Glazed Donuts por Los Todos!

After enjoying a little, and I mean very little, time with the new Heavenly Sword Demo for my PS3 I laucnhed back into Vinter to salvage my work from the previous evening and start fresh. In the comments for the last entry Aaron and I discussed the more amusing parts of working with glazes on a miniature. I ended up going with a Warm medium brown glaze (Vallejo Model Color Flat Brown) and used that as a glaze for Vinter's face and neck. Went back and re-worked the highlights and I'm much happier with the final product.

For Vinter's Armor I decided to just re-base coat and start fresh. After doing so I worked up a really nice Dark Blue, which I was pretty happy with last night. I get the feeling I'll be looking that over again this weekend and end up working a glaze on his armor and then re-highlight to tone down some of the highlights.

I was torn on working the metal aspects of the figure (sword and armor trim). Privateer has an official no Non-Metallic Metal painting for studio work and I have such a love of the technique when executed well. I quickly decided the following

a) I have no chance to actually win the competition, so any prejudice against NMM doesn't matter

b) I have no chance (or desire for that matter) to get a studio painting job out of this, so showcasing my ability to paint by their standards doesn't matter

Plus this figure will be sitting in my display case from August 21st on. Screw those hippies I'm painting the way I LIKE IT!

Gen Con Painting Update
I'm expecting Vinter to be finished by the middle of the week And then I've got two weeks to work up a second submission, Just not quite sure what yet...

Resetting the Paint Drive

I’ve now set the Skorne painting for GenCon to the side and I’m starting to work up the items for the painting competition. I’ve been trying to get back into higher end painting mode by finally finishing off the Spring Reaper mini exchange assignment (now officially 6 weeks late) but that was not quite revving me back up as I expected. The reaper assignment painting is finished, just need to do a bit of base work. If I get time to take pictures I’ll throw them up here before it hits the mail tomorrow.

Monday night I had severe difficulties sleeping so I sat back at the painting table and really laid into a figure. I pulled out Kaya the Bounty Hunter from the Reaper Warlord line. I’ve had this figure for probably 3-4 years, primed and sitting around. Started about 9:30 and quickly 2.5 hours had flown by. For the first time in about a year I was really enjoying the painting process. No stress, just working the figure. She’s still is not done but now she just needs to have the little bit of metal armor finished off and then work on all the little details of the fig, pouches, scroll, weapons, etc. Yes I’m aware that I need to get working on the GenCon Comp pieces but I think I needed this, to reset my paint drive. Now she will sit to the side until after the GenCon painting is completed

Last night I sat down with King Vinter Realthrorn IV from the Privateer Press IKRPG line. I’m currently planning to submit him in to the Privateer Press Painting Comp. I spent time looking over the "Lions Coup" comic and scenarios from No Quarter for inspiration, and decided on extremely dark blue armor with, Bronze trim, Royal Red Cape and some green alternate light source highlighting from the accumulator in his sword. Launched into painting him and so far I'm pretty displeased with the product. I really liked base/shadow coat I had for his armor but as I started highlighting up to base coat and then highlights the coloration was coming out more dark lavender than dark blue. As I started working on the face I think I’ve ended with too great of a contrast from shadow to highlight with insufficient coloration in between. Luckily none of this is game breaking. If I re-base the armor I won’t lose significant details, and I think a thin wash on the face will salvage my efforts there.

One Month Warning!!!

So in one month, Gen Con will be on top of us. Those of us going should already be in Indianapolis and everything will need to be completed. My own Progress

Hordes National Painting:
I've finished off all my painting for the nationals tournament as of last night, polishing off 10 Venators and 2 Paingivers in the past week. I've got enough for two full painted lists, if I decide to finish the touch ups on a 2nd Warlock. Either Hexeris or Makeda.

Now it's time to focus on painting for the Painting Comps. I would like to par take in the Gen Con general as well as the Privateers separate painting event. I may have to utilize some work which I have already started, but I will definitely be par taking in at least one of those, hopefully both!

Pachyderms off the Port Bow!

Paint load from the past 2 weeks. I painted up the Bronze Back and one of the Gladiators from scratch. The 2nd Gladiator needed touch ups to match my new color scheme, and the cannoner got included for the “family shot”