Hark...

...evich, Kommander Harkevich to be precise, is the first miniature I painted for the new FLGS here in Swindon, called Game Craft.  I delivered it this lunch time, and the new owner is very pleased with it, but damn, it was hard to give it up!  Trying different stuff with the camera again, this time I think the pictures are a little too light, but I think I've got the white balance right... 

This miniature was an absolute joy to paint, loads of interesting detail, and no large flat areas.  I'm not totally sure about his weapon, as I think it looks a little daft.  It was fun to paint though, it just looks a bit odd.  I think if I was to buy this chap myself, I'd be tempted to swap it for an axe, and turn the hand at the wrist 90 degrees, so it was horizontal rather than vertical.  Although I'd been given no requirements for the paint scheme, I wanted to keep reasonably true to the studio scheme, as the miniatures I paint for Game Craft are to be used to promote the Privateer Press games.  This was also the first time I've used some of Privateer's P3 paints, and I have to say I'm quite impressed so far.

The gold was done more traditionally than my normal method:

• Base coat:  Tin Bitz
• Shade: Devlan Mud wash
• 1st highlight: Dwarf Bronze
• 2nd highlight: Burnished Gold

It's come out really well I think, and certainly benefits from the "zenithal" highlighting method - I'm especially pleased with how the forearm guards look.

The steel was also slightly different to how I usually do things, particularly for the plates along the bottom of the cloak, which I didn't want to come out too bright, particularly with that amount of metal that was there:

• Base coat: Charadon Granite
• Shade: Badab Black wash
• First highlight: Boltgun Metal was painted over pretty much everything leaving a ring of shade around each of the studs
• Second highlight: Chainmail was painted on each stud and blended in along the top of each plate
• Wash: Diluted Badab Black (around 1:1 mix with water) was washed over the plates, toning the metal down.

The rest of the steel was painted similarly, although I didn't do the final stage on the mace as I wanted to keep this reasonably bright.

The red armour was a little different again - I wanted to keep the red fairly bright, but make it look a little dirty, like it had been through a battle or two:

• Base coat: Scorched Brown
• Wash: Devlan Mud
• First highlight: P3 Sanguine Base - it's a little more purple than I was expecting, but it works
• Second highlight: Scab Red
• Third highlight: Blood Red
• Final highlight: Blood Red and Solar Macharius Orange

The first three stages give the dark and dirty undertone, while the last three stages bring the raised areas up, but without being too bright - hopefully a "dust of the battlefield" look.  There was a slight temptation to add some battle damage to the armour, but I decided against it (that stuff can take me a lot of time...).

The coat and blanket were painted my favourite grey-green colour (almost olive drab) to compliment the red armour:

• Base coat: Charadon Granite
• Wash: Devlan Mud
• First highlight: Catachan Green
• Second highlight: Catachan Green and P3 Thrall Flesh (I picked this up as an alternative to GW's Rotting Flesh, and it really did the business)

The brighter top highlight was intended to give the fabric a worn look, and I'm really pleased with the result.

The brown fur trim, pouches, pockets and straps were done pretty quickly:

• Base coat: Scorched Brown
• Wash: Devlan Mud
• First highlight: Calthan Brown
• Second highlight: Calthan Brown mixed with Dheneb Stone

The fur trim areas were carefully drybrushed - I don't drybrush much, and the temptation is to do it quickly and roughly, when like all other painting it should be a slow carefully applied process.  Taking a bit more care with the drybrushing really pays dividends - and I can't recommend GW's drybrushes enough for this, they really are good.

The beard was P3 Cryx Bane Base, drybrushed with Codex Grey and washed with Badab Black - simple but effective.  After highlighting the "brown bits", I still had some thinned Calthan Brown, so I used that as a the base coat for the face - not something I've ever done before but I thought I'd give it a go.  I carefully applied some Devlan Mud to the eye socket and mouth, and then highlighted first with Tallarn Flesh, and then Dheneb Stone.  It certainly doesn't work any worse than my other skin techniques, so I'm happy with it.

Now here's something that I've found Privateer are better at than GW - defined eyeballs, for me so far (and I may have just been lucky), the eyeballs on Privateer's miniatures are easier to paint than on GW's, they might not be quite as realistic, but they're easier to get the paint in the right place.  For the eye and teeth, I used Dheneb Stone, and then added a Chaos Black dot for the pupil of the eye.

The final stage was the harnessed power in the mace - I seriously need to read some back story so I know what half this stuff is called.  This was nothing more than a base coat of Ultramarine Blue (making sure to fill all the cavity) and a dot or line down the centre of Ice Blue - simple and effective.

So there we have it, one finished miniature and one happy receiver (plus a happy painter too)!

Up next is article number 3 for the Ancible (which I'm starting in the next couple of days), something for the in-laws, and finishing off some projects on the work bench.

As always comments and criticism welcome!

Juggernaut

There's been a bit of a gap between posts, apologies for that, but there's a very good reason, which hopefully will be revealed soon...

But in the meantime, I've finished my first Warjack!  The pictures were taken outside for a change, I'm not sure if this is an improvement or not on my previous photos, but at least I didn't have to mess around with the lighting.

While being a royal (appropriate word for today) pain in the backside to put together, this great big lump was a blast to paint.  He's meant to look dirty and beat up, and while my battle damage needs a little work I'm pretty pleased with the overall effect.  The miniature is "zenithal" highlighted (I think that's the term, I pinched it from Ron at From The Warp), i.e. the light source is imagined directly above the model, so all the lightest parts of the model are the elements/sides facing up

Red Flag Flying

Red is not a colour I enjoy painting large blocks of, as in the past I've had issues with getting the transitions smooth.  I'm probably a little hamstrung to start off with as I undercoat with black, but I think it's worth the extra effort in the end. The current method I'm using seems to be working and although the red is a little brighter than I'd intended, I'm going to stick with it for my Khador force.

Stage by stage, it goes a little like this:

• Base coat:  A couple of coats of thinned Scorched Brown are applied across most of the model (it's the base coat for the bronze/copper too)
• Shade:  Devlan Mud is liberally washed across the model
• First highlight:  Scorched Brown is reapplied to all but the most recessed and shadowed areas
• Second Highlight:  Dark Flesh is blended in to Scorched Brown, so that the Brown is only showing in the darker shadows
• Third Highlight:  Blood Red is blended in, with the uppermost faces of the model being pure Blood Red
• Final Highlight: Solar Macharius Orange is applied as a top edge and point highlight

The battle damage is then applied to the armour plates:

• The "dent/scratch" is a line or spot of Scorched Brown
• Below the dent or spot I painted an outline of Solar Macharius Orange
• Blood Red is used to blend this into the armour

This gives the illusion of a pronounced edge to the dent.  I prefer this to carving dents and scratches into the model as it's easier to erase mistakes if you've done too much, or put it in the wrong place.  Once the damage was completed, a glaze of Baal Red is applied to tone down the colour of the armour.  If I'm honest, I could have done a better job of the damage, making the dents/scratches smaller and more numerous, but I'm still quite pleased with the way it came out.

Heavy Metal

There's a whole load of "metal" on this model, which was a lot of fun to paint.  As this is a steam powered piece of machinery, I wanted to make it look dirty while still having some shiny bits.

For the steel:

• Base coat:  Charadon Granite
• Shade:  A liberally applied Devlan Mud wash
• First highlight:  Boltgun Metal applied to all but the most recessed/shadowed areas
• Second highlight: Chainmail blended in

For the bronze/copper:

• Base coat:  Scorched Brown
• Shade:  A liberally applied Devlan Mud wash
• First highlight: Tin Bitz applied to all but the most recessed/shadowed areas
• Second highlight:  A 1:1 mix of Tin Bitz and Chainmail is blended in
• Final step:  A glaze of 1:1 diluted Gryphonne Sepia is applied all over

By using a flat rather than metallic base coat, the recesses look dirt filled, especially with the amount of Devlan Mud used.  By going no brighter than Chainmail (or a Chainmail mix), the metal areas aren't too bright, helping to add to the effect.

The Devil is in the details

After the major elements were completed there were a few other things that need finishing off.  The black trims and the Khador emblem were simply a Black undercoat which had Adeptus Battlegrey and Codex Grey blended in as highlights.

A glimpse of flame was added to the grill of the furnace.  The holes here were filled with Scab Red, then Blood Red and Solar Macharius Orange were added in smaller layers, brighter towards the bottom.  A similar effect was used in the face plate of the 'Jack, but with a final layer of Sunburst Yellow added to the centre.   I went a bit literal with the "Ice Axe" - plain metallic steel didn't feel right to me, so after a base coat of Boltgun metal, I added layers of Necron Abyss, Shadow Grey, Astronomicon Grey and then a final highlight of White mixed with Mithril Silver to give it a frosted metal look.  

The base was then done to match Sorscha, and a spray of Humbrol Matt Varnish finished it off.

So one down and one to go.  Now I know what to do with these bad boys, the Destroyer should get done a bit quicker, then I need to decide what I want to go with them - with a new store in Swindon opened, called Gamecraft, that sells Warmachine, this maybe sooner than I'd planned...

I've got a couple of miniatures lined up to do this weekend, hopefully I'll have some daily progress reports as we're in another 4 day weekend.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Kommander Sorscha

First up, I need to apologise for the pictures as they're not great - probably because it's late Sunday evening and I should be going to bed, oh well...

Anyway, my first Warmachine miniature is finished and I'm kind of happy with her, but only kind of...

To start off with, she was a pain to put together.  I don't know what the difference is between the plastic Privateer use and the plastic GW use, but Privateer's plastic seems much more resistant to polystyrene cement, so the parts are much harder to glue together.  Gluing the body to the base, via the tab, was OK, but gluing the arms in was not successful, and both arms came off while mid paint.  So in the end I used superglue to get them to stick, which does seem to have worked.  I'm now gluing a warjack together and making sure I'm much more patient and ensuring the parts have bonded.  

Also, with this plastic, flash seems much harder to get rid of (see the spiky bit at the non-business end of the hammer), filing tends to shred rather than remove and scraping with a knife seems to be the most effective method. 

As for painting her, it went reasonably well, the green looks alright and the red has come out nicely, but the hammer isn't quite as good as I'd hoped for and due to the position of her left arm, painting the face was a royal pain in the backside - particularly painting the lips and eyes, lots of counting to ten and deep breaths were required!

I've tried GW's snow on the base and I'm not sure about it - if someone can recommend a better way of doing snow it would be much appreciated, as GW's snow just looks like short white grass to me.  It doesn't look bad, and has kind of the required effect, it's just not quite what I was expecting.  Actual painting time for her wasn't too long - it's not my best work by any stretch of the imagination, but for a gaming rather than display piece, I think she does the job.

Also this weekend, I did a quick paint job on the first of my converted Chaos BloodBowl team (which have been kicking around for a bit unpainted).  His name is Albrecht Gore (pun intended) and while he is not based yet, the paint job is finished and he will be the captain of the [insert suitably Slaanesh-themed name here]*.

Once he's based up (I'm trying to think of a good way to do that too), I'll take some more pictures of him.  Here he is "in the plastic" with two of his friends, Blind Grekk and Axel "Pretty Boy" Throatripper:

Planned this week are a Dire Avenger and the 2009 Games Day Chaos Champion (painted in a Nurgle scheme), plus starting a Warjack if there's time.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

*The name will be "Purple Pain" (which is utterly dreadful) if I can't think of anything else soon...

Warmachine

Alternative title:  Sometimes Andy paints something non-Games Workshop...

2 months after getting back from the US, I finally get started on my Warmachine Khador boxed set.  First up is Sorscha - I don't like the colour scheme on the box, as it's too much red.  I know I've used the olive drab green a lot recently, but I think this complements the red well, without looking too "Christmas-sy", which is important, as I want to put snow on the bases - not something I've done before, but feels appropriate for the theme of the army.

One thing I have wondered about is the position of the hammer arm, which doesn't match the picture on the box, or any pictures I've seen online - it doesn't look unnatural, but I guess the piece must have got bent in the box?

The red is currently too pink/peach, I started off with Scorched Brown shaded with Devlan Mud, highlighted first with Dark Flesh, then Blood Red, and finally Blood Red with some Vomit Brown mixed in.  In hindsight I should probably have used Scab Red and Snakebite Leather, but it's a bit late now.  I'll tone it down with a watered down Devlan Mud and Thraka Green wash , which should take the pink/peach tint away, and then maybe re-highlight with Snakebite Leather.  The Dark Flesh is a good first highlight (cheers Tom), I need to remember that for the future.  I feel like I've made a good start on her, and looking forward to finishing her by the end of the week (he says hopefully).

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

A quick update (no pictures I'm afraid)

Not too much to tell you, I've been back in the UK for a couple of weeks, and managed to get some painting done...

Yeah, I know.

While in the US, I wandered  into this place: Meta-Games Unlimited, a quite wonderful gaming store, where I picked up the Khador battlegroup.

Yep, I'm going to give Warmachine a go.  Thanks to Tom at Longbeard, I know of a couple of clubs that play the game, so once I've got the things painted, I'm going to give it a whirl.

Painting wise, Lucius is going well, and I've finished the first stage of a "nostalgic" little side project I've been chipping away at.  Hopefully pictures soon.

Speaking of nostalgia - I noticed on the GW website that they've re-released some old-school Chaos Warriors - oh yes, they will be mine...

I also noticed here that the new Warhammer Forge book will be "Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos" and will allow people to field Chaos Warriors, Beastmen and Daemons in the same army.  Chaos as it should be!

Time to get back into this blogging lark properly again.