Absentia

Sorry I haven't had much to report lately - I haven't been painting models for the last couple of weeks. Instead, I've been prepping and cleaning almost all the models I need to paint for the Summer cons. To whit, as of this morning, the cleaning is complete and the painting can begin.

Here's what's in the que:


For Rob:
8 MI troops (now primed)
1 M8 Ape Suit (bare plastic)
1 M8 Ape Suit (base coat of paint on)
1 M9 Chickenhawk Suit (bare)
1 CHAS (bare)

For Me:
6 x Cougar Exosuits (3 primed)
6 x Grizzly Exosuits (3 primed)
5 x White Stars (base coat applied)
misc. Confrontation figs (I haven't decided what army to take to Gencon - I'm trying for Cynwall with the Dragon, but we'll see).


I hope to have the squad of 8 MI painted by this weekend and everything else should be primed, at the least.



Aaron

Hordes Pic Dump

Quick Photos taken last night of the Skorne Titan Gladiator and Cyclops as well as the first Everblight Shredder

Memorial Day Progress

Skorne Progress over the weekend: Finished off the Titan and nearly got the 2nd Cyclops painted up. I only need to finish highlighting the metal on the miniature and then finish off some of the rope trim. AS I have those mostly finished off I'm now switching to the next box set and I'll start focusing on the Everblight.

This weeks Goals:
Get the first 4 Shredders about half finished
Finish Dire Troll Assembly
Finialize Cyclops Painting

ouch

I got home yesterday around 5:30 or so.

Started painting around 6.

Finished painting a little before 2.

Man o man, my back hurts. More or less done, though. Isn't pretty, isn't finely detailed, but it's table-ready.

Seriously, I will never shop for brushes anywhere other than Pearl Arts and Crafts. The one in Alexandria, off route 7, is like an orgasmotron for brushes and inks. I've gotten stuff there that no game store and only a few online game stores carry. Plus, STUDENT DISCOUNT! And low prices already. Go there, you painty types!

I'm caving in

My plan to do the entirety of the Skorne and Troll Bloods in Non-Metallic Metal armor painting technique is falling to the way side. In the interest of time and progress Metalic paints will be used from here on out. In fact as I get the opportunity The finished Cyclops and Morghoul will have the metal portions re-don in metallic paint. But ths is lower on the Priority.

Wednesday update.

Well I've got 2 of my three goals acomplished.

2nd Skorne Titan assembled? Check
Everblight primed? Check and then some.

Last night I also got an hour or so on the titan. Starting to work up the deep blue on the armor plates.

Probably the most useful tool at my painting bench is a littl note pad. When something works really well, I write down what I did while it's fresh in my memory. If I have to paint a ton of minis, I write down what I did on the test mini. Then I can apply it to the rest. It really works for me. The other thing that's kinda cool is I don't have to pre-mix paints, something I've never been good at. I just write down the proportions. Works a lot better, I think. Now that I can post here, I'll transfer some stuff that worked for me to this blog.

ding!

Using my pumice-and-resin cheaty basing method, I now have my entire 1500 point Daemonhunters army based. (My girlfriend helped last night, as I was up way too late. She's a peach.)

This is, in fact, a first for me, after an entire lifetime of gaming.

(Not counting Heroclix, which are *all* based. Heh.)

Tonight, after Lost, I get down to some serious painting. The clock, she is ticking.

Crammed overly packed weekend update

Thanks to the glory of living in BFE Virginia my weekend painting was subpar. So I've got nothing to update.

Previous weeks Goals
Cyclops #1 took two days of painting to finish when I was expecting it to take an hour or so on the first night of painting. So I finished that one off and got started on the base coast for the Titan.

This Weeks Goals
Lets see: Friday I'm screwed, Saturday and Sunday are mostly in the Dumpster as well.
Lets go for this:
Finish Painting Skorne Titan Gladiator #1
Finish assembling Skorne Titan Gladiator #2
Prime Everblight Box Set, Makeda and Titan Gladiator #2

basing, the cheaty way

As all the long-time Disorderlies know, the one thing I'm worse at than painting is basing. It's messy, annoying, and a chore. So I'm always looking for cheaty ways around it.

I picked up a tub of Vallejo Pumice Stone Texture from the War Store, to give it a go. Changed my life, people. The tub is heavy, but looks like it'll go for a good long while. Not having any instructions, I just took a toothpick and went to work. The stuff comes out with a consistency a little looser than toothpaste, but after sitting for less than six hours, it had hardened into a superstrong supergritty sandpaper layer that I couldn't easily chip with my nails. It's not as quick as I was hoping, but I am sure that will come with practice. Just might have changed my life, here.

today's minis porn site

As we all know, I'm only marginally worse at conversions than I am at painting. Nevertheless, I am constantly keeping my eyes open for awesome pics online of crazy cool conversions and paint jobs.

Today, TSOALR delivered the motherload, in the form of Work in Progress, all dedicated to 40k and other GW conversions. I'm so, so jealous of all that free time and talent. Check it out, thank me later. So much eye candy. And by eye candy, I mean, eye crack.

Cyclops finished

Update on painting last night.... Finished off the first cyclops for my Skorne Force. Banner pinned on and everything is good to go. I still need to do some freehand work on the banner, but I will do both Cyclops' and the Titan's freehand work at the same time. Once they are all painted.

Pics likely later this week.

Weekend Progress: Tim

Weekend saw a spat of progress although somewhat less than I was hoping for. Cyclops #1 got the highlights done on the Armor, Armor Trim, and Cloth. Each color got somewhere between 5-6 layers. I’m leaving the face guard as NMM steel, along with a few of the should plates and the Falchion. All of this will be completed, possibly today, and then I can move onto the next Cyclops, as well as the Titan. So far the Cyclops has taken about 7-8 hours. More than I really intended to spend on him, I just hope he comes out looking good.

Carniviean Carnival
I also delved into permanently assembling Thagrosh and a Carnivean from Everblight. And permanent maybe a little… uh… impossible. Not sure what was going on but I was having severe superglue bonding issues. To the point that I needed to hold a pinned joint for upwards of 5 minutes for it to bond enough to set it down. Then let it cure for another 5-10 minutes. VERY frustrating, particularly on the 14 piece Carnivean. Not sure what the issue was as the glue bonded the shredders very easily and I even scored both sides of the joint to increase the texture and surface area for bonding. But luckily over the course of three hours I got the Full everblight box assembled plus Thagrosh. Only the have the Carnivean’s head fall off as I tried to move him to a resting spot.

Goals for the week.
Lets see… I’ve got a final, Mothers day, and potentially some gaming this week. So Goals for this week is to finish off the first cyclops as well as a second model, then strt on a third. Probably The cyclops and Titan in the order. But I’ve started to get the jonesing to paint up one of the Trollblood Impalers so we shall see how things pan out

Sunday Download.... Now with Pictures!

Due to some recent bitching from some unnamed members of this blogging community I gave up on painting this evening and just addressed working on some pictures to share.


First Boomhowler, I snapped the pictures a few weeks ago but never got around to cleaning the pic up and getting it online. Base still not finished but decided to load this one up.







Second is Master Tormentor Morghoul from the Skorne Warpack set. I'll be posting tomorrow about the weekend progress.

Thursday Progress

Quick update on progress on the Cyclops. Spent a little time, not too much with them last night. I got the shading work completed on the cloth and armor on both of them. Now I'll stop working on both of them at the same time, when working on the layering I find it best to limit the figs I'm working on. The armor is complex on these guys and if I try to work on both at the same time I'll miss some of the highlights and it will all look wrong in the end.

This weekend I'm shooting to finish both of the Cyclops and get pictures taken of them and Morghoul

Some recent Khador work

Well, I've been making progress - all that's left is to highlight the bronze/gold and then go back and do some touch-ups (and paint the Kodiak's head).


These pics truly don't do the figs justice, but I'll be hoping to rectify that after Gencon, where I'm taking a photography for minis seminar. The black highlights are way less harsh and there is an actual color gradient to the reds. Oh well, maybe soon I'll have a light difussion box.

Cyclops coloring

The color scheme I’m using for the Skorne is a quadrad color scheme. For those that paint a good amount, want to get a good cohesive miniatures painted up, and have a piss poor understanding of Color-theory I highly suggest a color wheel. Mine is damn good, on one side there is a wheel indicating what adding other colors to the designated color would result in. The other side shows the complimentary, split complimentary, tetrad, and quadrad color groupings as well as the tint, tone, and shade of those colors. This really helps in identifying new cohesive color schemes.

In general my Skorne coloring is as follows
Armor is in a deep Blue-Violet, with select deep Red-Violet plates and trim,
Cloth is being done in a very dirty, almost plague like, yellow green.
Metal trim is being done in Yellow Orange NMM.
Weapons and such will be done in a Steel NMM

This only leaves skin, the Warbeasts and skorne skin fall into these grouping as well. Titan/Cyclops Pale Bue-Violet, Basilisks will be done in a Yellow Orange (close to a Leopard Gecko) And Skorne falls in the VERY pale end of Yellow Orange.


So I sat down last night with the Cyclopsi. I intended to start with the skin and work out, as I usually do. However the Cyclops only skin showing is on the hands holding the sword. As the sword is separate to facilitate painting the body I moved onto the cloth. I carefully laid down the colors for the “shirt” and then following with the pants on both Cyclopsi. I decided just to get the base coats down and I would worry about coming back and highlighting later. The bulk of my “messy” painting happens with the base coat anyway. So next I laid down great swaths of the deep Blue-Violet I’m using for their armor. After the last brush stroke I realized my problem, after laying down the armor base coat I realized there was no where for one of my Quadrad colors to lay down. I laid down the plae blue-violet I intended for the Cyclops skin on the cloth. At the time I didn’t think this would be a problem. Until I realized I had no place to lay down the Yellow-Green colors.

Lesson for today: Don’t paint after drinking one cheap beer. Paint while drinking a bottle of wine? Sure! After/during a few cocktails? Sure! After a good 3-4 Beers? No problem. But one is just enough to distract me and lay down the wrong colors.

New Epic Caster - CAINE!

Hot damn! More epics in Superiority.



Aaron

Monday night progress? From Tim?!

Yes even though I sat through 2 hours of mind numbing lecture and then 3 student presentations I managed to get home, take care of the dogs, get a nice workout session in, and sit down at my painting desk. God I must have been on Speed last night. Despite my speed induced blur of activity I mostly took care of logistical activities. Went through the 2 boxes of Everblight, second Box of Skorne, as well as all the secondary casters and totem hunters I’ve got. (Can you tell I’m sitting on top of someone else’s stash as well as my own?) to do a parts check. My first Skorne Box was missing one of the Flachions for a Cyclops. Just thought a parts check would be a good idea on the rest of these before diving in too deeply. Luckily everything is accounted for.

Modeling consisted of a little work pinning Makeda’s right arm and tassel on. Her scabbards and back banner will both be painted separately and then put on after the fact. I also got her separated from her tab and pinned both of her feet. This is the solution I should have started with; pins in both feet allow me to use “binder” paper clips to hold the fig. This will work well for medium Warbeasts and infantry, however I doubt that the Titans will take well to that treatment. This will also help with keeping the fig on the base. Not sure if this will work for the medium trolls or not. Those “medium” warbeasts are massive!

After class tonight I’m looking at either working on the Cyclops of possibly Everblight assembly. I know all of you can’t wait to read the progress on that!

Morghoul is DONE! ...well mostly

Last night starting at about 8:30 I finally got around to sitting at my painting desk to finish off Morghoul. I still needed to complete the NMM armor trim, as well as the NMM razor claws and finally the gems. I made excellent progress all around. The claws look great and the trim does not look bad either. Thin lines of “metal” are always entertaining to try and paint up in NMM, very little space to get the reflecting effect, but I think I did pretty well. Finished him all off at about 10:20. Felt very good with myself as I crawled into bed until I realized I never actually did his 4 gem stones. So the gems must be completed and photos will be made available later this week.

Sunday Progress

So, after recovering from a long Saturday, I got to work around 12:30 Sunday afternoon. I highlighted the greys, re-covered the blacks and painted the flesh on Karchev. Now it's just the small matter of highlighting the blacks and going back over the metallics and the painting will be done (less the bases - which I will batch complete later with other models for consistency).

I may have time to take some pics tonight. We'll see.


Also: my new goal is to paint all models within 1 month of purchase. I am on the path so far with the Circle box set - I have the 2 Argus almost complete and I don't see the Warpwolf being too much work.



Aaron