More Kristianna WIP shots

Kristianna has gotten some more work done and is getting pretty close to getting the core done.  I'm toying with doing some freehand, but overall she is getting there.  Depending on the amount of freehand I put into the dress, I will fiddle with the blends/contrast on both the black and the red parts of the dress.

 

 

A quick congratulations to David Powell for his BoS win at the Capital Palette in Washington, D.C. last weekend.  Well deserved win for his outstanding hockey player piece!  He won himself a trip to the Crystal Brush next year. You can find a detailed collection of pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/novaopen/sets/.

This weekend is Recruits Con, our local con.  I'll be attending this year and am planning on getting some shots as well as a bit of paint time in.  It is a fairly small affair, mostly for gamers.  There is a paint and take, but no formal paint contest, unfortunately.

Games Day Germany finished

Wow!  Congratulations to Roman Lappat for his Slayer Sword at Games Day Germany.  The pictures are now beginning to roll in and it looks like the quality of the pieces this year was incredibly high.  Roman won this year with a massive diorama with over 127 minatures...I think that is more than I have painted in my life (and I am no spring chicken).

This upcoming weekend will be GenCon.  Best of luck to the painters headed out that way!

The past week has seen some work on a tutorial, a bit of prep work and the mummy is nearing completion.  I still need to do some more work on the metallics and fiddle with the OSL.  I'm not happy with it at all at the moment, especially the hand, but will keep at it. Once I have the paint where I would like it, I'll start in with the pigments to dirty him up.

Finally, hello and welcome to Walter for becoming a follower of my blog.  Thank you--I hope you enjoy your stay!

Painting Buddha has arrived

I got a wonderful surprise in the mail yesterday!  My long awaited package from Germany--the DVD painting set from the folks at Mastermini.  Rather fitting for my 42nd post, eh, Mr. President (inside joke for those of you that have been following the painting revolution at Masterminis.net)?  I am very much looking forward to digging into this six disc compilation.  I'm not sure how many total hours are on the discs, but it covers the painting of two models along with the display base from two stellar artists from start to finish.  You can pick yours up at http://www.paintingbuddha.com/.

 

 

If that wasn't enough, Wyrd has released it's latest Chronicles, which you can find at  http://www.malifaux.com/Downloads/Wyrd_Chronicles_Volume_7.pdf.  It covers their new releases for the upcoming Gen Con event this year and is more advertisement than usual.  It still has some nice fluff, but I'm missing the step by step paint articles I've seen the past couple of issues!

 

I was also able to get in some work on the blues for the mummy.  RMS Ultramarine Blue was the base.  It was shaded with RMS Blue Liner and highlighted first with RMS Ultramarine Highlight and then UH mixed with Linen White.  I also add some initial metallics.  The gold metallics were done with GW Shining Gold mixed with a bit of RMS Russet Brown and the steel metallics are VMA Gunmetal mixed with black.

 



Let the metallics begin

I've made more progress on the mummy.  Much of it is just basecoated, but at this point I've got the mini covered with paint.  I've sprayed some Dullcoat on him to "save" my paint job.  This helps with accidental bumping and minor chipping during the remainder of the paint job.  I'll do this in anticipation for adding the metallics.  I try not to add much Dullcoat over the metallics as it really tones down the reflectivity (as it should).  Sometimes I will put down my metallic basecoat and preliminary shading, then go ahead and add the Dullcoat, finished up with adding another very thin layer of the basecoat and the highlights to bring back the reflectivity of the metallics.

The skin has begun to get some additional work.  I started with RMS Dark Skin, shaded with a mixture of Dark Skin and RMS Green Liner, and then Dark Skin and RMS Yellowed Bone.  I wanted to see how the Green Liner would work with the reddish brown of the Dark Skin; a bit of complementary shading as opposed to using a darker brown.

The wrappings are RMS Yellowed Bone and selectively washed with VMC Smoke.  I've done some preliminary shading with RMS Stained Ivory and picked out some highlights with Linen White.  The waist wrap is VMC Deck Tan, shaded with RMS Bone Shadow, and highlighted with RMS Leather White.

I was excited to see another follower has joined the ranks!  Hello and thank you for joining me, Thrym!  I've enjoyed his work over at the Reaper forums--he did a cool little "cut and reposition" project one of the Bones werewolves.  I've not had a chance to mess much with the Bones, but am definitely looking forward to doing some conversions/mods with the Vampire set I picked up a few months ago.

Something new, something old

I always have trouble finishing up the last part of a mini, perhaps the last 5-10%.  So it is with the hound; I'll get to him eventually, but for now I've set him aside.  I've set my eye on a mummy lord from Reaper's Dark Heavens.  I've made some progress on him far, with the stone ruin and desert base getting close to done aside from a bit more shading.  The remainder of him is just basecoated (incompletely...) to get an idea of how the colors are working.  The brown on the wrist bracers and on the head dress will be covered with gold.  I generally will get a fair bit of my non metallic down then "save it" with a shot of dullcoat before proceeding with the metallic.

Next off, a hearty welcome to Don Hans!  Thank you for joining me.  Don is new to the blogosphere as well.  He started off about the same time as I did, just a few months ago.  He has a love for all that is Old School and has a great collection of old Citadel minis that are very nicely painted.  I love seeing old minis get a nice paint job.  Check him out here: http://realmofcitadel.blogspot.com/.

Along those same lines, I came across the revamped website of a guy over at the Reaper forums named Darkstar.  He is a fantastic painter and does some incredible stuff with freehand.  He also is not afraid to shy away from the older sculpts and is currently working his way through a set of old Talisman models. Here is the link to his Tumblr page: http://darkstarminis.tumblr.com/.

Keeping up with the old school theme, I finally like to give everyone a heads up that the Goblin Aid miniatures are finally getting out.  As you may recall, Goblin Aid was a ground roots effort to support Kev Adams who is one of the giants of the sculpting world and is well known for his old school orcs and goblins.  He was severely injured in a home assault earlier this year and the sculpting community came together to create a rather large set of goblin miniatures with the proceeds going to help pay for his medical bills.  The "historical" and "modern" sets of goblins are out and can be purchased here at the Ral Partha Europe store: http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/goblinaid-c-123.html.

One step back, Two steps forward

Hopefully, anyway.

After talking with some of my forum mates, I decided to scale back the cracks on the hound.  Thanks as always for the honest feedback! It was hard to remove such a large portion of the freehand I had spent quite a bit of time on.  However, the pattern was too symmetric and too linear--it might be something that would work well in a sci-fi setting, but as a fantasy creature was too artificial.  I think it looks more natural and am happy with the result.  I may even remove a bit more...

The blacks have two separate highlights to help differentiate them.  The black on the horns and nails is pure black with a sharp, pure white linear highlight to hopefully convey the look of polished obsidian.  The black of the skin is pure black, RMS Blue Liner for the shading and incremental amounts of RMS Ghoul Skin (a gray-green color) mixed with the pure black.  I give a softer look to the highlight.

Good news on the magazine front as well--the next issue of Portal is out and as usual has some great interviews and tutorials.  Take a look: http://www.wampforum.com/VB4/downloads.php?do=file&id=38

It's Tuesday!

Hello again!  It will be a quick one today--off to visit family today and will be away from the brushes for most of the coming 7 days.

Here's the nearly completed work on the hound:

I still need to do some additional highlighting on the fur and a few little bits and bobs.  The basework is nearly completed as well:

It has been a good exercise in OSL for me.  Learned quite a bit about detail freehand work as well.  As usual, there are things that I would have done differently, but that's why we practice, right?

Blog wise, this week I would like to direct you to Dave Taylor Miniatures at http://davetaylorminiatures.blogspot.com/.  He is an American painter that has been blogging since 2009.  He does both historical work as well as WH 40k.  He does some amazing conversion work and it big on the army painting scene and has been entering the Armies on Parade competition for the past several years.  He has also done some charity work as well, which as you know I am keen on.

Lava!

I've done some preliminary work on the lava base--the flows coming out of the base are just blocked in and of course I've not done any OSL as of yet.  I do like the how the main body of lava is coming along.  It's still a bit orangey, but not bad for my first attempt.

I don't do it nearly justice, but this is based roughly on Ana's tutorial over at her blog: http://paintingmum.blogspot.com/2011/09/lava-for-vulkan-tutorial.html

Blog Tuesday and a bit of basework

This week I'd like to mention a great blog from France.  It was started in 2008 and is very much a fan of the Warhammer 40k universe.  There are some amazing conversions and the painting is top notch.  I encourage you to take a look if you are a fan of the grimdark future of mankind!  http://leskouzes.blogspot.com/

I've also started on the base for the hound.  It's in its early stages yet, but you can see the general form.  I started out relatively light with RMS Weathered Stone.  I've done the highlighting with Leather White and some preliminary coloring with Russet Brown and RMS Blue Liner, but will be taking it considerably darker toward the end.  All the black bits will eventually be lava.

The hound continued...

It's been a slow painting week thus far, but I have been busy with the display base for the hound.  Tonight I was able to get a bit more done on him.  I decided to outline each of the horns with a lava effect which will help to set the horns off from the skin.  I've also elected to go with a blue-black for the skin to separate it from the horns which will be more of neutral black.  I should get some work done on the base this week as well.  It's got nothing but primer at the moment.

I'd encourage you to take a peek at this month's Portal issue.  Another good month and well worth a look.  It's got a nice article on skin tones by DPowell and a pair of interviews with a couple of stellar painters, Scott Hockley and Daniel Gutl:  http://www.wampforum.com/VB4/downloads.php?do=file&id=37

Blog Tuesday

Well another week as rolled by!  Congratulations the winners at the 2013 Spring Angel event in Moscow.  By all reports the level of painting was outstanding!  I'll be looking forward to the pics popping up at CMoN, but in the meanwhile some preliminary stuff is beginning to appear.  The biggest collection of links I've found so far is over at Masterminis-- http://masterminis.blogspot.com/2013/06/spring-angel-2013-paintingbuddha-travel.html

The winner of best in show at this event was Dmitry Fesechko with a beautiful diorama piece entitled "Surprise".  I was able to locate his website which has a large gallery of his works.  He paints a broad range of miniature subjects; fantasy, sci-fi, historicals and busts, as well as more traditional painting and digital art.  His website can be found here: http://fesechko.com/en/news/.  Check it out, be amazed, and do not break your brushes after seeing his work!

Congratulations to Tre Manor on hitting the goal and then some on his recent kickstarter.  I caved in the end and bought in as well.  I was able to restrain myself somewhat, but will be looking forward to seeing what he can sculpt up.

I also elected to lend my brush to the new Bloggers for Charity campaign.  The details are getting sorted out, but I'll be giving the historical side of the hobby a go for the first time.  Quite a while back, I had picked up one of Thunderbolt Mountain's French and Indian War pieces, but never got anywhere with it.  That's changed!  This one will warm me up for the Bloggers pieces and will also serve as a break for my work on the hound.  Not terribly much more than a basecoat except on the face at this point, but here's where I am at after an evening's work:

Happy Father's Day

I hope everyone is having a good Father's Day.  I have to work this afternoon, but have had a quiet morning while the family is out at church.  I think for me there is no greater gift than a bit of silence and some time to enjoy painting.  Much better than a tie!  I'm getting there on the hound.  I'm really beginning to like the look of him.  I think I will need to modify the horns, though.  The black on black just not going to work on the head and feet.  I had not planned to originally, but I think I am going to stick him on a fancier lava base so that I can continue to play with OSL as well as some crackle medium and perhaps some water effects for a splashing lava look.

Less talk, more paint

The title says it all!  More of the same on the body and tail.  I broke down and ordered some fluorescent colors from Vallejo which should be arriving any day.  I'll be using those on the face and mouth to see if I can up the brightness there.

Quick step by step

Now that the goblin is done and dusted, I've turned my full attention to the hound.  Here's a quick step by step on how I am doing to cracked, lava skin.  Nothing ground breaking here, just applied to a model I've not seen it done on before.

Over a black basecoat, I laid out my initial cracks.  I used VMC Ivory here, which I've found does a good job of covering black without have to put it down 15 times.  As you can see, the initial pass just get everything roughly in place.  I then went back and thinned down the cracks a bit to get them sharper and and more to the scale I was going after.  The Ivory also provides a nice base to work the red/orange/yellow off of.  Trying to get it bright over black would be tough.

 

Next I added RMC Big Top Red.  It's a nice, dark red, but unfortunately I think might have only been available during ReaperCon this year.  I followed this up by covering nearly everything with RMC Magma Red which is a nice bright orangy-red.  I finished this by once again thinning and sharpening the lines.

 

 

 

Now we start to really get that hot lava look that I am shooting for.  I took some RMS Lava Orange (good choice, eh?) and picked out some of the hotter areas.  I then took some Reaper Pro Paint Sunlight Yellow and picked out some smaller areas and finally VMC white for the brightest hotspots.

I think this comes off nicely, but I would be interested to see the same effect with some of those fluorescent pigments/paints out there.

 

 

 

 

I've got more cracking to do and will be extending it further down the legs, up towards the head and onto the tail as well, but I wanted to get this out for you all to see.

 



 

 

 





Is it Tuesday already?

Wow, last week sure went by fast.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of painting done this week, although I made some progress on the goblin and the hound (more on that later).  I've also done some prep work on The Hound from Darksword miniatures.

Welcome to the two newest members, Talespinner and Quidamcorvus!

Talespinner has been a long time forum friend over at the Reaper forums that I had the great pleasure of meeting at Reaper Con this year.  He is an excellent painter, but over the past couple of years has turned his attention to the sculpting side of the hobby and is now one of the up and coming sculptors in the industry, getting a number of his pieces picked up by Reaper.  He is also available for some free lance work I believe and can be found at his website at http://www.talespinnerminis.com/.

Quidamcorvus is a prolific painter from Poland.  He favors GW fantasy from what I have seen over at his website.  He is also working on a modification of Warhammer Fantasy by GW in which he takes the combatants to the skirmish level in a fashion similar to Mordheim.  He calls this new mixture Warheim Fantasy Skirmish.  Very cool!  Be sure and check out his blog at http://quidamcorvus.blogspot.com/

What else...Wyrd has released it's 6th issue of the Wyrd Chronicles.  Another fine issue with lots of fluff and another stellar painting article by Mark Rodgers.  You can find it here: http://www.malifaux.com/Downloads.php

The folks over at Platoon Britannica are starting another contest.  This one is called "Heresy be Dragons" and will be to support Heresy Miniatures.  You can find out all the details at http://www.platoonbritannica.com/index.php?threads/heresy-be-dragons-the-rules.2837/#post-47184

Now for my blog of the week by one Mr. James Wappel.  I stumbled across this blog earlier this year and it rapidly became one of my favorites.  Mr. Wappel is an multi award winner painter that began as a 2D artist that made the transition to miniatures.  He is an extraordinarily fast painter (and blogger for that matter!).  He loves to teach and his blog is loaded with quick how-to's as he goes along.  He will post nearly daily and not infrequently several times a day.  He finished up a kickstarter earlier this year and should be putting out a series of painting DVD's on a wide range of topics.  He is well worth a visit and can be found at http://wappellious.blogspot.com/

So what I have I been up to this past week?  Like I said, not painting as much as I would like, but did make some more progress on the goblin.  Here is the final WIP, I think.

 

 

A few more touch ups here and there, perhaps another highlight and a bit more work on the base and he'll be done.

 

I've also done a bit more freehand on the hound.  You can see I put down the cracks initially in VMC Ivory.  I find that the Ivory covers well over black in just a couple of passes and it makes it much easier to put down the subsequent red/orange/yellow.

 



Memorial Day

First off, a huge thanks to all of our soldiers and their families, both current and retired, for their service to our country, giving me the opportunity to pursue my hobbies like painting little men.  I have several extended family that have served and are serving in the military and we have been especially fortunate in that no one has lost their lives in the line of duty.  For those families that have my sincerest condolences.  Thank you to those soldiers that have paid the ultimate price.

Secondly, yet another new member joins my blog!  Hello and a big welcome to Shades.  He's a great guy I initially met over at WaMP.  He was very helpful during my construction of the Dark Carnival piece and I am glad to see him over here now as well.  He's got a blog over at http://minimayhem-theblog.blogspot.com/.  Most recently, he attended both Adepticon and MCFA and gave a nice report on both.  Well worth a visit!

Finally, another WIP in progress.  You'll find as time goes on, I tend to have a large number of WIP's and a significantly smaller number of completed minis...I'm trying to get better about that.  This is one of Reaper's metal Hell Hounds.  It is a practice mini on doing a bit of freehand as well as some lava effects.

Shirt progress

Just a bit more done today.  The blends need some smoothing, but you can see where the highlights and shading are falling into place.

Another quick reminder that the 1st Newbold Creative Event of 2013 is drawing to a close.  The deadline is May 31st.  Visit and enter at  http://www.newboldworld.com/Challenge/TNC03.html

Happy Friday

Hello once again!  It's Friday and I hope everyone has some exciting plans for the weekend.  As for me, I'll be working.

I'd like to say welcome to two new followers, Anne and Legion Games.  Thank you both for joining along!

 Anne is from Ireland and has been blogging since 2011.  She is a fantastic photographer and miniature lover and quite funny with her posts, unlike myself...  She is well travelled in the blogosphere--if you have a chance, take a peek at her blog at http://fortwitter.blogspot.com/.

Legion Games, I wasn't able to pin down where you might be at on the web.  Let me know and I'll get a link up for you.

I have to say I'm a bit excited about crossing the 1000 view mark!  Now probably a 1/4 of those are me checking on who's checking on my blog and the another 50% are webcrawlers, but I'll pretend that they are all different people coming to visit my little site.

While perusing Anne's site, I stumble across another blog called Wargames and Railroads.  He is celebrating a birthday and is going at it Hobbit style--he's giving away presents!  He's got a nice stash to give away and the celebration is going on until May 29th.  Check it out at http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/05/birthday-week-giveaway.html.

I've not had much time to work on the goblin, but here's a where I'm at with his shield.  I think I took the picture of the shield upside down, though.  See how the top is a bit darker than the bottom?  Early on yet, but the basics are there.  I'll probably add some more highlights and take the shading deeper once the shield is on the arm.  The metallics still need a bit of work as well, again mostly to shade them down and reduce some of the rusting around the bolts.

 

 

And the true scale shot :)

 



Blog of the week

Hello again!  I was a quiet weekend blogging wise--I unfortunately had to work this weekend.  However, Tuesday has arrived and it is time to highlight another blog!

This week I would like to showcase Miniature Fairy Tales.  As has become a growing trend, this is a compilation of several painters who are blogging collectively.  This nice from a viewer's standpoint in that the updates come more often as these four each post their individual works.  The crew that makes up Miniature Fairy Tales are Darkspawn, Sleipnir, Nathelis, and P1per.  They all are accomplished painters!  They have a wonderful collection of inspiring pieces in their gallery and a very nice set of tutorials!  Check them out at http://miniaturefairytales.blogspot.co.at/.

I was able to get a bit of painting in this weekend in addition to doing some prep work.  I've decided to take a crack at some of the Darksword miniatures.  They are finely sculpted and the ones I picked up have lots of details.  I chose The Mountain and The Hound from the GRRM Game of Thrones line.  The folks at Darksword were also generous enough to send me an extra miniature!  I received a female archer for free!  Jim Ludwig, the owner of Darksword, has always been quite generous with his business in my experience.  He supports a number of painting contests (ReaperCon and GenCon here in the United States) as well as online competitions.  He is currently supporting a Darksword competition over at WaMP with the top prize being $200 in Darksword credit!  Take a look at the contest here: http://www.wampforum.com/VB4/showthread.php?t=15374.  Time is running short on this one, though.

Anyway, enough of the chat.  Here is my work over the weekend.  The skintones on the goblin are largely done and I've done the lion's share on the spear as well.  He'll be armed with a shield as well, so the left forearm is intentionally left a bit undone.

Painting AND sculpting

Ok, while technically true, not so much.  I'm not sure if smashing a blob of GS into a CSM's belly and rolling little tiny tentacles counts as sculpting or if nearly completing a set of eyeballs and getting some basecoats down really qualifies, but I'm taking it.

I've nearly finished the champion...just need to decide if he needs a winged backpack or a bladed one...

 

 

I've also thrown just a bit of paint on an old school goblin from Mannequin miniatures.  I apologize for the poor picture.  Much of him is just basecoated with a bit of shading on the skin and jerkin.  The eyes are close to being done.  Yes, his gaze is a bit off, but I think that might be useful in goblins and perhaps even attractive :).  The boots are coming along as well.  Need some smoothing and perhaps a bit stronger highlighting, but getting there.  Since I frequently paint in this way (basecoating entirely, or nearly so before moving on), instead of completing one section at a time, this is the stage often referred to miniature painting as the a&% stage.  The plan is for it to steadily improve from this point on.  Most of the time that happens, but not always...

 

 

 

On the convention front, the inaugural of the CMoN Expo is this weekend.  Should be interesting to see how that goes.  The CMoN boys have brought in some big guns (Jen Hailey, Mike McVey, and James Wappel).  I'm looking forward to seeing what the turnout will be on the tail of the Adepticon, ReaperCon, and MCFA shows in the US and with GenCon yet to come.  Hopefully, there will be plenty of pictures as well.  Here's the linky: http://cmonexpo.com/

 

And last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Avicenna for joining me on my little adventure!  He is a world class painter, nabbing BiS at Salute in 2011 with an amazing rendition of Wolf the barbarian.  He followed this with a gold at the 2012 Crystal Brush!  His most recent accomplishment was a prestigious nod from the editors over at Putty and Paint this past April.  His work can be found at http://www.jollybodgers.com/.