Disjointed Metal

OOP Harlequins ...

2011-09-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well its been a long time since I posted here. I have been spending a lot more time playing guitar and programming, its nice to get back to painting.

I recently started prepping my Orcs of Bran-O-Kor, I managed to get all 5 more of less prepped and managed to get one finished. I set off painting the undercoat in a neutral grey this time after the fiasco with the black undercoat (Those dwarfs that were undercoated in black are now a dark corner of the cupboard waiting to be stripped). I am now working though the different base colours and shading and highlighting. It seem to be going ok but not as good as I would of hoped, I guess Im a little out of practice, thats my excuse anyway :-) Ill see if I can get some shots of the finished figure and post them up.

On a slightly different subject I was talking to one of my old friends a few month back about painting miniatures and we were reminiscing about old times painting the now out of production citadel miniatures. It turns out he had a set of Citadel Harlequins sitting in his loft. They had been sat there for about 17 years untouched! My generous friend has donated them to me, so they now in my painting backlog.

Here they are in all their glory:

There are only eight of the origonal present but its great to have the chance to paint them again. The funny thing is these are the same set that I sold to my friend 17 or 18 years ago...

Catch you next time.

Black undercoats, metal, plastics and resin

2010-12-01T15:59:00.000-08:00

I have had a bit of a break from painting lately because I have been really busy with work and studying but I'm going to start a couple of dwarf of Mid Nor using a black undercoat.

Here's the dwarfs as painted by the amazing guys at Rackham.

Its something I have been wanting to try for a while and after I started following a new blog I found: Wargaming Tradecraft from N++ in particular an article on black primer stirred my interest again.

I have always been aware of black primer and have read a few articles on it years ago but never bothered giving it a go, to be honest sometimes I never undercoat figures at all. I quite like to paint onto bare metal and have the detail at crisp as possible. I suppose that's one of the reasons I avoid plastics too the detail is just a bit less than metal and as soon as the undercoat goes on your hiding that little bit more.

Talking of detail I fancy getting some resin miniatures to try out, the stuff over at Studio Mcvey is looking really good I wouldn't mind having a go at painting some of these.

Anyway I digress ...

I already have the two dwarfs assembled, filed, and undercoated in black, I will keep a track of my progress on them and keep you updated. I'm really looking forward to starting them, just gotta find the time...

Completed Dwarfs

2010-11-14T17:16:00.000-08:00

I have finally finished painting my three dwarfs heres some pics:

I am quite pleased with the result, the only things I am not that happy with are the dodgy eyes and the non metallic metal on the swords, I just couldn't get the blends smooth and the paint started to dry and a lot of graininess creeped in.

A few more layers

2010-11-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

I managed to get a bit of time tonight to take a few pictures of my work in progress:

The figure on the centre is more or less finished just need to do the base and a few touch ups, it not until you get a close up picture that you start to see all the flaws in all there glorious detail :( Im not so happy with the blending but I have been having a bit of trouble with Intermediate blue, the pigment seems to sink into the binding agent really quickly, like five or six minutes and you can start to see the separation!!

Could do with tidying up the eyes a bit, when you look at a macro picture you can see all the dodgy bits!

Could do with a final highlight on the sword but is my hand steady enough!

I have just added a quick black wash over the Intermediate Blue base coat and done a thin glaze of the base colour on top 1:1:5 (paint : thinner : glaze)

The glaze has added a bit of a sheen to the highlights.

Here I have added 4 layers of highlights to the base coat and black wash on the armour.

Im quite pleased with this one so far but its a bit inconsistent with the first dwarf I started almost a year ago, the contrast is quite severe...

Notice the sword hasn't been touched, I had to repaint the base coat because the NMM went all wrong!

Just got to get the Steel bits finished then I can move onto the main armour. To be honest I cant wait to get these finished so I can move onto something new, hmm Samurai Goblins or Orcs...

... long time no post ...

2010-10-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

Well I haven't posted here for ages, I have been so busy playing guitar and learning new stuff for work that I just haven't had the opportunity to get stuck into painting, hopefully thats going to change and I can finish of the Rackham Dwarfs I started and make a start on all the other stuff I haven't even started yet.

I recently got a new Digital SLR too so hopefully I can get some good pictures to show you the work in progress...

Until next time...

A little progress

2009-11-21T13:52:00.000-08:00

Well I managed to get a bit of painting in, not that much progress to report though.

I tried to do non metallic metal on the silver coloured sword and armor, I found that its quite tricky to get the blending nice and smooth. I must admit the back is better than the front, I did the front first using mostly dry blending and then tried the back with wet blending which was a bit more successful, I think I need to add a bit of drying retarder for the wet blending, if you get to a stage where the paint is nearly dry then everything seems to get a nasty grainy texture. I will probably go for one more set of highlights and then finish of the rest of the figure, just got the plume, beard and gloves to do...

More work in progress...

2009-11-07T17:36:00.000-08:00

I've managed to spend a bit of time working on my dwarfs last week. Instead of using my own colour scheme I decided to try and copy the scheme rackham used:

Heres a picture of them after a base coat with a medium dark wash to bring out the details.

The picture looks a little washed out compared to the actual colours in real life, I still havent figured out the best way to take photographs yet.

Instead of working on all three at once I decided to focus on one at a time, heres the results so far:

I have shaded and highlighted the main armour and painted in all of the other base colours. The hardest part so far were the eyes, it was really fiddly painting in the pupils! I have added some blacklining around the grey areas to bring out some depth, yep I know its a little messy but I have to add highlights anyway so it doesn't really matter :). The layers on the main armour are not as smooth as I would like but hey its my first go at painting for years so hopefully things are going to get better. I need to make sure the paint is thin enough and to let it dry properly between coats, Im really bad for rushing ahead!

Progress has been a little slow lately and I have been really busy working on programming stuff for work so I never got much time for painting this week, hopefully I will get some more progress done soon.

Work in progress...

2009-10-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

Well its not much but here's what I'm working on at the moment.

I have actually painted some of the base colour on the dwarfs and quickly washed them to bring out a bit of detail. I'm updating this blog a day behind at moment so I will take some more photos as I go on...

It feels like I have forgotten what to do painting wise, I have used various techniques over the years but my tried and trusted method was always as follows:

Base colour
wash
repaint most of base colour
add highlights

I wanted to try out more of the layering approach, like what you see on the rackham paintings but I was unsure where to start. It doesnt feel quite righ using ultra thin layers that dont make much difference until your on the 12th layer, maybe its just me...

New miniatures

2009-10-23T13:27:00.001-07:00

Here is a pictures of my recent purchases from www.ludikbazar.com. I bought a total of 9 packs, I love Rackham miniatures, its a pity they have stopped producing the lead lines. I got some goblins, dwarfs, and orks. At the bottom is the free miniatures I got from www.15mm.co.uk be sure to check out the special offers, I got the fantasy set and the laserburn set. The first miniatures I ever painted were laserburn although I didnt know what the were called at the time!

I have prepared three of the dwarfs that didnt need any assembly, and all of the laserburn miniatures, it took ages to remove all the flash lines. I managed to get them undercoated ready for painting too.

New Paints

2009-10-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post I have got a new set of 38 paints. I got the paint from SnMStuff as they do a wide variety of Vallejo Model Colour sets from 6 to 48. I spent ages trying to figure out what colours I might need to start painting but finally managed to come up with 38 including the thinner and glazes etc. The closest I could find was a set of 36 but not wanting to decide which 2 colours to drop I emailed them and asked if they could do me a set of 38 and they agreed! So they put a custom item on their website for me. That's what I call service! They arrived very quickly too so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone, they were very friendly and helpful.

Here's my new paints in all their glory!

I painted a colour swatch sheet too, well my wife Lynsey kindly painted them in for me!

I think I got a pretty good selection of colours. There may be a medium blue missing from my set but its nothing I cant mix.

Next time I'll post the selection of miniatures Ive bought.

First post...

2009-10-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

This is my blog on painting and modeling miniatures, yes its a little sparse, the banner is too large and the colours are not quite right, Ill get to that, eventually... :)

I started painting when I was about 12 or 13 maybe younger, I'm 34 now. It was back when Games workshop used to be a more a independent company rather than the beast it is now, when all the figures in a squad or regiment were different, when the prices were reasonable! The first game I owned was Laserburn which was written by Brian Ansell, it was the precursor to Warhammer 40k, this was quickly followed by blood bowl, Warhammer Fantasy battle, Traveller, Rune Quest, Call Of Cthulhu, and Warhammer 40k, I mainly painted the 25mm Citadel miniatures which are now long out of production, I also had a small collection of 15mm Traveller and Laserburn figures which I fondly remember.

A few years ago I sold of all my paints as well as most of my old games and most of my miniatures but recently I have been thinking about starting again, I finally succumbed and ordered a set of 38 Vallejo paints, some Rackham Confrontation miniatures, and got a set of 15mm Laserburn figures.

Ill post some pictures of all my brand new paint and miniatures. Then Ill have to get to work on painting them!