noeste's - painting and modelling

Basing Tutorial

2012-01-30T10:05:00.006+01:00

Greetings one and all! Hope the new year's treating you well so far.
Been rather busy working lately, so haven't made any progress on the rest of my Warrior-regiment, but I found some pictures I took while painting the base of my standard bearer - recalling that I had planned to write a brief tutorial on how I do my bases lately. So without further ado, her goes:

First of all, I tend to use a bit of barch and some milliput to build up my bases, creating rocks and elevation. Add a pinch of sand, make sure the miniature fits onto the mix ( I usually drill a hole for the mini's foot-pin(s)), undercoat and then we're ready to start painting.

1. I start off with a nice coat of Shadow Grey. The blue-tinged grey works quite well for shadows and areas of shade - in fact I use this colour quite extensively when shading my miniatures as well, and find that by using many of the same colours on both base and miniature, it all gets tied better together and looks more natural - as if it's the same sun illuminating both the warrior and its environment.

2. My second shading colour of choice is Scorched Brown. I mix it with water and give the base a good ol' wash. Then I use Skull White to bring out edges and details; sand gets drybrushed, while edges are roughly highlighted.

3. Like I did with Scorched Brown, I make a wash out of watered down Chaos Black. I'm sure some of you might argue that I could just as well have used GW's washes, but this way I can more easily control the colour and opacity of my layers, and I don't risk getting these shiny bits from too much wash...

4: Now, this is the funny bit. Basically I just pick a set of striking colours (Blood Red, Darkangels Green, Ice Blue, Golden Yellow), water 'em down a bit, and place spots randomly on the rocky-bits of the base. It looks rather unnatural at this stage, but when the final layers gets on, these strange spots shine through and to my eyes it mimics the diversity of natural rocks quite well.

5: Watered down mix of Shadow Grey, Chaos Black and Skull White dampens the colourful spots, bringing back the greyness to the base.

6: Finally fine edge highlighting with Skull White for the rocks - maybe a bit of drybrushing over the sand, if you want to bring it out more.

The miniature is then glued/pinned on, I place small droplets of super glue where I want static grass (I use GW's Dead Grass, then place a smaller droplet of glue on top of that after it is dry, and glue some Burnt Grass on top of the previously placed grass - I guess one could just mix the two types and do it in one go, but I havn't tried that); if I want longer blades of grass, I use hair. The leaves on my bases are made by grinding a dried leaf into smaller bits.
Hope you've enjoyed this brief tutorial, and if nothing else it can serve as some inspiration.

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T14:16:00.003+01:00

Hey everyone, just thought I'd pop in and wish you all a happy new year.

My standard bearer didn't quite cut it at December month's Knights of the Brush competition - no wonder, as Santa himself decided to join in on the fun:

Great conversion and paint job by Mikkel, hope you like it as well!

Standard Bearer - Finished

2011-12-21T22:43:00.007+01:00

Arrived safely in Norway this evening, but managed to shoot a couple of pictures of my take on the Chaos Exalted Hero, before dropping him off at Games Workshop and catching my plane.

After talking to some friends, I decided to go for a traditional banner instead of a flag, and added onto the plastic banner from the Chaos Marauder Horsemen set. Got a couple of spare parts from the old mounted Champion of Slaanesh and the Dark Elf Cold One Knight boxes. I didn't have time to paint any freehand on the banner, but after I return to Denmark I'll see it through.

I've used a rather limited palette on this piece: only Skull White, Chaos Black, Shadow Grey, Mithril Silver and Scorched Brown (except on the base, which got a few colours more - but I'll make a short tutorial of it later), which I think has worked quite well to tie the whole model together. Granted, not the typical colours of Slaanesh, but I really like the concept of using light and clean colours to represent darkness or evil. And while I have nothing against pink personally, I do find it slightly over-used, so I wanted to try something else to make it stand out more.

With all the armour on this model, I've had ample opportunities to practice shading of metal - or painting true metallic metal, if you like - and I really like the process and results. To top it off, it goes faster and faster for every part, and I hope to keep this level up on the rest of the unit. I have mentioned in an earlier post, I believe, that this miniature will be part of a regiment of Chaos Warriors with the Mark of Slaanesh, and when I get back to Denmark I hope to be able to complete the first rank sometime february. There is some rather extensive converting and sculpting involved, and I have to figure out how to make a couple of things in sculpting putty as I go, but having one model finished surely helps on the motivation!

But now time for some pictures: Hope you like him! As always, comments and criticism is welcome!
The voting for december's Knights of the Brush will take place tuesday the 27th, so if you live in or near Copenhagen, feel free to drop by GW's store there, as I'm sure there will be several really great entries this month as well!

Late night update

2011-12-21T02:23:00.002+01:00

So it's 2:30 am here, and I've just put brushes, paint and glue down, and decided that the standard bearer is as good as he gets, if I'm to pack my clothes and christmas gifts as well as catch a couple of hours of sleep tonight.

I never got 'round to painting any freehand on the banner, but I'll get it done when I'm back in Denmark come january. I'll get some pictures of him up in the coming days, as well as a quick tutorial on how I make and paint the bases for my miniatures.

Now I'll have to track down my suitcase and get 'round to packing; watch this spot!

Standard bearer WIP

2011-12-19T17:56:00.003+01:00

Just a little WIP shot of the standard bearer.
For fun I thought I'd try something new with his helmet - the freehand need some cleaning, but I think I'll leave that for later - so much left to do! And I've got only tonight and tomorrow to finish him, if I want to participate in december's Knights of the Brush, as there's a plane waiting for me wednesday to take me back to my parents' place in Norway.

Don't know what you think? Part of me likes the freehand on the helmet, but on the other hand the lovely shape of the Chaos Warrior helmet gets a bit lost?

Hoist That Rag!

2011-12-03T17:57:00.005+01:00

So, it turned out that my finecast model wasn't of as good quality as I first presumed, and I've spent the last couple of days filling bubble-holes and trying to correct a huge molding fault. It's as if the two parts of the mold hasn't been correctly fitted, so the rear part of the model is roughly 0.5 lower than the front. So his left arm and leg has recieved quite the bit of sculpting, to correct this. Luckily, the rest of the mold line is hidden by the fur of his cloak, or ran down a undetailed area on his right side, and was thus fairly easy to remove with my hobbyknife. Still frustrating.

Either way, I've decided to make him the standard bearer of my regiment, and have started converting a bit: I've replaced the original head with a regular Chaos Warrior helmet sans horns, replaced the axehead of his left-hand weapon with an axe from the Chaos Knight sprue, and filled most of the holes in his cloak. As the unit will bear the Mark of Slaanesh, I want to reduce the worn look typical to the Chaos Warrior regiments' cloaks and equipment, and make them look a bit more like they care how they look. Sure, they've been out raiding and seen many a battle, but they won't be seen dressed in rotting cloth and rusty armour!

So here's how he's standing at the moment - not pinned or glued to his base yet, I prefer to paint them separately.
As his right arm also suffered from the faulty moldline, and in addition had two bubbles ruining the chainmail, I thought I'd sculpt the whole arm from scratch, and I hope to finish it by the weekend, so I can start painting next week. Speaking of sculpting, I've giving brownstuff a go at this model, and I'm very happy with how this putty's working. It cures harder than regular greenstuff, making it easier to cut and file should one want to do that, but it also stays more in shape than greenstuff: making it easier to get those sharp and defined edges you want when sculpting armour. Greenstuff, by contrast, acts in a slightly more "liquid" way: if you don't return and work on a spot regularily until it cures, the putty tends to go soft and gives rounded edges - which can work out very well if you're trying to sculpt something organic or soft, like flesh or cloth. So both putties has their uses, and I'm still very much at a learning stage, but hopefully this project will get me a few more steps along the way.

The standard itself will also be scratchbuilt from a 2mm iron pole and some putty, and I made my first attempt yesterday:
I got some nice tips from Mati over at Massive Voodoo on how to sculpt cloaks and the like, and used the techniques he suggested when I made the flag (as you can see from my setup below, I opted for paintpots instead of wire, as the flag was so large).
The technique seems to be working fine, but I'll have to remake the whole thing and make some minor adjustments before it gets where I want it, I think. For one thing, I managed to make it way out of proportions, it's too large! Secondly, a combination of too thin layer of putty and the wrong ratio of putty-parts made the flag slightly softer than I'd like. But I'll give it a new go and hopefully improve the outcome.

I have been debating with myself whether a flag or regular banner will look best on the tabletop; any thoughts from you guys?

Here they come!

2011-11-28T21:16:00.004+01:00

After tallying the votes saturday, it turns out I once more have the honour of picking the miniature for GW Copenhagen's monthly Knights of the Brush painting competition - and hence forth we are allowed to do a bit of converting, which suits me just fine. I'm sticking to the army of my heart, Warriors of Chaos, having chosen the Chaos Exalted Hero - and I do hope this doesn't bother too many; I was slightly dissapointed to see only three entries, including my own, last saturday. Anyways, fingers crossed that more will join in on the fun this month!

I picked up the last box in the store, and while the curse of finecast-bubbles still seem to linger, it doesn't bother me that much, as I'll play around with some greenstuff either way. Without revealing too much at this point (my initial plans for any model are always prone to change as the project progresses..), I have planned to make him fit into a Chaos Warrior regiment, which has been collecting dust in an unfinished state since the early months of 2010. The concept of this regiment was, well first of all, it will have the Mark of Slaanesh, but that's not so groundbreaking. But what I really wanted to do with this unit, was to break up the very rigid and boring poses the otherwise greatly sculpted Chaos Warriors suffer from, and to make it look as if the whole group was charging headlong towards the enemy. And it went fairly well with the first miniature, until I started to resculpt the cloak. I couldn't get the putty thin enough, or it didn't look natural, and attempts to use paperclips or plasticard didn't get me anywhere. So I lost motivation and shelved the project - until now!

I'll use the Exhalted Hero as part of the regiment; granted, he does not run, but the pose is rather nice and unique, so it will break up the rather monotonous look of most Chaos Warrior regiments. Furthermore, after I am done converting him, he'll serve as a nice model to test the paint scheme and has given me much needed motivation to dust off the box of unfinished Warriors and other bits and pieces I thought I could use for the project. I got to spend a couple of hours among plastic, glue and greenstuff, and this is a snapshot of my workspace and the state of my regiment.
I've still not figured out how I'm to make the cloaks (any tips or links to good tutorials would be greatly appreciated!), but I did experiment a bit with a grey putty, called ProCreate the other day. I was unable to make a cloak out of it, but it felt really nice to work with, so I'll probably give it a shot. Also have a batch of brownstuff lying about somewhere, which I have yet to test, but I have heard it's best suited for armour plates and other bits with sharp and defined edges.

Either way, will be nice to work on a regiment again; single characters are all very nice, and I do love the Knights of the Brush concept, as it not only lets me paint wonderfully sculpted miniatures, which I probably wouldn't buy normally (e.g. the Wood Elf Highborn), but also the deadline ensures that I finish them! But to complete a new regiment, that's something I honestly haven't done in a long time, but it also looks so much grander, doesn't it?
Strength in numbers!

Chaos Sorcerer Lord

2011-11-25T23:39:00.004+01:00

So slooooow!
I think I have to enter some regular "painting time" into my weekly schedule, 'cos a single model painted in a month, that's hardly progress at all. Won't get my army finished this century, that's for sure!

Either way, the Sorcerer Lord for tomorrow's Knights of the Brush painting competition is finished, and I do hope you like him! Very happy with how he turned out myself, although I caught a glimpse of another contestant's mini at the store today, and he's also gone for the magma-armour, which I had hoped would score me some easy "uniqueness points"...
C&C welcome.

Chaos Sorcerer Lord - WIP

2011-11-13T13:36:00.003+01:00

Progress has been slow this past week, or rather nonexistent.. But this morning/afternoon I managed to get some painting done - it's not much, but at least it's a start.
It's my first try on magma-armour, heavily inspired by Vincent Hudon's Magmatrax and redmanphill's Warriors of Slaanesh, and I think it fits a magican attuned to the Lore of Fire quite well.

I did the plates on his back first, and might redo them, as I personally find the smaller grid on the frontal plates more to my preferances. The remaining armour will be painted as dark steel, although I haven't decided on whether I'll try some lighting-effects from the magma (or if that will be too much?), or simply giving it a ever so slightly bronze-tint. Any suggestions?

To the Top!

2011-11-03T21:01:00.004+01:00

Just thought I'd drop by with a quick update, as I just was notified that my Amethyst Wizard won october month's Knights of the Brush competition!

This means that I get to choose the miniature we'll be painting this month, and I've choosen this chap:
The (relativly) new plastic Chaos Sorcerer Lord.
As you can see, I've started on a dark-red colour scheme, which in the end will mark him off as a sorcerer devoted to the Lore of Fire.

Epic Battle of Ultimate Doom!

2011-11-01T17:51:00.007+01:00

Irdgar saw the Dragon Ogres to his right advance against the Necrosphinx, as he led his retinue towards the horde of skeletons assembled before him. Arrows whistled through the air, but failed to pierce the armour plates and shields of Irdgar's elite warriors.
Drawing upon the unreliable winds of magic, Irdgar felt his dark lord Slaanesh's blissful caress, and smiled with pleasure as his spell made the undead bowmen crumble to dust by the scores! He opened himself further to the destructive energies of Chaos, becoming a true instrument for the dark gods, each millisecond bringing him closer and closer to his master, the Dark Prince. A tiny voice deep inside his mind pleaded him to stop, pleaded him to let go, but Ingtar ignored it in favour of the glorious choir rising higher and higher for every sliver of magic coursing through him...

Dusted off my miniatures and took roughly 1000 points worth with me to a local gaming club/store "Farao's Cigarer" yesterday, to partake in their Epic Battle of Ultimate Doom. All in all we were 14 players; the organizer split us into two even teams; the battlefield was chosen and our armies deployed. To cut it short: it was a blast!

The other team consisted of Dwarfs, men of Bretonnia and the Empire, Lizardmen, Wood Elves and Tomb Kings, representing the forces of good and order; my team on the other hand were mortal and daemonic followers of the dark gods and a handful of Dark Elves. As we were starting to converse and plan our battle strategy (few of us had ever met or played with/against each other, so there had been no planning in advance), a Bretonnian Paladin arrived at the field with his trusted knights just in time to see a band of traitorous Orc mercenaries leave the Encampment of Order, in favour of the armies devoted to Chaos and Destruction. Funny enough, the Orc Warlord turned out to have the highest leadership of all our heroes and commanders, so this shift of allegiance also gave my side a brand new commanding Warlord...

With 14 000 divided between two opposing forces, I soon lost track of what was happening everywhere on the battlefield, but my side's battleplan was roughly to harass/kite the Lizardmen on our left flank, keeping them from the core of the action; send our Flesh Hounds, Seekers of Slaanesh, Marauder Horsemen against the hill the cowardly Dwarfs and men of the Empire had fortified with their fearsome artillery; concentrate our superior heavy infantery on the right side of the battlefield's centre, to punch a hole through their lines, while our farmost right flank was screened by Furies and scouting Nurglings.
And I think it went rather well.

With an army consisting mainly of Chaos Warriors, with a trio of Dragon Ogres thrown in as support against tough opponents, my troops were deployed along hordes of Goblins, Plaguebearers, Black Orcs and Chaos Marauders on the right - except for a unit of Marauder Horsemen, which command were turned over to the captain overseeing the capture of the Artillery Hill.

Stones from Bretonnian Trebuchets fell among our ranks, while Skeleton Bowmen showered us with a rain of arrows, but it could not halt our advance! We answered with dark magic, softening them before the inevitable charge. Unfortunately, the commander of my troops became slightly overeager, let his control slip for a second and was rightly punished by the unforgiving winds of magic. Although his spell removed half of the skeleton horde deployed before the bulk of my units, the magic backlash of his miscast destroyed not only him, but half of the regiment he was accompanying. Nevertheless, the next round saw my screen of bloodthirsty Warhounds charge the crew of an enemy Trebuchet, which gave my Dragon Ogres a clear path to the enemy Necrosphinx. Although the Warhounds were soundly beaten, the fury of the Dragon Ogres turned out to be too much for the Undead construct, which was reduced to lifeless stone and dust.

At that point, the organizers tapped his finger at his watch; it was time to settle the score. I raised my eyes from the nearby melee, and inspected the battlefield surrounding me. At the far left, our flank had been pushed back by the Lizardmen, but our careful manouvering had placed the cold blooded warriors in a position where they could be of little assistance to their allies; our various fast units had successfully breached the defenses by the Artillery Hill, and enemy crewmen were either fleeing, slaughtered or fighting desperately for their lives. Although hampered by the dangerous march through Wild Woods, our horde of Khorne Marauders and Black Orcs had arrived to assist the cavalry by the hill, turning the enemy counterattack into a rout. My Dragon Ogres were in the midst of the enemy, awaiting orders to charge the next unit, while my Chaos Warriors were within charging range of the enemy bowmen. A valiant charge by Knights of Bretonnia had chased our Hydra off, and while this potentially left my rear vulnerable, Plaguebearers and a Herald of Khorne mounted in a war chariot had halted the human advance.

Although a lot could have happened if we hadn't had to stop at the end of the third round, I think we would have carried this home in the end. And the victory conditions counted at the time we stopped, were also in favour of the forces of Order's defeat:

- 1 point to the forces of Chaos/Destruction for having most units with Standards and/or Battle Standard Bearers on the enemy's half of the battlefield.
- 1 point to the forces of Chaos/Destruction for slaying most enemy heroes and monsters.
- 1 point to the forces of Chaos/Destruction for having captured most enemy Standards.
- 1 point to the forces of Order for having most painted units.

I think the opposing team were a bit unlucky, in that sense that their warmachines were unable to take out our heroes, and thus score points. My Sorcerer were our only casualty, in fact, and he died by his own hand... They were also unable to soften our units enough with their ranged attacks, and so we brutally butchered our way through their lines as soon as we made contact. Excepting the Bretonnian cavalry on the right flank and a regiment of Dwarf Longbeards (double 6 on the charge roll, what's up with that?!) were their only units on our half of the battlefield, as the rest of their army tried to defend their guns and stonethrowers, which gave my side some easy scoring points, as we got several banner-bearing units over to their side of the battlefield.

My side might have had Lady Luck on our side, though: the Necrosphinx for instance, missed on its monster-killing-blow strike, while my Dragon Ogres just cut through it, insane toughness and all, like a hot knife through butter... Granted, they had Strength 7 with Great Weapons, but still... But I guess luck can be put to blame in any battle.

Closing words: it was tons of fun, and I hope I'll be able to make it the next time such an event is organized!

Sorcerer of Slaanesh and new pictures of Wood Elf Highborn

2011-10-29T11:19:00.002+02:00

Here's the Sorcerer of Slaanesh I built out of the Empire Battle Wizards box, and he's now awaiting judgement in Copenhagen's Games Workshop, along with my Amethyst Wizard. Saw some very nice entries when I dropped my miniatures off this morning, I think it will be tough!

Managed to take some pictures of him before I left him at the store; in a way it is wrong to say he is finished, because I had initially planned to paint a large Slaaneshi freehand design on his back, but at 2:30 am this morning, I simply couldn't keep my brushstrokes straight, and had to leave him as he is - but maybe I'll finish him properly when I get him back. Might rebase him as well, come to think of it; just couldn't be bothered with building something nicer last night.

Also had some trouble with the undercoating of this model; for some reason, the white spray left rather large pellets of paint on the right side of his cloak, which made an uneven and rugged surface - hopeless to try any smooth blending or shading in that area, sadly. Awh well, really happy with the flames and his book. The OSL could maybe have been more smooth, but I think it's OK.

Hope you like him!
My Wood Elf Highborn was returned to me when I left my pair of wizards, and I've taken some new pictures of him, which does the miniature some more justice than the poorly lit and unfocused pictures GWCopenhagen took for their facebook site...

I've already introduced him in a previous post, but with these pictures I can't but repeat my satisfaction with the blade and the base of the model.
Hope you like him as well!

Wizard of the Amethyst Order

2011-10-28T20:03:00.004+02:00

The first wizard is completed!

Or, while taking these pictures, I saw I had forgotten to paint his ears and the edge of the base needs some cleaning, but I've just packed away my photobox, so you'll have to live with these pictures for now at least.

I need to get some whiter lightsource(s), I think: my pictures get all yellow-tintet and who knows if it affects my painting... But that's for the future!
Hope you like him!

Empire Battle Wizards - WIP

2011-10-20T19:35:00.003+02:00

Just thought I'd give you all a small update on how my entries for the monthly Knights of the Brush painting competition are progressing. Starting to feel a bit of a time pressure rising; the deadline is the 29th of October, at 10 am, and I can't claim to be a swift painter. But at least both of the models are assembled and primed, and I've been fiddling around with some colours and settled on themes for each of them.

First out is this fella. His main colours will be black and white, to better fit in with my Slaaneshi warband. I've sketched down some freehand motiphs, which hopefully will be enough to mark him as part of my army, once it's all done. The staff-head was created by pinning the burning sword onto a staff - I do hope it won't disqualify this model from the competition; conversions are not really allowed, but as I have only used parts from the Battle Wizard-box, I hope it'll be okey. After all, the winner of last month's competition had removed the tree-spirit from the Wood Elf Highborn... But we'll see!
...come to think of it, I did cut, reposition and pin the hand with the book, and also removed the pharaoh-ish beard-compartment from the mask - which actually saddened me a bit as I found the thing itself rather cool, but I was forced to do it, as the head wouldn't fit onto the body, unless I cut off the beard-compartment. Awh well! At least I think he looks rather decent this way, so should he be disqualified, I'll still have a nice addition to my army!

Then there's the second mage.
I've not made any conversions to this guy, so no danger of him being disqualified! The idea is that he'll be using the Lore of Death, and I felt that it should be quite obvious to any observer that he is - apart from the scythe and hourglass... As the previous wizard, he's still at a very early stage, but the freehands are at a slowly, but nevertheless steady pace turning out the way I want them to.
Hope you like them so far, I'll do my best to slap some more paint on them in the following days, and update promptly!

Wood Elf Highborn

2011-10-17T22:30:00.005+02:00

Afraid I havn't got much to show, when it comes to progress on my Empire Battle Wizards, which are the chosen model(s) for this month's Knights of the Brush - I have assembled them, even tried to sneak in some minor conversions, but in case that will get me disqualified, I've assembled a second mage. I just hope I have the time to get them both painted the way I visualize them.

Either way, the guys over at GW Copenhagen have finally uploaded pictures from last month's competition, so I thought I'd share a rather badly lighted and poorly focused image of my contribution.
As you can see, I went for some rather unorthodox colours for my Highborn; my model was the only which wasn't predominantly dark green with bronze armour.
I still need some practise when it comes to blending, but hopefully these monthly challanges will give me the motivation to push for and eventually master more fluid transitions between colours. All in all I'm quite happy with him; I really how the tree's barch turned out and the blade - although the quality of this picture doesn't render either very well.

Hope you all like him, I'll get some better pictures when the miniature is returned to me.

Returned!

2011-10-05T14:56:00.005+02:00

Whew! Time flies!

Roughly half a year since my last update, and well over a year since I showed any pictures of painted miniatures. But now I'm back; I started painting again this summer, loaned a finecast Orion model from a friend to test out and rediscover long-forgotten techniques and the joy of painting, and have done a little painting here and there since then.

Sadly I do not have any paictures of Orion at this point; I did the painting at the owner's place in Norway, and it wasn't finished when it was time for me to return to Denmark again after the holidays. But I do hope to finish him during the christmas-vacation, and I'll make sure I get some photos in return for painting up the model.
I have to say, though, that although finecast is lighter and the models don't fall over as easily or break apart like the old (unpinned) metal models did, it is simply not of high enough quality at this point. I very nearly went mad from all the air-bubbles as I worked on the model; while the old metal models might have needed some greenstuff gap-filling here and there, the resin finecast require sculpting! In no way is it more user friendly. Luckily I have some experience with greenstuff, so I managed to patch him together reasonably well, but yea.. I think GW should have tested and perfected finecast more, before releasing it.

But enough whining about finecast... Just damn shame about them bubbles!

So, what else have I been painting?
Well, the local GW has started (or have had for some time, although without me knowing) a monthly painting competition, Knight of the Brush, where all the contestants gets a month to paint the same model, chosen by the winner of last month's competition. So I dusted off my brushes and paintpots (actually had to replace a couple of colours, as they had dried up...), and bought myself a Wood Elf Highborn for september's competition.
Sadly I didn't make it to the top, quite high standard of the local painters - which is very nice in my eyes. I did score some extra points for "daring to be different", as my model was the only one not painted with green as the dominating colour. At the moment, the model's on display in the cabinet at GW here in Copenhagen, and I have no pictures myself, but the staff has promised that they'll get some pictures taken and publish them on their facebook profile, like they have done for the previous competitions - although they are taking their time!
Either way, I'll take some pictures myself when the model is returned to me at the end of the month.

Speaking of the local GW, their 14th birthday coincided with the Dreadfleet release last saturday, and the whole day was filled with events and competitions. The staff and several regular gamers had baked cakes for the occation; and also dressed up as Zombie Pirates - awesome! I got my ass handed to me in the "Ogre Olympics" (I'll do my best to get ahold of the rules; although rather unbalanced and mostly down to pure luck, it was tons of fun) and of course I participated in the speed-painting competition!

5 minutes: Go!
Alright, the poor Space Marine may not look like much, but I think I started out pretty well, lining the shoulderpads, painted the helmet white wihtout drowning all the details, had changed colour and done one eye lense, when the judge yelled: "First minute's up! Time to change hands!" ...and it sort of went downhill from that point on.. First of all, I'm NOT ambidexteritous, not the least. A minute later, we were told to hold the brush in our mouths; next minute between neck and shoulder (I can tell you, it is hard to dip the brush in a pot of paint, when held in that position!); then back in our off-hand. Owh, let's make this fun, throw in 10 seconds with eyes closed!

.. Well, it was fun, and it's a fine start on my return to the hobby - I think!
Next month's model for Knights of the Brush is the Empire Battle Wizard - no conversion, no greenstuff, only bits from the box. I'll pick up my box tomorrow, and we'll just have to see then how I'm going to model and later paint it.

Two more paintings

2011-04-27T19:43:00.004+02:00

End of April already, is it? Time flies...

I haven't spent much time painting lately; me and my brother's grand plan of weekly painting sessions over Skype sort of didn't work out in the end, and I've had tons of other stuff on my mind. But I've picked up the brush this evening, and will hopefully have some more paintings to show for it in the near future.

Today's update holds two facial-studies I did in the first couple of days of March, if memory serves me right. At the time, I hoped to complete more portraits, and thus I put off publishing these two 'till I'd painted some more, but I never got past than finding suitable photos on the web. So in a way of not leaving this guilt-ridden update empty of any imagery, I've included my first pair celebrity portraits - I hope you'll be able to recognize their faces, the first one's an actor, while the second is a musician.

If my brush-strokes have made them unrecognizable, tell me and I'll leave some more clues.

Photo-update

2011-03-03T00:36:00.004+01:00

Just a short update.

After reading Nesbet's great tutorial on how to improve miniature photographing, I've spent some time experimenting with my camera's settings, and I have taken some new pictures of some old models, trying to use Nesbet's tips. Despite this, I still struggle with getting the light balance right, so my pictures have a slight yellow tint to them, but the details are much, much sharper! The increase in quality of my photos has been demonstrated at CoolMiniOrNot.com, where the new pictures of models I previously had uploaded, now average a score 0,5-1,5 points higher than the old pictures! I'm still not 100 % happy with the quality; it's not perfect, but I need 2 more lamps and a proper photobox for it to get much better. Anyways, do drop by Nesbet's blog and take with you some photo-tips if you haven't already, and if you feel for it, drop by my CMON-page and see the improvement for yourself.

On a different subject, I'm working on a couple of miniatures at the moment, so the next post will probably contain some photos of that instead of aquarelles. My brother and I plan to hold a painting session over Skype tomorrow, to help each other with the motivation. We used to paint together in our parents' basement when we were younger, but now that we've both moved from home, I think it's several years since we last painted together. So there's a bit of nostalgia in it all, but I hope that this will lead to more miniatures painted and lots of fun chatting about nonsense while we're at it - just like old times!

More aquarelles and new layout

2011-02-22T22:10:00.004+01:00

With the revival of the blog, I thought it'd be fitting to change the old layout a bit - hope you all like the changes!

Also, I found some paintings I made last year, which I thought I could upload in lack of new stuff (I am working on a couple of things, so stay tuned!). The first two are the first two tries I did at painting people, and while they might not be as good as the last ones I've made, they mean a lot to me and were important stepping stones and taught me a lot.
The third piece is something quite different; a rather minimalistic landscape picture. It's a shame my scanner isn't better; it's not able to capture very light pictures as they are, and because of this, the colours are a bit paler than they should be. Nevertheless, I wanted to upload it, 'cos I made a lot of pictures like this a couple of years ago. Reminds me of the special light of the northern parts of Norway, with its cold and salty smell...

Long time no see

2011-01-26T18:24:00.002+01:00

It's been a long time since last update, and to any followers I can only apologize. My computer broke down early last fall, and my spare lap top is unable to read SD cards. This rendered me unable to import photos to my computer, so I sort of lost interest in the whole blog, and left it alone. Not only that, I lost an important motivation for painting my Warhammer models, and must admit I've barely lifted a paint brush most of these past months.. I did paint up a Bretonnian Damsel for my brother's christmas gift, but as I couldn't get any photos up on the blog, I didn't bother with photographing it, before I gave it away - sadly, 'cos I was rather happy with how it turned out in the end.

So why revive my blog, you might ask? Well, I just happen to be the owner of a new PC, and now there's nothing to stop me from uploading photos of models I paint anymore, so why not make a small entry in the blog, to help myself get my cans of paint, bottles of glue and all my brushes out! In the moment of writing this, I have to admit my inspiration to paint Warhammer models is pretty low, but who knows what will happen, when I publish this post? Time will tell...

When I said I barely had lifted a brush these last couple of months, it was only partly true.. Many, many years before I started thinking of painting miniatures, I loved to paint and draw, and since the middle of December, I have been picking up my old aquarell-set, and done some good old fashioned painting on paper. For reasons unknown to me, I'm in a period of high inspiration and productivity not experienced for many a year, which I find immensely fun! So, in the absence of any painted miniatures, I thought I'd share some of my recently painted aquarelle paintings.

Hope you like them!

8th Edition Event at Local GW - pt.2

2010-07-11T23:57:00.003+02:00

Sorry about this late post, but was to a pubcrawl most of saturday afternoon and evening.. My hangover combined with the very un-northly heatspell Copenhagen is under at the moment, really hasn't had me in the mood for writing, but here comes my short resume of the 8th Edition release-party event at the Games Workshop store here in Copenhagen.

The crowd was huge, and when I left for my pubcrawl a few minutes past 1, they had just three copies of the new rulebook left, all the others sold! Not many had taken the time to dress up, but the few who did looked splendid in their outfits. I believe there was a Witchhunter, a Tilean merchant or member of some free company, and there was a Priest of Ulric and an Abbess of Sigmar (bitter rivalry between the two members of the clergy was evident, as they tried to convert followers to their respective Gods...)
Very sporty and cool of them to do so, great for the mood at the event.

Then there was the cake-baking competition, sad to say mine didn't make the cut, although several staff members commented on it being one of the tastiest of the lot, but it was the store manager who had the say in which cake was the best tasting, and to his tongue, it wasn't mine... The cake best decorated was also rewarded, and one had created 3 Orcs out of marzipan and deservedly won that prize.

At 1 pm, the painted miniatures were to be judged, and I must say the dozen or so entries were of a very high standard; several of them converted as well. Unfortunately I never got to take pictures of any of them, but a wonderful Spellsinger won the competition. Faultless blending and really smooth colourtransitions combined with a very detailed and expressionfull face, gave the model the little extra, which the other miniatures lacked.

But there will be other chances, both for me and all the other miniature painters in the area! Another competition will be held in September, for that month's release - or that's roughly what the store manager said, and I'll just cross my fingers and hope he sticks to his word. My guess is that the theme will be the forthcoming Island of Blood-set, or alternatively be Chaos Daemon-related, with the second wave of Daemon-models coming in August.
Either way, I hope the competition won't be restricted to the armies in the Island of Blood or to Daemons, but I guess that could be a way of upping the sales for said armies... I guess only time will tell.

8th Edition Event at Local GW - pt.1

2010-07-10T08:18:00.005+02:00

Number 14!

07:35 I turned up at the local GW, eagerly anticipating the opening of the store at 10 o'clock, with the 8th Edition Event starting, with the release of the new rulebook and numerous competitions - one of which was a gift-handout for the first 10 people to enter the store. Maybe it was the fact that I ate breakfast; maybe I shouldn't have shaved myself this morning; maybe I shouldn't have spent so much time decorating the cake I baked last night; maybe... Meh, I'll never know what made me come just a bit too late, and thus lose the chance for some free stuff, but awh well! Instead of waiting by the store door for a couple of hours, with practically nothing to do, I decided to head back home. I did leave my freshly baked cake at the store though, for one of those earlier in the line than me, to carry inside when they opened - all I can do now is cross my fingers that the cake along with Vlad von Carstein will fetch me a prize or two... Time will tell, now I think I'll relax a couple of hours before heading back to GW...

Oh, I did take a picture of my Warhammer cake: one of my largest sculpts to date, using my ma's great recipe!
Next edition release, I'll finish the glazing the day before, maybe I'll get to the store in time to secure a better place in the line that way... I think some of them actually slept in front of the store, maybe that's the way to go? Either way, I'll return with the results of the various competitions at a later point, and maybe some thoughts on the new rules, as I'll pick them up at the store today as well, so stay tuned for part two!

Vlad von Carstein - Finished

2010-07-06T22:43:00.003+02:00

Fuelled by the warpstone of Mordheim, Vlad's magic seeped over Sylvania, coiling through the unguarded Gardens of Morr, pooling in the open peasant graves. Across Vlad's lands the dead awoke. Skeletons clawed their way through the dusty soil; Zombies stirred in their muddy holes; Ghouls loped from their crypt lairs to worship their new master. With this act, von Carstein threw down the gauntlet to the Empire. The Wars of the Vampire Counts had begun.

Here he is, finished at last!

I can't claim to be the author of the little piece of fluff typed down in itallics above, that honour goes to Gav Thorpe, the man behind the Vampire Counts' army book for 7th Edition. After buying Vlad, I read all I could find in the book about Vlad, in search of inspiration, and I thought that particullar passage really fit with the pose of the vile count - hence all the green, warpstone and all...
The book also describes Sylvania as a rather barren and wartorn county, and I hope I've managed to capture that essence in the base, with the gnarled, leafless tree, dead grass and leaves. Speaking of the grass, as I don't have any static grass in my flat here in Denmark, I used my own hair istead - a cheap alternative worth trying for other poor modellers! I must admit it was quite difficult to handle, but I hope the end result turned out to be convincing. The leaves I made from a natural dead leaf, grinded to small bits before glueing onto the base an effect I'm very happy with!

I'm not as happy with the OSL on this figure though, compared to what I've achieved on my last two Blood Angel Terminators.. Might be that my technique simply works better with Midnight Blue, rather than Dark Angels Green, or that the placement of the glowing blade makes it hard for the glow to reach the rest of the model, and thus the illusion of green light suffers, with fewer surfaces to be reflected off. Or maybe it's a combination... I think it looks decent enough, though, and I'm still very happy with how the blade itself turned out.

Now that the cloak is in colour, it might be easier to notice the ever so slight conversion I've made to the model. Originally, an extra ghostly head is soaring out from the cloak, but for one thing, I think it makes the left side of the model a bit too busy; secondly the model's front-heavy enough as it is (prone to tipping, even with the extra weight added to the base with putty and sand..); finally - and most important - I screwed up when cutting the loose head out, which ruined the part which should fit like a jigsaw-piece with a hole in the cloak. I gave up on using greenstuff to fix it, and the head's whispy "neck" was too thin to drill a pin-hole through, so I gave up on it all, and simply greenstuffed the hole in the cloak, and have later come to appreciate the choice, based on the two first reasons.
For a while, I thought of using it on the base - might be quite cool to have it come out of the skull's eyesocket, or something - but in the end, I decided against it. The pinning problem would have made it difficult, but also I think it might've made the base too busy, and drawn attention away from the model itself. I've still kept the head though, so it might find its way into another project, sometime in the future.

Hope you all like him; I know I do, and he's been a true joy to paint and work with, so it's not impossible I'll buy me another one, just to test out some other paint schemes. Then again, the other Vampire models do look rather splendid, so maybe a new one instead... I'll save that discussion for later, as at the moment my vallet is thin, and the Space Hulk miniatures are waiting eagerly to be painted!

Vlad von Carstein - WIP2

2010-07-05T15:06:00.007+02:00

Progress has been slow last couple of days, as I've been at a music festival instead of home and painting. It's truly been a blast, with great musicans, wonderful concerts and perfect weather!

But, this blog's about miniatures, not music, and in fact I have made some progress on Vlad this afternoon, which I thought I'd share. I've finished his armour, and painted his hair black, as well as working a bit more on the fur of his cloak and finished all the metallic parts.

In the end, I went for a red armour, which most of the previous comments have been in favour of. By Rogue Pom's suggestion, I've tried to make it dark, using a glaze of Scab Red + Chaos Black to give it a hint of purple. When painting the red, the new undercoat of black followed by white, really shows its value, as I could just give it one or two thin coats of Blood Red directly, and then work "backwards", making shadows and darker areas using Red Gore, Scab Red and Chaos Black. Quite the opposite from adding more and more red into a black base coat, which is how I've previously painted all my reds. Brother Zael, the next Space Hulk miniature to get some paint, has already recieved the new undercoat, and I'm really looking forward to working on him - the red parts should take a lot less time now!

But back to Vlad: I've seen many pictures of him, with white or light grey hair - 'Eavy Metal's take on the model amongst them - and while it gives a certain air of authority certainly fitting for the first of the von Carstein vampires, the Vampire Counts armybook describes him as:

"...darkly handsome, of noble bearing and aspect..."

Now, I'm not saying that grey hair can't be handsome, but to me, Vlad would've been a black haired nobleman, in his mid-twenties or early thirties when he recieved the blood kiss, and I think of him as quite vain and that he'd try to keep his dark hair in undeath. Also, from a painter's perspective, I hope this will make his face become a focal point - after all, with the fangs and glowing eyes, his face is what gives him away as a vampire!

Now, all that's lacking is a couple of gems, the cloak with its screaming heads, the hilt of the sword and of course the base. Oh, and the sword will get its glow-effect, but I'm going to wait with that until last, as I find it easier to decide how large a glow will be fitting for a miniature - what is too much, and what is too little - when everything else is painted.

Hopefully he'll be all finished sometime tomorrow, but feel free to come with any critisism or other comments!

Vlad von Carstein - WIP

2010-07-01T10:47:00.003+02:00

So, here's a pair of pictures, showing yesterday's progress.
The pictures ain't of the best quality, with the model being just a work in progress, I didn't bother with setting up my photobox, and Vlad's face in particular suffers for that.

I've still not decided how to do his armour, I've seen some great pictures of this model, with the armour done a very dark metallic colour. Others seem to do it golden, but I kind of feel the model looses some of it's aura of evil and darkness, if painted brightly golden. A friend of mine suggested red, like the wings I did on his shoulderpad, while another friend wanted me to do it a eerie and ghostly light blue - I think the latter would clash with the greatsword's green, though... Any thoughts?

Speaking of the sword, I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. At first I wanted to paint it in True Metallic Metal style, but my blending ain't good enough to give the smooth end result I crave, so I ended up repainting it green. The plan is to make it glow with some OSL-effects (as will the ring and eyes), I just need to finish the armour-bits first, so I can do it in one go.

I promised to write a couple of words on the undercoating-technique I've used for this model, and I think it's working quite as I read it should. The red was very easy to paint, just a few layers and there it was, just like I wanted. Same goes for face and other light parts (although I think the blitz from my camera has ruined the details and shading on the pictures above..), all's been very easy to paint up.
Another great thing, is that with the raised areas getting some white dust, the details on the sculpts gets so much easier to see. It's easier to plan which parts will get which colours, where I need contrast and such.

Comments and critisism is as always welcomed, but I hope you like him so far!

Summer!

2010-06-30T11:45:00.003+02:00

Summer has truly come to Copenhagen, the weather's been warm and lovely for quite some time. In other words, it's been hard to pick up the brush, with nature showing off its best colours, but with the upcoming 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, my fingers have started to itch for something to paint again - the urge getting stronger with every day passing, making the 10th of july get closer and closer...

Yesterday, I happened to be passing by the local GW, and went in for a chat and a quick look in the new rulebook (which I think looks fabolous, by the way). Anyways, it turns out that the store's having a small release party on the day, with all sorts of competitions for the customers: cake baking, army building, costume making and miniature painting.

I love competitions!

I promise you I'll give you pictures of the cake I plan to bake, but naturally I have to wait 'til we get closer to the date with baking it. In the meantime, you'll have to contend with the progress of my chosen (and newly bought) miniature for the painting competition:

Ever since I saw this editions sculpt of Vlad von Carstein, I've wanted to paint him up - it's so richly detailed and I think the sculptor (whom I sadly can't find the name of) truly has captured the character perfectly! Now I just hope I can do the piece justice.

I've tried a new undercoating technique for the first time, following a tutorial at Massive Voodoo, which basically is to first undercoat black, then gently "dust" it with white spray, which should make the raised areas naturally light, while cracks and areas you'd normally want darker, will be more black than white. Supposedly it'll make for an easier and better paintjob, as you get the best of both black and white undercoating: no need of darklining, as the black coat's there, while raised areas will pop more, and light colours like red, yellow and skin, will be easier to apply, due to the white.

I fear I might have been a bit too careful with the white, at least on his legs, ut I guess it's a learning process to get the technique right... I'll try to write down some thoughts on the matter in my next post, when I've tried my brushes on this new coating. And hopefully I'll find the time to do some regular posting of my progress on Vlad. I must admit I havn't decided on how to paint all parts of him, mainly the armour is undecided, so feel free to give me some suggestions, or if you have painted up one mini like him yourself, I'd love to see some pictures!

Sergeant Lorenzo

2010-05-22T16:06:00.004+02:00

At long last, Sergeant Lorenzo is finished!
One of my favourite sculpts among the Space Hulk miniatures, with his characterful pose and facial expression, and the lovely detailed and unique armour. In the end, I'm very happy with how he's turned out, and I hope you like him too:

(Click to enlarge picture)

Painting this guy has been quite the battle, and several times I caught myself wondering wether this miniature wanted to be painted or not. Certain areas I've had to repaint over and over, 'cos I simply couldn't get it right, and certain parts I've had to remove the paint with sandpaper, before starting all over again with the brush. For example, the swordblade alone took me at least 6 tries, and more than 3 hours to get how it is now. For some reason I couldn't get the red right at his armour when I first started painting him, and I've completely lost the count of how many layers of diluted paint I've glazed most of it...

But finally, he's finished, and I can focus my entire attention on my upcoming exams in the last weeks of June. Until they're over and done with, I won't have time for painting nor modelling, and my blog will be more or less in hibernation. Come July I should be back though, laying my brush onto more Blood Angels or maybe some Genestealers... Only time will tell which shall be my target!

Brother Deino (bigger pictures)

2010-05-13T18:44:00.004+02:00

Turns out the first images I posted of brother Deino were too small, so here is some larger ones.

(click image for even better view)

At the moment, the general opinion seems to be that I should only add battledamage to those models it's sculpted onto. Guess I'll follow that recipe, and then when they're all done, some with battledamage, some without, I'll make up my mind as to whether it looks good or incoherent with such differences in between the models.

The next model is advancing slowly but steadily, I havn't been able to do much painting yesterday nor today, but maybe later tonight.. I'll do my best not to keep you waiting!

Brother Deino

2010-05-12T18:38:00.004+02:00

Well, as yesterday's sneakpeek might have given out, I'm currently working on some Space Marines, namely the Blood Angels off last years reissue of the Space Hulk game. And first of the gang to be completed this side of New Year, is Brother Deino - hope you like him!

(click on image for better view)

I don't think I've had these on the painting table since october or something, and now that I've picked them up again, I've made some changes in the way I paint them - hopefully for the better. Mainly, the mix of red I use now, is not as dark as earlier, and I've tried to define the edges more with some extra highlighting - much lighter than before. Also I've worked on my technique when it comes to my NMMs and the OSL from the Powerfist. On top of that I've made minor changes to the painting scheme: parts of the Stormbolters will be red, many teardrops/blooddrops will be done gold (those that look like gems will still be green emeralds, but many of the blooddrops don't have a gemcasing sculpted, and as such looks wierd painted green, in my eyes) and finally the thin wires will be done green. And for the cloth, I've settled for white - strictly speaking, this is not a change, as Brother Deino was the first of the Marines I've painted with any cloth on him, but I think I initially had planned to do it some other colour...

I'm still undecided as to how much battledamage I'll paint onto each model - the sculpts themselves varies a lot on that subject: some, like Brother Claudio and Sergeant Lorenzo, got large gaps and holes in their armour, while others, Brother Deino amongst them, look like they're coming directly from maintenance... Any thoughts on the matter? Should I dirty them up a bit, some scratches here and there; make it look like they've fought their way through a horde of Genestealers? Or should only the models with battledamage sculpted onto them, recieve such a treatment?

Either way, Brother Deino is not varnished yet, so if you have any suggestions or any critisism, don't be afraid to empty your mind!
And in case someone wonders, the thought I had when painting his Powerfist the way I did, was that he's just "turning it on", so to speak, and the powerfield giving the glow hasn't charged up yet, so the backside of the fist ain't enveloped in energy, just yet.
An alternative theory was given to me by a friend upon seeing the painted model, saying that "bitch-slapping" is the way to go, when fighting Genestealers...

Still around...

2010-05-11T22:52:00.003+02:00

It's been a while, well over a month, but now I'm back! And even though this term's exams are approaching, I'll do my best to get the odd update rolling on this blog every now and then. I might even expand the theme for this blog somewhat, to include another hobby of mine, yet that's something I'm still contemplating... Time will tell!

Either way, I've spent the time since my last blog-entry doing quite the bit of experimenting, painting-technique-wise, and as such I don't have much to show yet, as a lot of time has gone to trial, error and starting over. I have finished one mini, and will post pictures of it tomorrow or the day thereafter, while a second is well under way. here's a sneak peak:

The red (although not very well represented in this picture, and turned way too orange due to light-settings) and the NMM gold, has been the main targets for my mentioned experimentation, and while this picture may not be much to go by, I hope you like it. Stay tuned for better pictures, come sunlight!

Coconut!

2010-03-26T16:20:00.003+01:00

Been a while since last time I made a post in my blog, and frankly there ain't much to show in this post either... I did recieve the strangest of strange items one can get through regular mail yesterday, however, and I thought I'd share it with you.

In a couple of my previous posts, I've been promoting a painting competition under the name "Show Some Balls", run by Massive Voodoo, and the 18 entries can be seen here - for anyone interested. As earlier announced, I made an entry, sort of a rushed thingy one of the last days before the competition closed. At first I really didn't know what to make, but as Massive Voodoo got this jungle-theme, and all the artists got an ape-alias, I figured I'd paint some apes.
Not very original, but served as some nice freehand-practice. Either way, some of the contestants put a lot more into it than I did, and as such I'm happy that my entry didn't place among the winners. But by chance, my entry-number was randomly chosen for a small "surprise gift", which was to contain "... a Coconut, fresh from the Jungle and some PK-Pro Bases."

Now, as the site got this jungle-theme, and everything there is counted in bananas and the like, I didn't believe they were actually going to send me a coconut, but they did!
It really made my day to open the package and find a real coconut in there - along with some nice bases from PK-Pro and some German candy - it's like the slogan says: "Haribo macht Kinder froh - und Erwachsene ebenso!"
Now, all I have to do, is to decide on how to consume the 'nut; just take it as it is, or maybe something more fancy... Any suggestions?

Well, enough of balls, competitions and coconuts - what's the status of my current projects? And what happened to that green stuff tutorial I promised to write? Has there been any progress on those cloaks I was going to make out of plastic card?

Sadly, in short I have done very little: I made some attempts at the cloaks, but quickly gave up, and demotivated I have put the Chaos Warriors on ice for the time being. I've lacked the time or energy to do much hobby-related, barely touched a paintbrush since I finished my entry for the Show Some Balls-competition. Now that the Easter-holiday's arrived, I might get something done, but it really depends on my mood and if I got the inspiration to do anything. And a green stuff-article will simply have to wait 'til next time I start working on a project involving sculpting.

Speaking of sculpting, though... For anyone interested in sculpting and working with green stuff, I'd like to direct you over to a blog serving as a resource-archive, or theme-hub if you like, on the matter, simply called Green Stuff Sculpting. It looks like it's filling up nicely with links to various articles on how to sculpt or examples of great conversions or full sculpts made with green stuff, as well as tutorials - so check it out if you're interested in that kind of stuff!

Progress?

2010-03-02T23:36:00.003+01:00

Not much to tell, not started painting nothing yet, still busy working on my Warriors - four of them are currently in progress, including the one I showed a picture of in my last post. At the moment I'm having some issues with how I'm to sculpt the cloaks - as I've changed their feet and general posture, the original cloaks had to go - not a big loss, considering their worn and torn appearance... Any true follower of Slaanesh, would think twice before donning anything but the finest clothing!

Anyways, I'm finding that greenstuff easily gets too bulky and thick for the cloaks, as I want them flowing out behind the Warriors as they charge forward, so I went through many of Copenhagen's hobby stores, in search of an alternative. In the end, I was lucky enough to find me some sheathes of plastic card - on sale no less - a mere two danish Kroner pr A4-sized sheath (that's roughly €0,25 or $0,35)!

Now, why would I want plastic card? Well, I did recall seeing a tutorial some time ago of how one could heat plasticcard to make rather convincing banners, and so I thought to myself, that cloaks and banners should be about the same thing. The author of the tutorial is doing something which I'm not a fan of, namely warming plastic over an open flame - that's got to produce some nasty fumes! So instead, I've opted to use boiling water, which seems to do the trick - although I havn't had the time to find any good technique yet, but if (hopefully when) I get the hang of it, I'll make sure it gets posted here in detail! I'll do some testing the coming days, and we'll simply have to see.

In addition to the plastic card, I got myself some yellow-grey milliput - and frankly I understand why it's so much cheaper than GWs greenstuff. It might just be me who's using it wrong, but to me it is a lot more sticky, acts differently in contact with water, and doesn't seem suitable for detailwork. It's too grainy and seems to rupture if treated too hard. That being said, I think it can serve its purpose at larger and more rougher things, eventually at bases. I do not recommend it for small detail-work, however - at least, greenstuff is much more to my liking. I've placed an order for some brownstuff and some procreate, and when they arrive we'll see how they fare in my eyes!

Owh, but look here! I have found some use for the milliput:
A slightly irregularily shaped ball!
This (when painted) will be my entry in Massive Voodoo's competition: "Show Some Balls!", with a final deadline on the 10th of march - so hurry and sculpt your own ball or eventually make a pair, there's still time to join! I have yet to decide on what I'll paint onto it, but I do have some ideas...

Inspired...

2010-02-25T23:36:00.006+01:00

As the work on my Sorcerer neared the end, I began thinking of what to do next. I came to a point with my Sorcerer, where I had to wait some hours for certain parts of putty to cure a bit, before I could move on. I suddenly had a timepocket to fill, and while I could have started painting my Dragon Ogres, I thought that the space of time would be better suited continueing sculpting - after all, both putty and tools were already in my hands, so no need to dig out paint and brushes.

But what to do? I do have quite a few regiments waiting in their sprues, and while looking through the boxes, I came over my Chaos Warriors, and it hit me how static they look, all lined up, weapons and shields at same angle and looking quite boring (at least the third time one assembles a regiment of them...), despite the rather great sculpts. Lots of good detail, no doubt about that, just lack "motion".
Then my mind wandered to an image from the armybook, of a charging warrior, and I thought to myself, that's what I want to make! So I cut off a leg, half the cloak and one shoulder, then found an arm and some greenstuff, and started putting it together. A few hours later, and this is what I got:
It's by no means finished, I'm currently working on making the cloak sort of flutter behind him, and I need to find him a helmet. And even if the shield's finished, the arm might need some extra sculpting as I've cut away a large portion of the cloak which'd normally hide the upper arm... His left foot is there somewhere, but it's bet so high you can't see it from this angle.
Owh and here's the picture from the armybook, just for reference:Mine will get a classic Chaos Warrior shield, though, as I think they simply look gorgeous - and besides: carrying half-torn bodies stuck to the shield ain't only unpractical, but slightly un-Slaaneshi, don't you think?
I don't know how you think, but personally I felt so happy with the result, that I decided to make the rest of the regiment in a similar matter, i.e. less static, and all with unique poses, but so far I've only gotten the second one to about the same stage as the one on the picture above, although with quite a different pose. Unfortunately I didn't take no pictures of him yet, and I'll try not to make you wait long.

Anyways, hope you like the idea and how the first one's turned out so far.
Last in this post, I thought I'd include a picture I took this morning, which managed to capture some of the details better.

Sorcerer of Chaos - Finished!

2010-02-24T22:01:00.003+01:00

That's more like it!
Name and a short story will come later, I promise to have it ready by the time he's painted, if not earlier.

Here's some pictures of him - terribly sorry about the mediocre quality of them, but I hope you all like how he's turned out.
I do know that the left arm is slightly too long, but the hand has turned out so much better than my first try, so I don't think I'll attempt to cut the 1mm or so off his wrist, out of fear that the hand might get damaged...

Oh, and I did try to take some pictures as I worked, although I doubt they're good enough for a step-by-step guide.. I'll look the pictures through some other day, and make that list of tools and write down tips and stuff I learned while working on him, as I promised.

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP4

2010-02-08T15:11:00.003+01:00

A small update on the Sorcerer.
First of all, thank you all for the encouraging comments so far. Means a lot.

I have gone through with my plan, giving myself a new chance to sculpt the hand and arm better. I have unfortunatly had very little time to do any sculpting, however, so I havn't gotten very far yet, but I think my skeleton for the hand is of a better size this time - like last time, I've used thin staples to create the core of the hand, and then I add greenstuff-"flesh" on top of the "bones". I'll get some pictures at another time.
It turned out surprisingly easy to remove the old head and lower arm without damaging them, so as you can see on the picture above, they're still with me, serving as a reference for "too big", hehe.

I hope to have some more updates in the not so distant future, but february has turned out to be quite the busy month for me, so I can't promise nothing. And I'll try to get a post up about tools, tips and the like, for any who'd like to give sculpting a try themself - it is very fun and rewarding, once you get the hang of it.

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP3

2010-02-04T13:37:00.004+01:00

I'm kind of at a stand-still here, and a bit at a loss as to what I'm to do next. I have finished sculpting my first head (milestone!) and also given him a left hand.
Now, it's not very hard to spot that his hand is way out of proportions, and his head is also slightly too large. On top of that I think the face is expressionless and boring, the cheekbones are too prominent, his nose is too beaky and he's even looking in the wrong direction - at least I think he'd look much better if his head had followed his arm. That was after all the plan when I started sculpting the head, but as I was trying to figure out how to make ears and shape the face, I sort of lost sight of the bigger picture, and I was unable to spot my mistake, until too late.

So, uhm, what now?
In a way, I have done what I set out to do, namely sculpt a head and a whole arm for the first time. And I have learned a lot, no doubt about that, and that's always nice.
I am however not happy with the result, so my Sorcerer won't see any paint in the near future, that's for sure. In fact, I'm quite tempted to scrap both head and arm, and redo them from scratch.
Right now I think I'll take a short break from him, however - I seldom get anything constructive done, if I'm frustrated over my own mistakes. It's the wrong kind of motivation for me, but that being said, I won't abandon my Sorcerer either, his time will come!

I have recieved a request for some hints and tips regarding how to sculpt, and although I'm far from an expert, I promise I'll start working on a list of tools, including a short description of how I use each, and if I've started redoing the face and arm, I'll try to include some step-by-step pictures as well. Hopefully something to look forward to!

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP2

2010-01-29T20:06:00.005+01:00

Thank you for the feedback so far on my Sorcerer.
I've gotten a bit more sculpted today, his left arm and his back are now roughly fleshed out, although I see I'll need to cut and file away a couple of thing, when it has finished curing. I settled for the "open hand, palm face forward"-pose, although I fear the fingers will be a challenge... I'll suffer and weep tomorrow, I guess, heh.
The observant might have spotted that I've started on the head as well, uhm, not gotten any further than marking out the major muscles at the throat and neck. Will just have to see how doing the rest goes tomorrow as well.
Thanks for watching, and any comments or criticism is welcome.

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP

2010-01-28T23:19:00.005+01:00

Just a few pictures of my WIP Sorcerer.
His torso's from an Ungor, while the right arm's a Marauder Horseman banner-arm, with a Daemonette-claw to crown the staff. I'm torn between having his left hand point, or to be open with palm pointing forward, as if he's channeling some spell out of his hand. And as I don't have any suitable heads in my bits-box, and I don't think I want to put a helmet on his head, I think I'll end up sculpting his head in the end.. As I envision him in my mind, he'll get shoulder-long hair, maybe a braid or some charms in it, but the left half of his scalp will be shaved to the skin - might give him a tattoo there when I get to painting.

He's not glued to the base yet, and I'm not sure if it's good enough, or if I should build it up a bit more, him being a character and all..?

Tell me what you think, and help me decide what to do with his left arm!

cracks the whip

2010-01-20T21:23:00.011+01:00

Alright!
Holiday's over, exams are done for now, and it's time to return to the hobby!

It's been well over a month since last update, and I'm afraid I have nothing new to show youtoday, as I havn't done anything hobby-related since I finished the three Pegasus Knights for my brother.

I've still not decided on what colours to use on my Dragon Ogres, now that my mind's free to think of other things than my exam, I'll see if I don't get a spark of inspiration the following days. Suggestions are of course welcome!
In the meantime, I'll see if I can finish adding putty to a Sorcerer I started on sometime during november, in between painting Bretonnians, but never completed.

While you wait for the next hobby-update, here's some pictures I took at my parents' home in Norway - the weather was absolutely lovely!
My parents had forgotten to take in the garden furniture... serves quite well as an indicator of snow-depth...
And here's a morning picture of the town, seen from the house. Fog hides the river, and I just love the light of the sky. Our house is still in the shade, hidden from the sun by the hilltop behind the house.
And here's a view from atop of that hill in the evening.
Mordor's just beyond the next ridge...

Aah, I miss Norway. Good thing I'm heading home again this weekend - hope to have a hobby-related post within a week though!

Pegasus Knights - Finished

2009-12-20T14:41:00.003+01:00

Turned out I found the time for a last post before I leave for Norway.

I finished the last of the Pegasus Knights yesterday night - some of my neighbours were having a christmas party, so I figured I might as well get some painting done, with their music and noise keeping me awake anyways.
So, what have I done? Well, it took me some time to find the technique and effect I wanted, but finally I ended up using Blazing Orange glazed with Blood Red as the darkest shades, and mixed in more and more Golden Yellow for the highlights. This has made the Gallant and his mount much lighter compared to the two other Knights' clothing, but as his mount is so much darker, I think it evens out. To make him stand out more (and 'cos Iyanden Darksun didn't look very good with all the orange), all the freehand patterns were done in black. Matches the dark mount as well, I hope?
As you might have noticed, I've darkened the mount somewhat from it's pidgeon'y past, and used various shades of purple and blue, instead of grey. I hope it looks more like a raven now, but still not boring and monotonous when compared to the other two Pegasi.

So here they are, all three finished and ready to fight evil and rescue damsels in dire need of aid:
I'm not sure it's easy to spot on this picture, but I quite involuntarily had to reposition the green one. I was so overjoyed this morning that I was finished, and the light was good outside - so I thought I should get some decent pictures - that I didn't take the necessary care one should take, when I moved my models over to my couch, and set it up for a photo-session. Something (I think it was a pillow, but the incident was so traumatic that I'd rather not think to much of the details...) toppled over my brave Knights, and I heard the loud *crack* of plastic breaking.

Luckily, it was just the transparent pole holding the model onto the base that had broken off, but nevertheless, I spent one and a half hours removing it completely, drilling holes in both base and model, find some wire of decent length, and then glue it all together again. Owh, and of course fix the paint that had flaked off as I worked. Pfew!
In the end, it's turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as this enabled me to reposition the green Knight so it can rank up with the other two - earlier I was a millimetre short or so, if I wanted them to rank up and face the same way, but now they can all look the same direction! Even Johan at GW should be content now, their inability to rank up was his only critisism of the unit when I showed it to him on tuesday - apart from the black wings, but they weren't finished at that point)
My only concern now is whether my Knights will survive the flight to Norway...

I doubt I'll make any posts in Norway, and as I have an exam mid-january I doubt there'll be much activity from me until I'm through with that. But after that, I have some Dragon Ogres very much in want of some colours, plus a Sorceror in the making, so it's just going to be a short break.
Wish you all a very merry holiday and a happy New Year!

2nd Pegasus Knight

2009-12-12T11:40:00.003+01:00

The Pegasus Knight in greens is finished, hope you'll like him!
As suggested by Rogue Pom, I have tried to bring more yellow into the highlights of the cloth, making them a much lighter green - personally I think it looks better now, although I think I could've made it a tiny bit lighter, as it still is darker than the purple on the first Knight.

Progress on the last Knight's going slow, but I hope I'll have him finished before I leave for Norway (9 days to go...). I've started redoing the orange, using a lot more Blood Red to create shade, but still on a experimental stage, so not sure where it'll end just yet, heh.

If I don't get finished before I leave, then I wish you all a happy Christmas holiday!
I'll bring my camera back home and see if I can catch a picture or two of my old models. Maybe I can challenge my brother's army in a battle for our dining room's table top, heh.

Pegasus Knights - WIP

2009-12-05T15:13:00.006+01:00

While there's been rather quiet around here the last couple of weeks, I havn't been completely idle - although my hobby time has been greatly reduced due to my studies the last couple of weeks. Anyway, here's how my Pegasus Knights stand at the moment:
As you can see, the first I started on (the one most to the left on the picture above) is finished, rider and all. I'm really pleased with how he turned out in the end; just hope the use of yellow will transfer well to the two other models. Yellow, apart from the metallic and leather colours, will be about the only colour the three models will share, tying them together. Or that was my plan, still has to see how it turns out in the end.
The brown Pegasus clothed in green was the second I made, but apart from the colours I changed little from the first one. Initially I wanted to make it look like a brown-feathered eagle, as the first one had been inspired by a hawk, but figured it needed something extra in the end, so I gave it a touch of yellow (Vomit Brown) to add some contrast and texture to it.
I'm not as happy with the green as I was with the purple - I tried mixing Dark Angels Green with Goblin Green in the same way I had mixed Liche Purple with Warlock Purple, but the outcome was a way too flat colour, so I made my darkest colour Choas Black+Dark Angels Green, ad used Golden Yellow to create the lightest colour. Overall, it has resulted in a much darker caparison, but I hope it isn't too dark and that it merely serves to draw attention to the heraldry and other freehand I've done in yellow. All in all I'm happy with it, and think it'll look as great as the first as soon as the rider's done.
Last, there's the Pegasus of the Gallant, the black one - or should I say grey? I wanted it to look like it had raven wings, but all black became too dark for me. I've tried to add some blue-grey-purple'ish colours, but in the end my brush went for one of the grey paints, and now I'm not sure what it looks like. I fear it's pretty close to a grey city-pidgeon - not quite fitting into the "bird of prey"-theme I thought I had going on...
"Not quite ..." sadly sums up this model, as it's the one I've been struggling the most with and the one I'm least happy with. In fact, the only thing I'm completely happy with, is its base...
In a previous post, I believe I mentioned doing some Greenstuff work on its caparison, and as you can see I have covered the shield, as I wanted some space to paint a bit extra freehand stuff. Now that I've gotten my freehand design onto the model, I'm not sure I like it anymore. The more I think on it, the more I want to repaint the whole caparison, the colour of the cloth is too vibrant and strong, it doesn't fit in with the two other Pegasi when placed next to each other, who got rather dark colours for their caparisons. What to do, what to do.. Any suggestions?

I am really happy with all the bases though - finally found some use for some old pieces of city ruins that I got at some prize draw or something. A saw, my hobby knife and some files, soon reduced the ruin to even smaller pieces, and after making sure any iconografy belonging to 40k was totally removed, I glued them onto the Pegasus' bases, and added sand and pieces of barch. I've also had great pleasure experimenting with weathering effects on those pieces of rubble, using a sponge with lots of different browns, black, white and grey on it, and just press it randomly over the ruins. Painting stone's never been more fun! I just need to add some grass, but I know I got some back in Norway, so it'll have to wait 'til I get there.

Any critisism and/or suggestions that can make the Pegasus Knights look better will be greatly appreciated - christmas is soon upon us, and I really want my brother to like this gift! So please help if you can!

- - -
Edit:
Here's a crude drawing of some alternative freehand designs for the black's caparison:
Any favourites?

Show Some Balls!

2009-11-30T18:28:00.003+01:00

Just thought I'd spread the word about a painting competition over at MASSIVE VOODOO, under the catchy name: Show Some Balls

In short, it's about painting a self-sculpted ball, no size restrictions and no other theme, than it being round, without other details sculpted into it. The deadline's the 10th of march 2010, and for every entry (max 2 per person though!), the guys behind the site will donate $1 to an ape-preserving project in South Africa. On top of that, there's some prizes announced - but this is more about the joy of our hobby and supporting a good cause. Check the links above for more details about the monkeys and the competition.

I'm going to sign up for this, and I already have a plan or two maturing in my head, and I do hope some of you reading this might join in on the fun! Best of luck to those who care to do so!

Tutorial - Painting White

2009-11-19T21:47:00.002+01:00

These past six months, I've been using white or light colours more and more on my miniatures, and it is generally very well recieved - which I think very much comes from it being a colour which holds very much beauty in it, and responds very well to its surroundings if painted well. It serves as an eyecatcher, yet seldom "drown" the model - on the contrary, it tends to enhance whatever other details you've painted, giving them the focus.
White is however, quite challenging to paint, which probably is the reason behind it being so popular but still so seldom used. It doesn't cover very well, it seldom flows the way we want, and if you're not careful, you'll use too much and your model's details will be washed out or disturbed, as mounds of dried white paint or tracks from brushstrokes all of a sudden covers the surface you so gently had removed mold lines from, or even taken so long time sculpting yourself.

In this tutorial, I'll try to share a few thoughts, tips and tricks I've learnt through trial and error, and also after my best abilities describe the different techniques I've used to achieve the results on some of my own favourite miniatures.
As I undercoat my miniatures with black spray, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the problems (and solutions to them) that I describe, will be different if not nonexistent for those undercoating white or grey. Also, I exclusively use paint from Games Workshop, so my observations are based upon my experiences with those paints. Likewise, any reference to names will use GW-names, but if you prefer other brands and/or don't have any experience with the GW paints, then this site should help you find the right colour from your preferred paint brand.

One of the first problems that many experience, is that Skull White is a rather thick paint, and easily clogs - or it turns that way rather quickly. So to make it flow better, dilute with water, but then it turns out to be very translucent, and this presents a problem when used over dark surfaces (Chaos Black for example), as you end up with grey spotted with white grains, instead of white. Problem leads to a new problem.
There are several ways to cope with this, and in my early painting days, I recall I simply used very much paint on my very wet brush, and just gave the surface a generous layer. This was before I started using a palette, dry as well as wet, so wet brush into the can of paint was the way to go. And after a fashion, it worked quite well - that was as long as the surface was flat and without details sculpted into it; bolts, small cracks etc, would easily drown under this layer of wet paint, so that was sort of a minus. Also, using so much paint took a long time to dry, and what's worse is that gravity's pull on the paint would easily make it run slooowly as it dried, thus create uneven parts if you didn't manage to leave the miniature to dry in a fashion, that held the painted surface horizontal. And finally this technique is not a viable option if the surface you intend to paint white holds nicely sculpted details you wish to keep visible, if the surface is curved in any way or if you want the white to be shaded.
So, I have found two other main techniques for making the white look white:

First option is to place layer upon layer of diluted paint upon the surface, which will make for a white finish in the end, and if you give certain areas fewer layers than others, you'll be able to create areas of shade and light. It is a lengthy process, though, but worth it if you stick through to it in the end.

The second option is to mix your Skull White with another colour, and work your way into brighter and brighter colours by adding more and more white to the mix for each layer you paint. Like the first option it is important to dilute your paint, or else the sheer number of layers will remove all the details.It is of course possible to combine those two, as you'll see in one of the examples I've described below, and for both options - but especially the second - using a wet palette really helps!

The second option presents lots of possibilities which I thought I'd adress now, namely which colours to blend the white with. It has to be a colour with enough pigment to cover the black easily, but it shouldn't be too dark neither, 'cos then you'll need a lot of "unneeded" layers, compared to using an already light colour. For this purpose, I find the relatively new Foundation paints from GW to work perfectly. My two favourites are Astronomican Grey and Dheneb Stone, which respectively yields a cold and a warm tone of white. One can also make more complicated mixes, for instance by using Bestial Brown with more and more Bleached Bone added to the mix, and when it gets light enough you start adding Skull White, one can create a sort of creamy colour. I am also positive that one can use several of the other Foundations with good effect: Tallarn Flesh, Iyanden Darksun and Gretchin Green springs to mind as colours I'd like to experiment with in the future.

Now, what's the deal with all these different mixing colours? Why not just stick to Astronomican Grey, as it lies closest to Skull White, and thus should yield the "best" white? Well, that's mostly true, Astronomican Grey and Skull White makes a great white, but in some cases, pure white is not what you want. See, the mixing colour (eventually brightened up a bit with Skull White) not only serves as the "darkest shade" of the white, but it's also a major factor when it comes to how the white harmonizes with the other colours of the model. I'm thinking especially on the balance between warm and cold colours and what you want your white colour to do. So before you decide on how to paint your white, ask yourself the following question: What do I want my white to do? Do you want your white to be in contrast with the rest of the model? An eye-catcher or point of focus? Is white the main colour of the model? Or do you want the white to compliment the other colours, be more anonymous and in the background.

Let my try to illustrate what I mean with a couple of examples taken from my own models:
The white on my Marauder Horsemen is concentrated mainly on the horses, creating a cold sphere with a warm core in the form of the rider. The viewer's focus will then be on the rider, which after all is the "main character" of the model, while the horse serves more as an enhancing factor.
For that reason, I choose my Astronomican Grey as mixing colour, as it gives the white an extra icy edge. I started by covering the flesh of the undercoated horse with two thin layers of watered down Astronomican Grey, the last one with some Skull White taken into the mix for a slightly lighter colour. Then I actually continued to add thin layers of only diluted Skull White on top of every raised area. I repeated this step until I got a pure white as a highlight - the number of layers depend on how much white you mix in with your Astronomican Grey in the second stage.
Now for the hardest bit. At this point, the darkest areas of shade, will be too dark compared to the whitest of the white. If not, you're simply better at mixing colours than I am, heh. See, it's very easy to make a too light shade at the beginning, which makes your model look flat and without shadows in the end - after all, white only goes to a certain point in lightness, you can't highlight it further. So I usually make my Astronomican Grey+Skull White mix "too dark" on purpose, and then light it up.
I make a very thin glaze of Skull White and plenty of water, and then like a wash or ink, brushes it onto the model. Make the layers thin - you can always repeat them, but never redo them, so be careful in the beginning - and with a spare and dry brush, I gently remove the paint that gathers in any recess (the areas we want to look like shade).
While reading, it might seem a bit pointless - why paint something just to remove it again? Well, when you try it, you'll see that you won't be able to remove it all without adding aditional water, and a thin layer will stick, and like glazes should, just slightly affect the underlying colour.
It sure is a lengthy process, and you might have noticed that I combined the two main techniques for painting white I described earlier that I'm using, plus the extra bit with the white glaze on top. It wouldn't surprise me if there are other methods which yields as good results as this one, if not better, but this is one of my methods of painting white - and with a good record on, time flies!

Now, that was an example using cold white to create contrast, yet give focus to another part of the model. Let's see how a warm white can be used:

At the time of writing, I'm working on a unit of Bretonnian Pegasus Knights, and the first Pegasus I made was painted white. I didn't want it to be completely white - they're not meant to be peace doves! - so I found some images of birds of prey, specifically hawks, which are mostly white but with dark browns mixed in between. Brown being a rather warm colour, combined with a warm purple caparison, would create some conflict if I made my white colour cold. Especially the blending from white to dark brown and black at the tips of the primary feathers (biggest at the tip of the wings), would be difficult, if there was a temperature difference. Now this is a quite different scenario than the Marauder and his horse; here I want the white to blend in with the rest, and I try to keep a warm feel to the whole miniature.
So, for this minature, I used Dheneb Stone as my mixing colour - I actually mixed a tiny incy bit of Scorched Brown into it, to get a very soft hint of pink in it. Then I covered all fleshy areas with a watered down layer, then made a new mix with Skull White added, and kept on making new layers with more and more Skull White into the mix. So this time I stuck to the second technique of mine, rather exclusivly, until I gave a final highlight of pure white. I did use my white glazing technique in the end, as I once again had made a too dark shade. Also note that I've added some texture to the neck of the Pegasus, by leaving a shaded area running down the neck. On most horse models, it is sculpted into it (actually on the other set of heads for the Pegasus, there is..), but I mention it mostly to demonstrate how one can try to create the illusion of different muscles underneath the skin.
I did the wings in very much the same manner, barring the blending from whitest to Scorched Brown to Chaos Black at the very tips. Here I tried to use the white to draw focus towards the centre of the model, by painting the proximal part of the feathers lightest white, while the fading towards black was distal. Another difference I did was mix some Bleached Bone into the Skull White and Dheneb Stone mix, and use it a bit at random - I'm not sure why I did it, but it felt right to do - I don't know if it makes it look like more natural wings or what. But that's basically my method for painting a warmer white. But do yourself a favour, and use a wet palette, it'll enable you to going back and forth between different colour values almost effortlessly, and also keep your mixed tones of white wet and ready for use for a long time at a time, so you can keep the same colour all through the model.

Lastly in this tutorial, I thought I'd adress the issue of painting freehands using white, upon dark surfaces. There's an example of that on my Marauder Horseman's shoulderpad, where I've painted the Mark of Slaanesh, and at the local GW that in particullar has recieved some praise. It is however, not as hard as one might think, to achieve that. If you recall, I initially described how white usually turns grainy grey if watered down and painted upon a dark surface, and personally I prefer to use quite diluted paints when working on freehand designs; which presents a problem. Or it should have, if not for this simple solution:
simply mix your white with a high pigment colour like Astronomican Grey - you won't get a 100 % white, true, but you can add water to the mix without problems, and get a very light grey as a result. And a very light grey painted on top of black, says "white" in most people's brains, so it's quite hard to spot that you've been "cheating".

With that I'll end this tutorial, and I hope this collection of thoughts, tips and tricks can be of help!

Pegasus finished

2009-11-19T15:14:00.003+01:00

I finished painting the first of the Pegasi yesterday morning, but the weather's been against me so it's been hard to get any decent pictures until now - light's still not optimal though. Hope you like it!
I think I'll brave the rather moist air, and undercoat the other two Pegasi and all the riders. I'm not sure if I should use the same colours for the other two, as I did on this Pegasus - will it be boring with three of the same kind, and should I rather experiment with other colours on the feathered wings and horseskin? I choose the light tan/redish brown mix with the white, 'cos I think that brown and purple works very good together, but the other two will have green and orange caparisions - respectively of course!
One of the three has to be upgraded to a Gallant (Champion), according to the rules, so I was thinking maybe different colours on the Pagasus would help mark him as different? It's either that, or edit his caparison with some green stuff.

Any thoughts?

Bretonnian Pegasus Knights - WIP

2009-11-15T09:44:00.003+01:00

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm painting up a unit of Pegasus Knights as a christmas gift to my younger brother. I'd hoped to have one done by now, but my first two paint schemes didn't look quite right, but now on the third take, I think I'm heading in the right direction!
I'm doing three of these, and each Knight will have one of the secondary colours as his - this is obviously the purple one, heh. I'm not happy with the freehand on the shield, think I'm going to remove it, and rather use one of those water transfers that came with the box. Also I think the shield needs a yellow rim, to make it stand out a bit more. I'd like to try some freehand scrollwork on the non-shield parts of the tabards, though, but I'm having trouble finding a pattern I like - if anyone got any pictures of nice patterns I could use for inspiration, that'd be most welcome!
I also need help deciding how to paint the mane and the tail; should I keep the feathers/hairs bright, maybe give them a highlight more, or should I have them fade to dark brown/black at the points?
Owh, and hope you like it!

Wet palette, new brushes and progress!

2009-11-11T17:45:00.003+01:00

I've finished assembling the christmas gift for my brother this year - those of you who have taken the time to read through my blog from start and up 'til now, might recall it starting out as a blog where I charted my progress painting up an Ancient Stegadon for my brother's birthday. It was well recieved, so I've decided to paint up some more miniatures for him for thsi year's christmas - although this will be models for his other army, namely Bretonnian Pegasus Knights.

I've always loved the models, and am thrilled to be painting them - I've been looking up pictures of hawks and other birds of prey for inspiration, and gave the first one some layers of base coat yesterday evening, down at the local GW (painting- & gaming nights every tuesday and friday). To keep up the progress today, I've not only bought myself some new brushes: size 0 and 1 of kolinsky sable; on top of that, I've decided to try out the wet palette, and see how it works. So far, it's been great! I made my own, following Jarhead's great tutorial over at MASSIVE VOODOO, and it looks something like this:
Quite simple, just a tupperware box with about 5 mm thick layer of wet paper tissues, covered by baking paper - won't go more into detail, head over to the tutorial linked above for that! I think I have made the slight mistake of not having a large enough piece of baking paper - at any rate I placed some of the paint too close to the edge, and some leaked into the tissues. Other than losing a little bit of paint, I can't say I've noticed any bad effects yet, but I'll probably change the tissues when I start on some completely different colours. For now, the colours I have in the palette are all going on the skin and feathers of the Pegasus, so no big worries there.

I'm really happy with how the palette works: my paint don't dry up at all, and by adding several colours to the palette at the same time, mixing and blending is so much easier! I highly recommend using one, it is no hocus pocus, but will (probably) help your painting, blending and finished products.

If you do give it a try, best of luck with it!

Tutorial - Assembling Dragon Ogres

2009-11-08T22:01:00.008+01:00

After all the positive feedback I've gotten on my Dragon Ogres, I decided to make a tutorial of how I've made them. So, I've taken pictures from start to finish as I made one, and I hope this tutorial can be of inspiration, if nothing else, to other war-gaming enthusiasts!

First of all, a list of bits used:
O&G Black Orc torso + arms (right arm holding banner, left had a spiked club - removed)
DE Cold One Knight lizard except the heads (still wondering what I'll use them for..)
40k Kroot heads
WoC Marauder Horsemen chains, with skulls and other goodies
BoC Beast Herd horns (on this particular Dragon Ogre, I also used a sabre from same package for its Great Weapon.. On the picture below are some other weapon-options I was considering; just use your imagination when you make your own!)
Also, a fresh suply of Green Stuff is needed (I'm sure other modelling putties will work just as fine), along with glue and regular tools for cutting, filing, sculpting and drilling (remember the paper-clips!) - and don't forget the 40mm square base, for gaming purposes.

Step one - cleaning, filing, cutting and glueing:
File or cut away mold lines. I found the Cold One to be particularily tricky - sure it's a lovely sculpt, but I think the mold lines were placed unstrategically; hard to get at, and in a careless moment, it's easy to cut off some otherwise nice details...
In addition to the mold lines, parts of the saddle had to go, and also most of the Black Orc's armour.
After that it's just to glue the Cold One together, and place the torso on top.
I've also placed the Dragon Ogre to be on a temporary base, mostly to give me something to hold on to, while I add and sculpt the Green Stuff. A hole's been made in the neck region, and the Kroot head's pinned in place. Time to bring out the Green Stuff!

Stage two - Green Stuff:
Yellow+Blue=Green : Place a small ball on his lower stomach, and another ball at his chest. Then it's just a matter of taking one's time, and sculpt out m. rectus abdominis and a pair of mm. pectorales majores and his front is more or less done. I added some more at a later point for his neck and also built out the pauldrons a bit..
The tricky thing with Green Stuff is, as I'm sure most of us know, that it takes time to harden. And unless it has hardened, whatever you've sculpted is prone to being mashed to goo (or one big fingerprint). So, to avoid mistakes/accidents, I left the main part of the model for now, and proceeded to making those arms and the weapon.

For this Dragon Ogre, I decided to make something a bit more original than just using the Black Orcs' axes, as I had given my two other Dragon Ogres said axes. So, I started out with the banner pole, and tried to fit various blades to it - in the end I went for a Beastman sabre. I found a left hand that I thought would make a decent fit to the lower part of the pole, and got something looking like this (after pinning and glueing it together):
I've also added some chains from the Marauder Horsemen-kit, makes a nice "chainmail", heh. No, really, I think it helps to hide the true nature of the nearby saddle, and makes it look a bit more like armour plates. Also, they're nice accessories, and I wanted to include them in some way on one of my units. Be warned though, they're quite fragile and easily break off during sculpting if you're not careful. Then again, after the arms come on, the chains are very hard to get glued on correctly, so it is kind of a sacrifice to wait with them 'til after the sculpting.

With the first layer of Green Stuff hardened, the arms were glued/pinned in place, with a 3 mm gap to the torso. I've found the Black Orcs to have too short arms, so without lengthening, it looks all out of proportions. This gap is then filled with next batch of Green Stuff, making the Dragon Ogre's overarms mostly built out of putty and the pin as "skeleton".
The armour plates have been enlarged some places (other parts have been cut away to balance it), so that the arm looks like it fits underneath, and then the back gets a coat of greenstuff in the same manner as the front. Later I added a spine of scales running down the back, as it'd look kind of empty without it.

Stage three - gap filling, base switch, head details and horns:
When the putty of the former stage has dried, and the model's safe to touch again, I went over the model, weapon in particular, and filled in any gaps I found with Green Stuff. Then I glued the double pair of horns onto the head, and while it dried, I got my 40mm base (bits of barch already glued onto it) and drilled a hole in it where I wanted the front leg of the Dragon Ogre to go. Why the front leg? It's simply easiest to drill, to be honest I'm not sure if it's doable to drill the other leg, as the joint between foot and leg is sort of curved, while the front leg goes more in a straight line and on top of that looks slightly thicker.
The Dragon Ogre was then moved to its new base, and then the horns were expanded using Green Stuff, merging head and horns.

And that's basically it.
Do these steps three times, and voilà! Three fearsome beasts ready to wreck havoc upon any foe!
Hope this rather brief tutorial can be of help to some and give others inspiration.

Dragon Ogres - WIP (2)

2009-11-02T22:51:00.004+01:00

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates and progress with my various projects. Short story is I've been busy: visitors, trip to Norway, concerts, schoolwork and work. As I've barely touched a brush, I'll have to "joker" this month of the Tale of Fantasy Painters, which means I use one out of two "free months", as in I don't paint anything. I'm slightly worried that I will have to pull out of the Tale, as I doubt I'll have less to do at the university in the coming months, and then there's my brother's christmas gift which will demand quite the bit of time. If I can get him to promise me he won't drop by this blog of mine to look, I'll make WIP shots as I go, but if not I'm afraid a lot of my painting results will go unpulished 'til after christmas... I'll do my best to convince him, 'cos feedback would be lovely!
Either way, I think I'll have to put my Space Hulk models on hold for the moment, and rather return to them as soon as the new year's in. Brother Claudio did place among the top 11 in Jawaballs' Painting Contest, which I am fairly happy with (picture number three from the top). Feel like I'm at the right track with my Terminators, was up against a lot of great minis!

Anyways, although I havn't gotten much done, I've at least finished the green stuff work on my first Dragon Ogre - the back is all done, added some more armour plates on his back, and I think I've solved the issue with his head being slightly too small, by adding that extra set of horns; you'll be the judges of that! Hope you like him - I certainly do, and I look forward to giving him some paint to wear!
Also found some nice trees near a hospital I frequently work at, which I could scavenge for barch-bits for my bases. I have yet to try adding dead or burned grass to them, but got a tip from one of the regular gamers down at the local GW, who said my bases and models would pop a lot more, if I painted the rims black instead of grey. I'll do some testing when I find the time!

Dragon Ogres - WIP

2009-10-12T23:31:00.003+02:00

A few pictures of my WIP Dragon Ogre.
Finnished lengthening the arms with some green stuff today so he's almost done. Only have to figure out what to do with his back, and then get him atop a proper base.

Greatly inspired by Elazar's Dragon Ogres, I've merged Cold Ones and Black Orcs to make the basis of the model, but as you can see I carved away most of the front of the Black Orc torso and sculpted a new one. The arms needed a bit of lengthening as mentioned, so they were pinned onto the torso with a 3-4 mm gap, which I then filled with greenstuff and sculpted to muscles. I'm fairly pleased with the result, it was easier than I initially feared, both the pinning and the green stuff work.
The head's from some Warhammer 40 000 Kroots - got three of them off a regular gamer at the local GW - and I think they makes for a nice reptilian feel. Glued on some horns to make it more draconic, and to create the illusion of them being bigger than they are.
Lastly I've given them a "chain mail" from the chains off the Marauder Horsemen sprue - on the next one, I'll glue these on before I do the arms...

Think that should list all I've done to create this monster, hope you like them!
I plan on fielding a unit of three, and I've got a second one which is a step or two behind this one when it comes to green stuff (arms are just pinned on, plus a few other things lacking).
Any suggestions to how I'm to paint them is welcome; armour will be black like all the rest, but I'm not sure how to do the skin and scales. A blueish grey maybe..?

GW painting competition, thoughts on White Dwarf

2009-10-10T14:04:00.004+02:00

In my first Space Hulk post (start of september), I wrote about a painting competition at the local GW here in Copenhagen, and the date set for entries and judging was today. So I went down there with Brother Claudio safely wrapped in foam.

Turned out that due to bad promotion, I was the only one with an entry - at least at that time of the day! Hehe, actually one might be inclined to believe that the manager had forgotten all about the competition himself: he looked quite shocked at first when I said I had come for the Space Hulk competition - but let's give him the benefit of the doubt! He recovered quickly at any rate, and seemed to love the model, which meant a lot to me, 'cos I know he's a very talented painter - great freehands on banners etc. Anyways, he gave me the newest White Dwarf magazine for free for showing him the model. Very nice, considering it wasn't supposed to be a reward for the competition in the first place.

This just happens to be my very first White Dwarf, unlucky for me it was heavily themed by 40k's Space Wolves. Unlucky, how? Well, first of all I don't play Warhammer 40 000, and secondly I just don't like Space Wolves! In my eyes, GW has tried to merge two excellent themes - ancient norse culture with science fiction - but with a disastrous result void of substance or logic. What's the deal with Space Wolf Terminator trying desperately to get drunk on ale, when their altered genes and armour system keeps them close to immune to toxification? The Space Wolf-concept feels like putting turkey and chocolate ice cream in a mixmaster for the dinner at New Year's eve, hoping it'll taste as good as the two seperate dishes...
Anyways, there were a couple of nice articles in between the "space vikings", and in particular I liked the War of the Ring campaign the studio team had put together - some interesting scenarios, mixing large scale battles with light skirmishes between scouting parties and vanguards. Inspirational!
I also liked the kit-bashing section for Space Wolves was rather nice, I think, as well was the 'Eavy Metal Masterclass-article, some nice tips but mostly good colour choices for desired effects. I did find the section about Battle Damage poor though, it seemed a very backwards and difficult method to me. Myself I prefer to paint "inwards", i.e. I paint a large spot to mark the extent of the battle damage, then highlight towards the centre in the metal-colour. The EM-team on the other hand seem to highlight in layers around a small spot of damage: very strange in my eyes...
There were also an article about Special Characters in the Warhammer game, and how you can build themed and very interesting armies around them, but while I at first was really intrigued by the idea, I think it was very poorly executed. They brought up the issue with certain characters story-wise having a connection to certain units; for example Korhil of the White Lions should have a retinue of warriors from Chrace with him. So they had a Lion Chariot and some Spearmen with lions on their shields. And uhm, that was it.. No tips as to how one can get a Chracian look on your models, nothing about what makes a model look like it comes from the Principality of Chrace - if they'd just explained a bit more, maybe taken the liberty to provide some extra fluff or some explanation as to why certain special character has certain rules, it'd be so much better. Why do High Queen Khalida Neferher of the Tomb Kings favour ranged units in her army? Why do Scar-Leader Kroq-Gar ride with a huge retinue of Cold One Riders? Not just "they do": we know that already by reading the rules! After reading the article, I was left with the feeling that I'd just read an advert squeeking "buy special characters, 'cos they're cool!" without offering any arguements as to why they are that. So much potential, wasted..

Pfeh, wasn't supposed to be a review of the newest White Dwarf, but guess that's how it is, sometimes one can't stop writing. If I'm to draw a conclusion, I have to say I won't subscribe to White Dwarf - at least not if this issue was representative for the magazine. There's too little focus on modelling, painting and battle-/scenario-variants or ideas to spice up the game, while there's too much focus on advertisement. And by advertisement, I do not mean all the pages listing products or showing pictures of new releases etc - even if it constitutes roughly 25 % of the magazine (I did count pages, yes..) - I simply skip reading those pages, so it doesn't really bother me. The problem seems to be that they try to sell something with every article, and if not for that they could've made a great, informative and very inspirational magazine. Too bad.

Brother Noctis - Finished

2009-10-06T18:03:00.005+02:00

... or as finished as he can get. I can't say I'm completely happy with the OSL (Object Source Lighting), but I frankly don't know what to do to improve it. If anyone got any tips, they'd be more than welcome.

The pictures are a bit grainy, took them early this morning before heading off to the university, and the morning sun didn't agree completely with my camera, or the other way around.. Anyways, hope you can make out most of him - lovely sculpt, really fond of his pose!

ToFP - September

2009-10-03T01:22:00.004+02:00

Just thought I'd make a post to celebrate yet another month in the Tale of Fantasy Painters 2009-2010 has been passed, and that I've managed to keep up with my schedule.

To mark the occation I took a picture of my warband as it stands so far, hope you like it:
Sadly my Dragon Ogres - which are next on my to-do-list when it comes to Warhammer - are not completed yet, but at least I've ordered the bases for them now, so that's a start, mhm?

I have made some progress on my Space Hulk marines, though. Three of them are currently at my work bench:
- Brother Noctis (pointing Terminator) - almost completed, only have the base and the steel NMM left, plus maybe a last highlight on the red.
- Brother Leon (Assault Cannon Terminator) - reds are done, but nothin else.
- Lexicanium Calistarius (the Librarian) - painted some of his blue and decided to paint his shoulderpads red, but have put him on hold until Noctis and Leon are done.

Down at GW today, one of the employees showed me a cover from some book with a Marine with an energy field around his power fist, so I decided to test that out and I'm fairly happy with the result I got on Brother Noctis. Also recieved a can of Midnight Blue for free - being out of production, they can't really sell them, but as I use the colour for various things, I got one - very nice!
Also observed a 2.500 pts battle between Daemons and Dark Elves, and I can't say I'm looking forward to meeting either from what I saw! The players had agreed to go cheesy beforehand, but still, whew! Both armies got some really tough and merciless units, that's for sure.

When I finally got home half past midnight, a small package was waiting for me: 2 Elven Scouts from Mantic Games. Wayland Games are/were promoting the new line of miniatures by mailing a couple of free models to anyone who asked, pretty nice if I may say so. Sadly I don't think it's something for me, though. Not only am I more than busy enough with my Chaos Army and my Space Hulk set, but there's something about the models... The elves they got, while being extraordinairy well detailed, alive and very gracious, they're not quite my cup of tea - then again I'm not an Elf player, so it could be very much related to that. If I had to choose an Elf army, the Mantic ones would be a strong contender, that's certain. But, myeah, I sort of love the more heavy look of the general Warhammer minies, especially the Warriors of Chaos ones naturally. Might not be as realistic or lifelike as the Mantic ones, but still... It's a bit like the LotR range - lots of those models are really beautiful, but they're a bit too small, and doesn't feel right.
I do think that this competition from Mantic Games is very healthy for the hobby and industry though! Being at half the price of Games Workshop's models, and when it comes to the Elves they're even better sculpted (although slightly anorectic and some of the ideas are a bit off in my opinion: Bolt Throwers and the Spearmen mostly - I do love the concept art for the spears, but they've not managed to get the same design on the models, sadly), all makes for healthy competition. Hopefully GW will work even harder to produce good models, and maybe they'll even find it in themself to drop the prices back to the level before this summer's rise, if not even further down. That'd be great!

Anyways, I'll paint up the two Elves I got, just for fun, and share them with you. Havn't decided on a colour theme yet, think I'll go for something different than the white/black I do for Chaos, or the reds I do for the Blood Angels. Any suggestions would be most welcome - the two models I got are mostly clad from top to their toes in armour, no cloaks or other cloth to speak of.

Brother Claudio - Finished

2009-09-26T14:45:00.004+02:00

Finished painting Brother Claudio today, my first completed NMM ever! 10 Terminators and one Librarian to go - owh and then comes the Genestealers, but they got no metal to speak of on them, so should go fast. I think the rest of the Space Marines will go much faster than Brother Claudio aswell, after all I should be done with the trial and error-part of these models, which always takes a lot of time when a new colour scheme is to be used or a new kind of unit is getting a paint job.
But, pictures:As you can see, I went for the green gems - noone seemed to like the idea of blue ones and I must say the green looks very good with the red and gold after all. Turns out my initial scepticism was uncalled for.
I tried to paint the base as if it was part of the Space Hulk floor or something, but I think the details pretty much too dark to make out. Must admit I'm not too happy about how it turned out, and if I find a better way of painting metal plates and such on the other models, I might return to this Claudio and fix it up. We'll see.

But wait a moment! This is not a finished model! I've not painted any of the battledamage yet!
Well yes, that's true, or it's partly true. I took some pictures of Claudio before I did the battle damage, just to mark the difference. I thought it might be interesting to see. Especially since Claudio not only is my first NMM model, he's also the first one to recieve any weathering/battle damage, so double the milestone!
Hope you like it as much as I do, and if there's any critisism or feedback you'd like to offer, please do!

Red or green? Or maybe blue?

2009-09-23T16:05:00.008+02:00

Now that my first regiment of Horsemen are finished, I have returned to Brother Claudio.
I've come to the point where the gems which adorn his armour need some loving from my brush, but I'm not sure in what colours I should paint them. As they're shaped like blood drops, I'd normally paint them red, but as most of the model's already painted red, I fear that gems might get lost, if painted red. Green was suggested earlier, as it is a complimentary colour to red, and thus makes for some nice contrasting work, but at the same time don't make the model look too "busy", if I've understood the theories of colour correctly. For that reason I finally buckled under pressure and made his eyelenses green instead of the blue colours I had planned. His eyes are quite small, though, so I've been deliberating whether or not I should paint them lighter, as they sort of disappear a bit, no? Take a look for yourself, and help me decide!Right, back to the gems. They're all encased in gold, and so I gave the red variant a chance, as I hope it'll set them apart from the rest of the armour. I did also paint one green gem, for comparison, but still I can't make up my mind, so I'll leave the choice up to you who might be reading this. One on each hand, if they're hard to spot. I'm not too happy with the green gem, think the red one looks more gem-like, and seems to be reflecting the light better, but might be related to the whole "painting green too dark"-issue I feel I have with the eyelenses. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, don't pay heed to the fact that the red one might be a more successful attempt at painting gemstones, it's all about picking the colour.

Edit:
After painting his claws power-weapon-blue tonight, I've been thinking, maybe the model will become too busy with red, gold, blue and green; and while I think that red gems won't be visible enough, and therefore can be discounted as an option (unless someone manages to convince me otherwise), maybe blue gems would give the needed contrast to the red and gold, and at the same time fit in with the blue claws?
Any views/thoughts on this?

Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh - Finished

2009-09-19T18:25:00.007+02:00

I've finished painting my first regiment of Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh; plan to do the second one sometime after christmas, painted very much the same. Right now, I'm not too keen on doing more white horses, hehe. A break is due!Compared to my other Slaaneshi units, this one hasn't been converted very much. The musican did recieve a swordarm from the plastic Marauders on foot, and I "shaved" off the beards of two of the Horseman-heads before gluing them on... But that was about it, I think.
Speaking of the musican's sword, in a way of keeping the unit in theme with what I did with my Warhounds' eyes, I tried to replicate the glow-effect to the runes of the sword, which I'm quite happy with.Earlier I asked for advice regarding where to put the Mark of Slaanesh on them, and while I liked the suggestion of branding the horses with it, I didn't feel confident in my own abilities to paint it. Idle Scholar on Warseer gave me another suggestion, namely painting it onto the shulderpads of the riders, and after giving it a try on the musican, I was so happy with it, that I gave it to all five.I've been debating whether or not my bases are good enough: my initial plan was to create some sort of a stony wasteland, barren of life, just stones and dust, very similar to a desert, but in a colder enviorment and without the richly and warm-coloured sand of a typical desert. But now that I've completed three units with these bases, I was thinking maybe it gets a bit monotonous and boring? I've added some skulls here and there, but maybe I should get some of that burned static grass from GW, or something? To keep the lifeless wasteland-feel going..? Or are they good as it is? Any thoughts?
Also, any critisism or other suggestions regarding my Horsemen are very much welcome!

Brother Claudio - WIP

2009-09-14T19:19:00.007+02:00

So, I decided to do Brother Claudio first - not yet sure whether he'll be my submission to the painting competition, though: I think I got time to finnish the Librarian and the Broodlord before the 10th of October. I havn't gotten very far yet, but I'd like some feedback to what I've done so far, and would also like some opinions on a couple of issues I'm having with him.

I've gone for what I believe must be a traditional Blood Angel theme: Armour's red, blood-drop gems will be red when I get to them, and chains and jewelry will be painted golden or brass (will save that discussion for further down). The battle damage will be something new for me to make, but I got some ideas as to how I'm to pull it off, and I'll probably add slightly more than what's sculpted into the model already. I was thinking of using the sword from Space Hulk's cover as inspiration for how I'm to paint the Lightning Claws; and with that in mind, I think that his eyes/goggles should be blue aswell. But how am I to paint the cables which protrude and connects arms and body? They're painted green on the box, but so's the eyes, and first of all I don't like the green colour they've used and secondly I don't think it'll fit my red and golden theme. So, any suggestions are very much welcome!Painting him red has taken some time though: I lost count of the number of layers I've given him, but I'm super happy with the results - hope you are too! I've gone from a Scab Red darkened with Chaos Black, adding more and more Scab Red for each layer, until I reached pure Scab Red, then it was Red Gore's turn to be mixed into it, then I slipped in more and more drops of Blood Red until finally I got to a final highlight on the edges with pure Blood Red. A lengthy process, but so much better than painting white, hehe! It's as if the red paint is more alive, and it's more easy to predict the outcome of each layer... On the other hand, maybe I'll slip in some of the painting-red-technique the next time I do a white horse, or some other part of my rather light Slaaneshi warband. One can always hope!Anyways, in a fit of madness, I've decided that I'm going to give the NMM-thingy a new chance. I must admit I was soundly defeated by the Stegadon earlier this year, but this time I got more time, and I've given it a shot on one of the skulls on Brother Claudio so far. I'm not perfectly happy with it yet, but it's better than what I ever managed on the Stegadon's gold. It doesn't shine enough yet, though...
I've been thinking, maybe I should try to make it more contrastful; darker shadow areas, and even a slightly lighter yellow for the areas of reflection? I also think it'd look better with a slightly warmer gold, but I don't know if adding some red paint into the browns and yellows I use, will give me what I want, or just mess it all up.Any tips are most welcome.

As a alternative though, if my NMM-plans goes to shit again, I do have some of that wonderful old Brazen Brass paint from GW, and I know from experience that it makes quite a good fit with red (Iiiiiih! Who'd thought Khorne would manage to infiltrate my Slaanesh-sacred blod?). So that'll be my back up plan *grins*

- - -
[Edit 16th of September]

I took some new pictures of Brother Claudio, and these pictures got a much better lighting than the ones I took prior to posting. I think these show the red colour more like it is, but I'll probaly add some extra highlights to the edges and such, when I find the time.

The reason behind the little note with my name on and a date, is that I've decided to enter Jawaballs Blood Angels painting competition, just to prove it's my model, sort of.

Anyways, hope you like these extra pictures!

Space Hulk (2)

2009-09-06T13:37:00.002+02:00

I recieved my Space Hulk box yesterday, and boy was it a heavy box! If I could do it all over again, I would've saved myself the 45 minute trip on foot, and taken the bus instead. What was I thinking? Something about saving money, and getting some fresh air, no doubt.. Aw well!
It is looking wonderful, though, and all in all, it was worth the trip, without doubt.

Due to swiftly shifting weather, mostly rain and otherwise high humidity, I've not dared to undercoat the models, although my fingers are itching to lay some paint unto them. Hopefully the dark clouds outside my window will clear away through the evening, so I can get them undercoated in a few hours.
I've not yet decided on which model I'll pick as mine for the painting competition the local GW's running, but I've narrowed it down to three "finalists", so to say:

The Librarian
The Broodlord
The Terminator with those fancy claws

I think it'd look nice with a cloak on either of those marines, at least if I'd be able to make it seperate from the body, and not clinging to it. Then again, the models by themself are so wonderful, that it might be shame to tamper with them..?

Anyways, any opinions as to which of the three I should go for in the competition (I will paint all of them eventually), would be most welcome!

Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh - WIP

2009-09-06T12:40:00.003+02:00

The progress on my army has been slightly halted by the start of a new semester at the university, but I've gotten a bit done; two of my Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh are done - with the exception of arms.
To keep them in line with the white and black colour scheme I've choosen for my army, I painted the horses white, and I've finally found a recipe which gives results I'm happy with.
All my models are undercoated with black, and after that I give the areas to-be-white two thin coats of watered Astronomican Grey, to get a lighter background to work with, but not ruin any details. Then I "sort of" drybrush with watered down Skull White; I have more paint on the brush than I'd normally have when drybrushing, and I keep the brush strokes going in one direction, horizontally. I try to only pick out the raised areas, like the different muscles, and keeps the Astronomican Grey base-colour alone in the recesses, or other areas I want to keep dark / in shadow.
The first brush strokes of Skull White will not be very white, however, so I repeat the dry-brushing technique until I'm satisfied, then I water down Skull White to a glaze, and simply brush it over all the grey-white areas of the model. That way, I get the borders between grey and white smudged out a bit. After that, I highlight every raised area with Skull White.
It's a lenghty process, but at least I get a result I'm happy with.
The metal armour is painted black with white highlights (I found that mixing Skull white and Astronomican Grey, gives a very light, almost white grey, which covers black much better than Skull White alone - probably due to the abilities of the foundation paint), while leather have been painted Scorched Brown with Vermin Brown highlights, then washed with Badab Black.
One thing I feel is missing, however, is something to tie them to their mark; there won't be no banner for the unit, and no shields neither to paint the rune of Slaanesh upon, so I'm kind of at a loss...
Any suggestions as to how I could withdraw any doubt as to which of the four gods, my Horsemen ride to war for, would be most welcome, along with any other suggestions and/or critisism.

Space Hulk

2009-09-02T16:30:00.009+02:00

After deliberating the matter for some time, quite a bit of persuasion from the local GW-staff, and some words of praise of this game by Elazar amongst others, I've decided to pre-order the third and very limited edition of Space Hulk.
For those who doesn't know, it's after what I've understood, a boardgame set in the Warhammer 40.000 universe, where a team of humans have made their way into a flaoting mass of starship wreckage, in search of ... something. The Space Hulk, as this piece of space debris is called, is however inhabitated by some aliens, and so the humans find themself under attack, fighting a desperate battle for survival against the bloodthirsty and hostile aliens, but also against the clock; sooner or later, the Space Hulk will be sucked off into "the Warp"...

My knowledge of the 40k universe is very limited, and it wouldn't surprise me if I've gotten it all wrong, but anyways, it's supposed to be a very intensive and funny game to play - and the models, despite not being Fantasy, are really looking great! So I'll have something fun to paint in the near future aswell (the game's released the 5th of September).
Speaking of painting, the local GW-store's having a painting competition for this occation, Single Miniature from the Space Hulk, another good reason for buying it. It's not like there's any prize or anything, except the honour, but I find it always adds a bit more motivation and also tends to force oneself to keep pushing one's own abilities as a painter, if the model's to be judged by someone else.
Owh, and lastly, something fun happened at GW after I preordered; I stayed a bit for a chat and the like, and I think it was only 15 minutes or so after I had had my name written down in their book, the store got a call: "The online preorders are sold out.."
I think the store got a couple of copies left, but for anyone in Copenhagen who missed the online preorders - head over to GW as soon as possible, they don't have many left.

ToFP - August

2009-09-01T14:22:00.008+02:00

Right, it's the 1st of September, and about time I published last month's work in a post of its own, I think.

For the first month of the Tale of Fantasy Painters 2009-2010, I've painted:
- 10 Marauders of Slaanesh (Light Armour, Hand Weapon, Shield, MoS & Full Command) - 90 pts
- 5 Warhounds of Chaos - 30 pts

I've taken new pictures of the Marauders of Slaanesh, with both better lighting and showing them from some new angles. I've also taken a picture with them and the Warhounds together, so you can judge if my paintschemes for the two troops fit together.

Hope you'll enjoy them!

Warhounds - Finished

2009-09-01T08:32:00.005+02:00

At long last, I'm done with the first regiment of Warhounds.
I must say, I was really disapointed by the sculpts, lots of mold lines, terrible horns and tails, and I'm really not much of a fan of all those sores and tenteacles and scales, which cover most of their skins.
So, with a sharp knife and some greenstuff, I removed what I didn't like - or in the case of tails and horns, didn't glue it on - and then I simply covered it up in greenstuff, sculpted fur where the horns should have been, and made new furry tails for them aswell.
Especially with all the other new Chaos stuff being so well made, the disapointment in the dogs became double up, so to say.
When it came to painting, I wanted to stick to the black and white paint scheme I used on my Marauders, and I relearned how painfully it is to paint large areas of white, and I'm not sure if I'm happy with the way it got shaded, so any feedback and/or tips as to how I can improve it, wouldbe most welcome, as I've got as many dogs left to paint, and also got ten horses for my Marauder Horsemen, which will be painted white aswell.
Speaking of Marauder Horsemen, I couldn't help myself, and opened one of the boxes while I was painting the dogs, and before I knew it, I was cutting them out of their sprues, cleaning off mold lines and assembling them. The first 5 were undercoated and has been sitting idly waiting to be painted for the last two days, heh.
Really wonderful sculpts, so lifelike and easy to assemble and with few mold lines to speak of. I'm really looking forward to get started with them!

Warhounds - Test painting

2009-08-22T07:52:00.004+02:00

So, I finnished one of my Warhounds yesterday.
It's the first time I try to make that "glowing eyes effect", any tips as to how I'm to improve is very much welcome! I'm not sure if it'd be better with red eyes, as the model gets very... icy and blue with the colours I've chosen for this one.
Any thoughts?

ToFP - Painting shedule

2009-08-20T19:11:00.003+02:00

Judging by my assembling-, converting- and painting speed, I've come up with a plan for the Tale of Fantasy Painters, and thought I'd share it here:

August: 10 Marauders of Slaanesh & 5 Warhounds
September: 5 Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh
October: 3 Dragon Ogres
November: 10 Warriors of Slaanesh (w/ Halberds and Shields)
December: will be my first joker (a.k.a. a free month of painting, as I'm headed for Norway for the Christmas holidays, and I also got my exams come January, so will be busy enough)
January: 5 Knights of Slaanesh
February: Hellcannon
March: 5 Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh & 5 Warhounds
...

And, frankly, that's all the models I got at the moment, so I really don't know what the next couple of months shall be used to. Maybe a character or two? I think my regiment of Marauders could use a few more ranks, if they're to be of any use at all... Also, I think I might fancy a Giant for my army at some point, to fill in the last Rare slot. Or maybe a couple of Chaos Spawns?
Truth to be told, I really don't know what more I want for my warband. I guess I like the concept of both the Warshrine and the various beasts beside the Dragon Ogres, and Chaos Dragons are simply raw awesomeness. But mnyeh, can't seem to make up my mind as to what comes next, apart from more Marauders.

Any suggestions are very much welcome! Seen from a tactical view, but also if there are any wishes as to what I should make and paint next, please feel free to speak your minds!

As to my progress, I've near to completed my Warhounds, but sculpting tails for them is more time consuming and difficult than I had initially thought. Anyways, I hope to have them done by the weekend, monday at the latest. After that I'll break into my first box of Marauder Horsemen, and assemble them, so they're ready for painting come September. I have to admit I'm looking forward to that, as I find the new Horsemen wonderfully sculpted, full of nice little details, and they got such an amount of character! If only GW had let the same person sculpt the Warhounds...

Marauders of Slaanesh - Finished

2009-08-18T16:26:00.006+02:00

The first 10 are done!
In the end, I went for white leather armour, black plate for the gauntlets, greaves and shields, aswell as black cloth for their skirts.
I finnished the bases late yesternight, and must say I'm very happy with them. A good thing with Denmark, is its high quantity of flint stones, so I merely took a trip with my bike, found some sand with small flint pebbles, and there you go; small rocks with sharp edges, jutting up from the lifeless barren earth.
I wanted to capture the barren and lifeless aspect of the Chaos Wastes - a land torn asunder by magic and warfare. So I googled for pictures of stone deserts and barren wastelands, and with some help from friends, picked a theme to go for.
Base painting recipe:
Chaos Black base coat
Shadow Grey all over, except for deepest cracks/fissures
Codex Grey drybrushed on pebbles
Gryphone Sephia washed all over
Bleached Bone / Astronomican Grey mix drybrushed over it all

(just so I don't forget how to paint the bases for the rest of my army) *winks*

Anyways, hope you like them as much as I do! *beams with pride*
I'll be working on converting my Warhounds this evening, hopefully getting an update with them uploaded soon.

The Tale of Fantasy Painters 2009-2010

2009-08-13T00:23:00.003+02:00

I have, as Elazar prompted me to do, signed up for the Tale of Fantasy Painters, which is run at the Warseer forums.

For those who're unfamiliar with it, it's sort of a community on those forums, and those who've joined it, have commited themself to paint 200 pts of models, each month, for a year. We're allowed 2 "jokers", which is free cards, for months where exams or whatever interfere with our painting schedule. Thus, with 2 jokers played, one should have an army of 2000 pts, painted and all done, by the end of the coming year.

Not only is the community a great motivating factor, when it comes to getting your models painted, with deadlines and all, but also, it serves as a great arena to give and get feedback - which not only might be motivating by itself, but also can enhance your own, and others abilities, skills and painting techniques.

It should be said, however, that those who are soft, and don't think they can make the 200 pts per month, can still join, and stick to only 100 pts per month, but are then entitled as "Boys" (eventually "Girls", I'm sure, for those of the strongest sex who've joined).
And well *coughs* it turns out I'm in the Boys' division.
In the past, I've mostly only painted during holidays, and never as much as 2000 pts in a year, not sure I've painted 1000 pts, even. Or, if we don't count characters, that is. So, this will mainly be an experiment, to see how long I can keep myself going, and really how much I'm able to paint in a month, with studies and work stealing my time.

The Tale aside, my Marauders are finally taking shape - or, they're getting some colours on them; shape I say they got when I was done assembling them...
I've scrapped the first test-mini's choice of paint, and after two other variations, I've settled on the third.
My convertions, were well recieved at Games Workshop here in Copenhagen, and I've promised to have them finnished for next tuesday's painting- and gaming-evening, and I think I'll make it! Got monday off from work, so I'll see if I can't find some beach or something, to get some sand for the bases...
I'll post pictures when the whole regiment is done!

Marauders of Slaanesh - Test painting

2009-08-07T21:46:00.006+02:00

Right, as I wrote yesterday, my plan was to head down to the local GW for some test painting, and thus I did.

Nearly got two finnished in the roughly three and a half hours I stayed there, which I'd say ain't too bad, as I did quite the bit of testing in the beginning, as to what colours I should use. The remaining shouldn't take much time!
I'm still not sure if I'm happy with the armour, though...
I've been debating wether I should paint it all black, and just paint the edges Mithril Silver; it'll be easier to spot the details then. Eventually, I could paint it Mithril Silver or maybe Chainmail, again to bring out the details of the armour.
I've also been thinking of maybe giving the armour a wash of blue, as well I like blue, heh.
I particularily happy with the shield, should leave no doubt as to whom of the Great Four this regiment is sworn to.
The shield is kinda what pulls me in the direction of painting the armours black, with very thin mithril borders, instead of the Boltgun Metal 1 : 1 Chaos Black - mix I've used as a base colour for the armour.

Any comments, critisism and/or advise, would be most welcome!

Marauders of Slaanesh - Assembled

2009-08-06T19:41:00.005+02:00

After many many hours, my heavily converted regiment of Marauders is finally assembled. Hopefully, the painting should take less time.

My fingers are itching to get them painted; I've planned a sort of black and white colour-theme for my warband, although I'm tempted to mix in some blue here and there. Yes, that means I'm steering clear of the pink/purple Slaanesh look - I'm thinking something along the lines of how the old (6th ed) metal Daemonettes were painted by the 'Eavy Metal team (not my picture).

So, for these models, I've planned to paint the cloth white, armour will be black/dark blue iron, hair will be black and weapons normal steel. I have, however, not decided how I'm to paint their skin, I'm leaning towards a whitened Elf Flesh, but I got little experience with painting flesh, and I'm unsure whether this will conflict with the white cloth.

An alternative, would be to paint cloth black, armour and weapons as steel, and the skin very light, but I'm leaning towards the first scheme at the moment.

I'll undercoat them tomorrow morning, and after work I'll head down to the local GW store, as fridays are free for all painting nights, so I'll be able to test out all the paints in the GW range, for free. I'll test the first scheme out to begin with, and we'll simply have to see how it fits.

What's next?

2009-08-02T18:09:00.005+02:00

So, the Stegadon is all done; what's next?

I do believe that I - in my first post - mentioned my plans for a warband of Slaanesh worshipping warriors, and creating that still stands as my main goal, when it comes to Warhammer armies, at the moment.

To that end, I've been shopping:
1x Warriors of Chaos regiment
1x Chaos Knights regiment
2x Chaos Marauder Horsemen regiments
1x Chaos Warhounds
1x Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount
1x Lord of Slaanesh
1x Hellcannon of Chaos (white mystery box on picture...)
1x Black Orcs regiment
1x Dark Elf Cold One Knights regiment

Inspired as I was by Elazar's wonderful Dragon Ogres (bottom of the page), I'm going to make mine in a similar fashion, thus the Black Orcs and Cold One Knights. I havn't peeked much inside the boxes, as of yet, but hopefully they should both yield other bits and pieces that in one way or another should fit in with the Slaaneshi theme. I am slightly worried that I shan't be able to use the Black Orcs for much, though, maybe their weapons can be fashioned into Halberds or something? In either case, it's great models by themself, and if nothing else, they'll serve as just "something different to paint", sometime!

Not included in the list above is a second regiment of Chaos Knights, as they're not going to be part of my Slaaneshi warband; I bought, assembled and started painting them on a whim earlier this spring, but as they're not really converted anything, and not really that special, I'll wait 'til I've finnished the last two of them, before I take some photoes of them.
The two unfinnished ones might be spotable in the small box on the far right of the picture above, where they currently reside along with the first part of my Slaanesh-project, namely my Marauders!

My Marauders of Slaanesh are converted out of this edition's plastic Daemonettes, using plenty of spare bits from Warriors of Chaos and Dark Elves, among others and lots of green stuff!
I'm getting more and more pleased with them as the days go and the progress advances, but they're still very much a work in progress, so no more info about them just now.
I do hope to have the first ten assembled and ready for paint in a couple of days, though, so that should be my next post!

Ancient Stegadon (5)

2009-08-01T16:26:00.007+02:00

'Tis been some time, but now I'm back!
The Stegadon is all finnished now, and has been given to my happy brother - although late!
Despite all my efforts, I was unable to finnish it on time, and as a result I got really demotivated and zapped of energy to finnish what was left:
- 2 Skinks (basecoats done)
- Skink Priest
- Most of the largest howda-piece

When I finally got hold of myself, and picked up the pencil again, I got only minor stuff done, then other plans sorta came rushing on, and I found myself off in another part of Norway, visiting my mother's branch of the family, and then when I got back to my parents house, Stegadon waiting impatiently, mmy head was filled with other things I wanted to do, and so I spent the next couple of weeks running a DnD campaign, playing volleyball, computer games and seeing friends - usual summer stuff, I guess...

I did manage to get something done, though, forced myself up (relativly) early, and worked on it while I waited for my brother and/or friends to wake up, so we could hang out.
So eventually I finnished it (four days ago), and now that I have returned to Denmark, I have decided to return from my self-imposed exile, upload pictures of the finnished Stegadon, and move on!

The pictures' ain't the best, the day I took them was all rainy and grey, and so I tried to use some lamps and stuff, so most of the pictures are rather dark, and those with decent lighting are totally out of focus, due to my crappy skills at photographing...
Observant people, might notice that there's only one banner pole on the howda, and yes that's correct. Sadly the other one broke off during the trip to Norway, and despite repeated tries to glue it back on, it simply wouldn't sit.
Nevertheless, and to my great relief, my brother seemed really happy with it, although I've gotten my share of him telling me I'm a slacker, and that the gift's late etc.
I really can't see why, his birthday being the 17th of april... Owh right, nevermind.

I know I'm happy with it at least, although having to quit my NMM-plans, and on top of it not finnish it on time, sorta stings. On the other hand, I think the model turned out beautiful in the end, and so far it's the biggest and meanest model I've completed, and I feel I've learnt a lot when it comes to painting skin and blending colours.

Now, onto other projects!

(No more NMM...) Ancient Stegadon (4)

2009-06-27T02:57:00.003+02:00

Whew, been some time, huh...

Uhm, after much trial and error, reading tutorials, then trying and erring some more, I've decided, that my initial plan to do all the metal parts using non-metallic paint, won't be possible. At least if I'm to finnish the gift on time; I've got to have it done on sunday at the latest, and I've still not managed to get the colours blended like I want them, for the golds.

It's been an educating process though, and I feel I'm pretty close to sorta figuring the whole thing out, I just don't have the time for it, on this model - being a gift and all. So for now, the process of learning NMM will have to be put on a shelf, and the brush will sadly head for the cans of golden paint. I'm pretty confident that I'll give NMM-painting another go as soon as I'm done, and have had a short break from painting; and I'm still very happy with the results I got on painting that steel helmet on the base, so it's not like I haven't learned nothing!

So, tomorrow's a hectic day of painting all the golds!
Hopefully, I havn't destroyed any details, with all the failed attempts with yellows and browns.. Only tomorrow holds the answer to that!

Ancient Stegadon (3)

2009-06-17T14:15:00.009+02:00

As promised, pictures of yesterday's work.

First of all, some pictures of the base for the Stegadon. It's a slightly converted version of the jungle base from Micro Art Studio, which I linked in a previous post; I've added some roots and extra leves with greenstuff, and removed the small lizard (was unfortunately placed right where the left hindleg of the Stegadon had to go...).

The human head in stone could probaly have been greenstuffed over, but I didn't bother with it, as the right foreleg of the Stegadon steps right over it, and hides it from view.

Any comments or criticism on the NMM job I did on the helmet between the roots? Or maybe the pictures are too small..?
Also, I was wondering wether or not the base actually gets too dark, with the relativly light coloured Stegadon on top. I've tried to tie the two pieces together, by giving the small flowers shades of pink and purple, beneath the white petals, but I'm not sure it's enough... Maybe I should try to give a couple of the plants some red edging?
Something like this...?
Even though, that's oposite of what I initially thought, but might work aswell? Any thoughts?

I'm pretty pleased with the shades of green the different leaves have gotten; don't know if the lighting was optimal on the photos, and the base therefore looks so dark; it's not that dark in the flesh... Any suggestions, or is it fine as it is?

Owh, and as to the pink horns; I've not finnished them yet, it's simply the forth out of six or seven layers. I start by painting them Scab Red, then mixes some Bronzed Flesh into it for a second layer, then even more, then I start using Bleached Bone with the red, and finally I end it with only Bleached Bone, with some Skull White added for the final highlight at the very tip.

Will have to see how much more I get to paint today, as I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Norway; spending the rest of june and july with family and friends.
Out of experience, I doubt I'll get much painting done the first couple of days, as they're usually a bit hectic, meeting everyone and stuff, but I have to finnish the model sometime next week, and I'll post updates as I go. So stay tuned!

Ancient Stegadon (2)

2009-06-17T00:58:00.001+02:00

Rigth, so I took a trip down to the local Games Workshop store, to paint a bit, and hopefully get a tip or two, on which colours to use for painting gold using non-metallic paint. Sadly, though, the staff at my store seems to be content with basecoating their models in light colours, and then simply wash them repeatedly with the new Citadel Washes; one of them even suggested that next time I was painting a Stegadon, I should rather try to base it Bleached Bone, and just wash wash wash!

*sighs*
Apparantly, the staff members at GW seem to focus only on rasing their armies as quick as possible, to a more or less decent table top standard, while the modelling part of the hobby sort of is collecting dust somewhere... I guess if everyone were to use long time on their models, GW would sell less, mayhaps? Wash wash, sell sell...

Angry ranting aside, uhm, I've finnished painting the base for the Stegadon, and I've almost finnished painting all its skin. I don't have any white-light/sunlight lamps, though, so pictures will have to wait 'til tomorrow morning, when the sun's up n' all. I've tried to take some pictures, but they all got this yellow hue, twisting everything in a way Tzeentch would aprove of!

As part of the base, is a human skull with a Conquistadore-inspired helmet on top, which I've given my best effort to paint as steel, and while I'm not perfectly happy with it, it's been good practice! (Un)fortunately, the skull is mostly hidden under the Stegadon's shadow, so it's not like it'll recieve many critical glances... Will have to wait and see though, if I get a hang on this whole NMM business, I might just return to it, and hopefully improve it.

A big thanks to Elazar, who's provided me with links to some wonderful guides, regarding the whole NMM issue. There's especially one which I've found very good, so I'll relink it here, for anyone who ain't too keen on searching through yesterday's post's comment; enjoy!

Ancient Stegadon (1)

2009-06-15T23:30:00.002+02:00

First of all, what a wonderful sculpt!
And all the different options and spare parts in the box, just lovely!

I decieded, that since the sculptor clearly has outdone himself with this model and all, I'll refrain from converting it too much. And apart from shifting the position of one of its legs a bit, so it'd fit better onto the Jungle-base I ordered from Micro Arts Studio, I've left the model without any customization worth mentioning.

As such, there ain't no pictures of the whole assembling process or nothing, but for anyone who might read this, and might be wondering; trust me, the parts fit (almost) perfectly together, and as it's all plastic, there's no risk of getting a model that's bent or nothing. Just don't glue the howda on top of the monster, before you've painted them seperately, and everything should be fine.

Speaking of painting, I've started doing just that.
As I know my brother's Lizardmen army got most creatures painted either red or orange, while the Skinks and Saurus are shades of blue, I decieded to stick to his palette, as best I could without asking him what colours he'd used.

So the Stegadon would have to be red, and personally, I love GW's Scab Red for red leather / tough skin. Also, I believe my brother's used it on his own, but that's speculation...
Anyways, as the Stegadon was supposed to be of the ancient kind, I played with the thought of making it much lighter than what they're regularily painted. My idea would be for its scales to be more bony, like all the horns and bone ends protruding from its back.
And after some testing, I found a procedure, which gave the desired effect (in my eyes).

First, I basecoated it Chaos Black with GW's primer spray. Then I mixed Scab Red and Liche Purple together, to get a nice base colour for all the skin (don't ask me about the ratios, I just mixed until I got a colour I fancied...). Then all the scales and most of the skin got a few layers of watered down Scab Red; I did leave shadowy areas and recesses alone though, the purple base looking like darker regular flesh. Then I started mixing Bronzed Flesh into the watered down Scab Red, and simply went over every thing jutting out, be it muscles, raised parts of skin, scales or horns/bony parts. I added more and more Bronzed Flesh to the mix, while covering less and less of the raised areas, and finally started mixing Bleached Bone with the rest, to get the final highlights for the scales. The tips of the horns got some extra highlighting with Skull White + Bleached Bone, jsut to make them look slightly sharper.

As you might have spotted, there's quite a bit of skin left, which I havn't finnished painting, although I'm going to start working on it, as soon as I've finnished this post. While I do that, I have to try to figure out how I'm to paint all the gold and such, using NonMetallicMetal paints. I've given it a test try, on the decoration by the tail, but I'm not sure about the results; I think it's slightly too yellow, and don't look all that shiny to me neither...
I'll see what I can come up with!

The beginning

2009-06-15T23:12:00.001+02:00

The very foundations of the world must be rocking, 'cos now even I have a blog!

... or, I've taken the first step, I guess - it remains to see whether or not I'll be able to keep this all running, with regular updates and all that... I'll keep fingers and toes crossed, and hope for the best!

So, this first post should maybe be an introduction of some sorts, mhm? Or better yet, mayhaps a plan for what's to come, yus, that sounds like a great idea. What shall I post in this blog and the like.
Well, only the future shall tell, but as it stands now, my initial plan is to make sort of a working/progress blog for my Warhammer army, which unfortunately mostly is in sprues and boxes at the moment. But the idea's to create a band of warriors who've pledged their lives and souls to Slaanesh, the Dark Prince.
But before I get to that, I have to finnish modelling and painting an Ancient Stegadon, with a Skink Priest and an Engine of the Gods on top. Why, you might ask? True, true, I don't own a single Lizardmen-model, nor do I have any plans of collecting them, but my brother's always loved them, and so I decieded to make him a Stegadon for his birthday.

So that's where it stands right now.