures!

First up is the lawyer:

To be honest, of all the crew, he is the least interesting model, but his simplicity meant that it was easy to test the paint scheme I wanted to use.

I wanted a deep red for the trousers, so Scorched Brown for the base coat, washed with Devlan Mud, then highlighted with Blood Red and then Red Gore.  The boots were based in Vallejo German Grey, highlighted with Adeptus Battlegrey and Codex Grey and then washed with Badab Black.

I wanted the coats to be different from the standard grey-black, and I make no apologies for using Charadon Granite - I haven't checked yet, but I really hope they've got an equivalent in GW's new paint line, as I don't have a huge amount of it left...

The coat was washed with Badab Black, and highlighted up through Charadon Granite and Dheneb Stone.  The liner of the coat was a mix of Khemri Brown and Charadon Granite, washed with Devlan Mud and then highlighted with Khemri Brown and then a little Dheneb Stone mixed in.  The gold trim to the coat is P3 Blighted Gold, shaded with Devlan Mud and then highlighted with the Gold and some Mithril Silver.

I wanted the hair to stand out a bit as the rest of the model is quite dark - so a base of Snakebite Leather was shaded with Gryphonne Sepia, and then highlighted with Snakebite Leather and Bleached Bone (I'm going to miss those two paint names when they go).  The shirt was Dheneb Stone shaded with Gryphonne Sepia and highlighted with Dheneb Stone and Skull White.

The skin was my normal method at the moment - Tallarn Flesh, shaded with Ogryn Flesh (which gives a nicer colour than Gryphonne Sepia) and highlighted with Tallarn Flesh and P3 Ryn Flesh.  The teeth were then shaded with Devlan Mud and picked out with white.  The face mask was based in Astronomican Grey and highlighted with white.

The base is another from The Dark Templar, which I can't recommend highly enough (no, I'm not on commission, just a big fan!).  On the metal parts, a base coat of Tin Bitz and some spots of diluted Bestial Brown was washed with Devlan Mud, then lightly dry-brushed with Boltgun Metal and Chainmail.  The stone was a lot of grey washed with Devlan Mud and dry-brushed again.

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A friend of mine from work (and his son) have just joined our beloved hobby and he already has a blog up documenting his journey.  I know he'll appreciate any advice you can give him, so please follow him at:  J'karain Wargaming Miniatures

Other News!

Andy Hoare has released the next preview version of his skirmish rules "Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies" (Download here), now with points costs! and he's hoping for people to play-test.  I'm starting on my second warband, the Shadow Company mercenaries (the third warband is in the pipeline too), so may get around to putting up a battle report in the coming weeks.

Smerc the thief is almost done, but "The Great Shazam the Sorceror" will be on hold as only evil warbands get sorcerers (I probably should have checked that).  It might be time to look through my collection of old miniatures again...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!