OOP Harlequins ...

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

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

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

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!!

... long time no post ...

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

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...

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.