A Beast among us…

So the DIY is on hold for a week or so until the plaster is properly dry - a bit annoying, but nothing I can do about it other than be patient.

I’m still on my “clearing the painting desk” mission, and my next finished miniature is this beauty from Reaper:

My photography has improved a little – this picture was taken under the supervision of Kenny, owner of the Ancible and the guy who takes all the pictures of my finished miniatures for the articles, using his setup.  He gave me a crash course on taking pictures of miniatures, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot.  One of the main things I’ve learned is that I don’t have anywhere near enough light (see my pictures below).  Not sure how I’m going to solve that bit yet, without spending plenty of money…

This miniature was an absolute blast to paint (yep, he’s meant to look Khornate) – the skin I’m particularly pleased with:

• Base:  P3 Beast Hide
• Shade:  Devlan Mud
• 1st highlight: Beast Hide
• 2nd highlight: 1:1 mix of Beast Hide and P3 Ryn Flesh
• 3rd highlight: Ryn Flesh
• Glaze: Gryphonne Sepia

The final glaze really seemed to tone everything down and tie it all together, I’m tempted to use it more often.

The rest of the miniature was painted how I usually do things, the horns were a bit of a challenge as in trying to remove some pretty nasty mould lines, I had to sacrifice some of the ridge detail, which had to be recreated using paint.  Thankfully the tops of the horns were clear of mould lines, and they painted up really nicely.  It’s often tempting to dry-brush things like that, but painting on the highlights with a fine detail brush really can make a difference.

Just another bit on photography.  I’ve also learned that trying to do things on automatic really isn’t going to work, this stuff has to be done manually to get decent pictures.  Yet another area where it doesn’t pay to take short cuts!

I retook a picture of the assassin from the last post:

Still not perfect, but definitely better than the previous pictures!

A quick list of things learned:

• You can never have too much light
• The camera settings need to be done manually, automatic doesn’t cut it
• Background light (from windows, overhead lights, etc) can have a huge effect
• The background you put your model in front of can have a huge effect too…

(I won’t be using a red background often…)

So a big thank you to our glorious dictator leader for the crash course.  I now have to get some photography practice in, and when the lair is set up properly I’ll have a permanent place to have the camera set up

The next article, Bikou, and maybe something else are next on my plate.  Off to Warfare at Reading next month, I noticed Black Scorpion Miniatures will be there, so I maybe picking up some Elven Pirates…

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Back in the saddle

Just a quick post today, I'm back painting again and should have some pictures of some stuff in the next couple of days.

The big news for today is that Issue 10 of The Ancible is out!

Download here

Contents of this issue:

• A Call to Arms
• Watching Paint Dry (my article)
• Mansions of Madness
• Campaign Cartographer
• Darkage
• Khador Smelter Terrain Guide
• Firestorm Armada
• Starmada

For this issue I painted a House Hawkwood fleet for Call to Arms: Noble Armada from Mongoose Publishing.  That's my fleet on the front cover of the magazine.  In the article the WIP shots are mine, but the pictures of the finished fleet are done by Kenny, the owner of the magazine - it just goes to show how good stuff can look when photographed by a practiced photographer (i.e. not me...).  I've learned a few tricks from Kenny about photographing miniatures, so hopefully we should see some continued improvement in the shots I take (I'm not promising anything though...).

Of course it's not just about my article - there's loads of fantastic stuff in this issue (as there was in issue 9 which I should have mentioned last time), the Firestorm Armada battle report has some beautifully painted  ships in it, the Khador Smelter terrain piece is spectacular with a capital OMG (and it's made to look so simple too), and there's a ton of reviews of stuff we might not have had chance to see before.  Oh and the final word is about how the D6 has done a "grey squirrel" on all the other dice types (my first miniatures game, Advanced Heroquest, used D12s, where have they gone?).  All great stuff, and it's a free download, so it's criminal not to get your hands on it!

In other news (and something new for me), I've started painting some new Privateer Press releases for Game Craft, the new FLGS in Swindon.  Like painting for the Ancible, this is painting to a deadline, so it's a bit of added pressure to get things done, but that pressure is good for focusing the mind on the job in hand.  I'm not totally sure how this will work out, as there's only so much spare time in the week (which is shrinking every week thanks to the pressures of work), but it's nice to have something new, and the little ego boost that comes from people wanting you to paint their miniatures, especially as it's a business that intends to display them.

First up is Kommander Harkevich, The Iron Wolf, a lovely miniature that painted up really nicely.  I'll have pictures of him up tomorrow.

As always, comments welcome.  If you have any feedback for the magazine, join the forum on the website and let the team know what you think - and like here, constructive criticism is always welcome.

Let there be light

As longer term readers will know, I've always had issues with taking photographs of my miniatures, particularly with the amount of light I could get on the subject.  In recent months I've managed to ease this problem by taking pictures outside (starting with the Juggernaut ).  Unfortunately the British summer has got back in to its usual pattern, and has started throwing it down every so often, making picture taking outside a risky and soggy experience (I haven't tried it by the way, just imagining).

A few weeks back, a "quick" trip to IKEA (just some oak and some pine and a handful of norsemen...) yielded three of these bad boys: 

Photo from IKEA

I'm a big fan, only £8.16 for something that clamps to a desk/work surface and fully adjustable, and can take a 20W energy saving daylight bulb (effectively 100W).  Speaking of which, I managed to pick up some bulbs from my local art store - Craft Factory PureLite 20W.  Unfortunately they only had two, so I'll have to pick a third up from Amazon or somewhere.

So the current photography set up looks like this (these pictures are a little ropey due to using my phone camera):

The top lamp is my trusty painting lamp with an 11W daylight bulb in it, obviously this will be replaced by the third Tertial when I get the bulb for it.  The light box is my own self made affair that I've been using for a while now.  I think I'm going to have to replace the top and side panels, which are currently tissue paper, with something a little more transparent (tracing paper maybe?  I'll need to do some research).

The early results aren't bad but required a little editing in Picassa to bring the light levels up:

This is Huron "post-droppage", which I don't think I've photographed before, I'm still really chuffed with this paint job, even though I've learned a lot since finishing him, and would possibly have done things differently.

Progress wise, things are on track.  The painting for next article of the Ancible is progressing well, although the whole process is slowed down somewhat by the need to take pictures at every stage, but it's still enjoyable.  The Ashkasa is going slowly, but steadily, and I'm making good progress on Boris:

I bought this chap because of the armour, I love the look of the scales and the skull breastplate, and the horned head sword hilt is nice too. It would have been too easy to paint the scales of his armour red, and invite the Khorne/Skorne comparisons, so I opted for blue instead.  This makes him a little less evil than the red would have, but the scales have come out nicely and work well with the gold.  The more I painted the Boris, the more "World of Warcraft" he looked, particularly the face, so I went full on for that look when I did the beard orange.  I'm now looking at ways I can accentuate that look with the rest of the miniature.  

Like a lot of Reaper models, Boris is stuck to a chunk of metal sculpted as ground that acts as a base.  I prefer my miniatures to have a stable base, so picked up some 30mm round lipped bases from Orc's Nest when I bought Boris and pinned him to it, filling in with basing sand to neaten up.  I've got a couple of other Reaper miniatures (one also called Boris for some reason - is Boris the name of choice for Evil fighters?) that I will be doing the same with.

So very much onwards and upwards at the moment - as always, comments and criticism welcome!