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.

Work in progress...

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

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.