Broken Zealot Painting Blog

From the Desk: DominationThroneCheatery Mashup

2012-01-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

Another total mash-up desk post here.
Meager progress on the Throne. As you can see, I've gotten everything put together except for the lower teeth and the tentacle claws. The sorceress is on a pin and just set on top rather than glued in yet since I plan to paint her separately. Getting all the tentacles attached to the main body was actually pretty easy. I used the drop-of-paint-to-mark-where-to-drill method, and it worked out very easy. Still though, there's a lot of gaps to putty later. Also the tentacles weren't all even at the bottom so I had to do some leveling with plasticard to get the whole thing attached to the base and level. The scale of this thing is just crazy though, standing over 8" tall.

Played in the Domination release event at my LGS. Rather than some huge battle report, here's a bunch of highlights:

10 players! (4 Legion, 3 Circle, 1 Troll, 1 Khador, 1 Cygnar)
Didn't take any pictures. Boo!!!
I won the Legion faction coin!
I played 6 games total, spanning 6 warlocks, and won every single battle by assassination.
The dice gods were throwing their blessings on me left and right throughout all but the first game.
Had a seriously fun time overall. The open format is definitely my favorite.
Played the Throne in 2 of my 4 games and was very happy with it overall.
One other player had a fully painted Throne for the event. I was totally impressed he had it done so fast.
The tournament winner coin went to the Khador player. Crazy!

Hats off to our TO and Press Ganger Ray. Even though he said this event was a piece of cake for him to run compared to most other, I brought him a Seether as a gift of thanks. It was sort of a win-win since that Seether had been sitting in my unpainted bucket for ages, and he enjoys playing Cryx from time to time. But seriously, Ray did a great job of running the event and impressed me multiple times during the tournament with his knowledge of the rules. Go Ray!

Ok, that's enough. I really need to be spending my time assembling and painting rather than all this blogging.

From the Desk: Updates on Throne, Health and Misc

2012-01-19T21:24:00.000-08:00

Three different topics tonight! First up, progress on the Legion battle engine. I got a fair amount of assembly done in the last couple days. Just now I finished drilling holes for pinning the tentacles. I gotta say, when they say use a dust mask, they mean it! I'm glad I heeded the warning. I was using the dremel, in the garage, with a dusk mask, and I'm still feeling like it wasn't entirely safe. The amount of very fine dust particles spewed out was pretty crazy. After having taken what some might be a rather liberal stance on paint toxicity, I'm going to go on record saying that being extra cautious with the resin kits is highly advisable. Inhaling the dust particles is seriously bad news. That stuff won't leave your lungs. I highly recommend the wet method for any cutting, filing or drilling, regardless of what tools you use.
Ok, warning past, I am happy with the amount of progress. There's going to be a lot of gap filling to do though, and certainly some final mold line cleanup. The kit overall is pretty good, but the mold lines on the tentacles gets a little out of control. I'm not so surprised though given how wild those things are.

Second update, my push to get this battle engine assembled is because our LGS' Domination event is this Saturday and I wanted to field it. I don't have any solid plan for how to use it, but I want to bring the giant beastie to the table at least once. It won't be painted, and might be missing a few final detail pieces, but it's going to make an appearance. I just need to come up with a good way to transport it...

Third and final, thanks to those that gave me feedback on the health article. I'm still running down some additional information so there will probably be more updates in the future.

Paint Toxicity

2012-01-17T10:04:00.000-08:00

If you're a brush licker, you need to read this post. It could save your health!
There's a lot of discussions out there about whether paints are toxic or not. It's easy to read the side of a bottle of paint and see "non-toxic" and take that at face value. However that labeling may only be applicable to a specific type of exposure based on "expected usage" of the product. For those of us that lick our brushes though, that isn't necessarily part of the expected usage, so the question of toxicity is still on the table. I started off with a curiosity to learn a little more about paints and potential toxicity and, like Alice, found myself quickly falling down the rabbit hole. This post is a summary of what I learned that's relevant to those of us in the miniatures painting community. As a quick note, this post is rather lengthy so I've tried to organize it with headings to help you skip to sections you are most interested in.

Disclaimers:
First, I am not a toxicologist, government regulator, lawyer, chemist, manufacturer, or any other profession even remotely related to the art industry. I should not be considered an expert and the information presented here is to the best of my understanding. I've done the best I can to validate all the information presented, but I've provided numerous reference URLs for you learn more.
Second, I am not being compensated in any way by any manufacturer for this post. Everything presented here was as a result of my own rigorous investigation and although I dearly love my painting hobby, learning the facts was my chief motivation here.
Third, I am only covering traditional acrylic paints. That is pigment and acrylic polymer emulsion medium. I am not covering other acrylic additives or oil paints. I am also not covering other materials of the hobby such as putties, resins, plastics, metals or spray sealants (or anything else for that matter). If there's enough interest in other materials I will happily do future research and posts on those.

Grades of Acrylic Paints:
For the purposes of my investigation, I broke up acrylic paints into 3 groups:

Hobby grade - These are paints use for the miniatures painting hobby and make up 99% of my paint supplies. As examples on my desk, I have P3, RMS, RPP, GW, VMC, VGC, VPA, VMA, and Secret Weapon (see abbreviations in sidebar).
Craft grade - These are paints bought in craft stores that come in larger bottles. They are used for a wide variety of projects. I've excluded them from my investigation for a number of reasons. The main reasons are there are a huge array of manufacturers out there and I own almost none of them due to the particle size of the pigments. I will note that in general, I found craft grade paints tend to be even safer (less toxic) than hobby grade paints. On my desk I have Delta Ceramcoat, Folk Art, Craft Smart, DecoArt, and Apple Barrel.
Artist grade - This refers to acrylic paints intended for traditional canvas artists. They are purchased in art stores, come in tubes, and tend to be far thicker than traditional miniatures paints. Although I own a few random tubes of artist grade paint (from Winsor & Newton, Golden Acrylic, and Liquitex) I almost never use them. In general, most artist grade paints are non toxic, however there are many notable exceptions and if you are going to use them, make sure to read the labels carefully. On my desk I have W&N Finity, W&N Artisian, Liquitex Professional, and Golden Liquid Acrylics.

Regardless of the grade of paints, they all fall under the same regulatory bodies and the information provided here is applicable to all of them.
Also note that I'm not going to specifically cover inks, washes, dry pigments, metallics, glazes, additives, or other related products. I've added some notes on them at the very end in the glossary. Again though, the guidelines of how to read the labels will apply to them as well.

A Brief History of Acrylic Paints:
Acrylic paints are a relatively recent invention (about 60 years old). Acrylic paints are, very simplistically, plastic in water with pigments added. The plastic is an acrylic polymer emulsion and when applied to a surface, the water evaporates depositing the acrylic polymer. That polymer then hardens and is unable to be re-hydrated. It is these qualities that make them very well suited for the miniatures painting hobby.
The first acrylic paints were made using similar pigments as traditional artist oil-based paints. Many of these pigments were made using heavy metals (more on that below) because of their colorfastness. Today, most pigment are made from various organic or synthetic compounds. Some pigments are even made from normal dirt!

Quick Chemistry and Health Lesson:
Heavy metals (such as As, Cd, Co, Cr, Hg, Pb, Sb, Se) are toxic! If absorbed into the bloodstream (through skin, ingestion, or inhalation) they can cause very serious health problems. Cadmium (Cd) for example can cause liver and kidney failure and cause cancer. So if you're thinking that the small amounts of paint that we're working with can't be dangerous, think again!

A quick note on metallic paints: The "metal" part of metallic paints is actually tiny particles of mica. Mica itself is not particularly toxic, but there are a number of studies out there in the cosmetics field that will indicate dangers about mica. To the best of my research, this is only relevant for the particles being inhaled, and there is no specific toxicity dangers to the mica particles being ingested. In fact I discovered that some toothpastes actually include powdered mica as a whitening agent.

Regulating Bodies
There are three primary regulating bodies in regard to artist material safety.

The first, and in my opinion most important, is the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). Unfortunately this body oversees a huge variety of things. The relevant standard to know about is D-4236. This is the standard for artist materials and you'll see this referenced on pretty much all of the paints. More on this later.
The second is the Art & Creative Materials Institute (ACMI) which is a US-based non-profit organization that certifies a variety of artistic materials. Essentially, as far as I can tell, their standards are an implementation of ASTM D-4236, but with simplified labeling. The upside is that the ACMI labeling makes it much quicker to assess the safety of a product. The downside is that relatively few products seem to actually use this standard. Of my own collection of paints, less than a third of them had it, and specifically none of what I classify as hobby grade paints had it.
The third is the European Commission which is responsible for the EC symbol you'll see on many paints. There's a lot of details around this on their website. It's essentially meant to be the same as the ASTM D-4236 standard. Obviously I didn't go into the detail to determine how similar those standards are.

Standards and Labeling (or... This is the important part!)
So right about now you might be thinking Ok great, that's all fascinating, but I still don't know if my paints are safe! So let's go over what to look for on the labels.
I'm going to start with this P3 Iosan Green. If you look at the label you'll see the text "Conforms to ASTM D4236". What this means is that the product is labeled according to the D-4236 standard for labeling artist materials. This part does not mean it is entirely non-toxic. It only means that the labeling will include any relevant warnings. If you keep reading you'll see "Nontoxic", "Do not ingest", and "In case of eye contact...". So how do you make sense of all that given it seems a little conflicting? Well the "Nontoxic" part is pretty straightforward, the "Do not ingest" is an indication of intended use, and the directive about contact with eyes is exactly what it is. At first review it may seem like this label is saying that licking your brushes is going to be "bad" in some unspecified way. But, before you panic, let's take a look at another example.

This bottle of Golden Fluid Acrylics is a much more interesting study. Notice how it has the "ASTM D4236" seal on the back. However, in the fine print you'll also see "Warning: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer." That's right boys and girls, this paint is not safe to lick. This is why I said the D-4236 standard was not a seal of non-toxicity in itself. If you go to the Golden Paints website for more detail, you'll discover that this particular paint contains "crystalline silica" and "iron oxide" (and yes, it's also on the front label of the bottle). On the data sheet they have many other heavy metals listed as used in other paints. This bottle is a good example of why it's important to check the labels carefully. If you just looked for the "Conforms to ASTM D-4236" labeling, and didn't read the rest, you could be on your way to the hospital. Ok, enough scare tactics. Let's move on...

Now here we have a RMS bottle with no ASTM labeling on it. You will however notice that it has the "CE" symbol, and the words "non-toxic". Although I am less versed in the details of the CE labeling, if you see these together you can feel fairly safe that the paint is non-toxic.

This is just a quick overview, but you should have learned the importance of reading the labels carefully. Also I have admittedly had a bit more of a US-centric focus in terms of standards, so for those readers in other geographic regions I do apologize. I only had access to paints available in US stores so hopefully your labelings will be similar. Odds are that one or both of the ASTM or CE labeling schemes will appear on your paints. There are other labels (swirling arrows and big "e" to name a couple) which I have not researched here. Also remember that the ACMI labeling functions as a roll-up for approved non-toxic product under the D-4236 standard, so if you see the ACMI AP label, it's safe. For now though, let's cut to the chase on some specific manufacturer's lines...

Guidance for Specific Manufacturer's Lines:
Once again, please take care in noting that this is only my guidance and I am not a qualified toxicologist, doctor, or any other professional of any kind to rely on. I'm only sharing the guidance I am giving myself about paints I commonly use. This is a list of paints immediately found on my desk that I use on a regular basis. If I've noted it as "safe", that means the entire line seems safe for normal painting activity, including brush licking.

Reaper Miniatures: Safe! Reaper actually responded to me 2 days after I emailed them. They sent me an entire data sheet of product safety information about their entire line of paints. Unfortunately the sheet is not directly available on their website. If you are interested, you can email them. Please note that the data sheet only covered the Reaper Master Series paints though. The Reaper Pro Paints were replaced by the RMS line. I think in order to be on the safe side, the RPPs are going into my "archives".
Games Workshop: Safe! Admittedly I'm relying on the labeling alone here. I attempted to contact GW by email but never heard back from them after 2 weeks.
Privateer Press: Safe! Same boat as GW actually (no email response for 2 weeks), but with the caveat that I've seen forum posts by Matt DiPietro and Mike McVey stating the paints are non-toxic and these guys are consummate brush lickers when they use the 2BB technique. Heck, Mike helped formulate the P3 line of paints, so he ought to know what's in them.
Secret Weapon Miniatures: Safe! Ok, this needs a significant caveat here. At present the Secret Weapon line is not labeled for safety. Also they have dry pigments and washes only. However Justin McCoy from Secret Weapon went above and beyond in helping me out on this research project. Turns out he is in the process of getting the ACMI certification for the entire line of pigments, washes and scenics. Many thanks to him for the numerous emails we traded!
Acrylicos Vallejo: Do not ingest! Vallejo was the one manufacturer that I didn't attempt to contact via email. They have a very comprehensive website in terms of safety standards and ratings and a good FAQ on health questions. Now when I say "mostly safe", it's important to note that most of their paints are fine, but some are of questionable nature. The individual labeling on their dropper bottles is not always clear either. I never found a single bottle in my collection that says "non-toxic" on it. My unfounded suspicion is that there are trace amounts of something bad. I'd love to call it safe, but I think going forward I'm going to avoid any 2BB work with them.

Some Final Thoughts or What I'm Going To Do Differently:
Hopefully you've found something useful in here, and hopefully nothing inaccurate. If you know of any inaccuracies, please post a comment! Completely unlike my normal approach to this blog, I spent a lot of time working on this post. Seriously, probably 30 to 40 hours of reading, emailing, searching, reading more, going to various stores looking for other paints, trolling through forum posts, cross-checking facts where possible, reading even more, and of course writing this post. I've done my best to present accurate information, but I'm only human. In any case, here's my personal take-aways:

Red tape on bottles - Any paints that I plan to keep in normal circulation will get a stripe of red tape to remind me of any potential toxicity concerns.
Cleaning out my rinse jars more often - This is something I didn't explicitly cover above. Although generally the paint ingredients are inactive, leaving a jar of water out that's gotten all kinds of stuff in it has the potential to turn bad. I had this happen to me once when I left a jar of very dirty rinse water sit for over a month. When I opened it, there was a puff of compressed air released and a noxious odor. As a result of this study and seeing more than a couple posts about rinse water going bad, I'm going to make an effort to dump out my rinse water between each painting session. Btw, the dish soap I put in my rinse to condition my brushes... I check and it's safe.
Added caution about inhalation potential - By far the biggest danger presented is inhalation of materials. Although most hobby grade dry pigments and airbrush paints are fairly safe, getting materials into your lungs is a recipe for problems. On of my goals for this year is to use the airbrush and a couple of the VMA paints I have are not entirely clear on their safety. I think I'll make sure to use caution with those and not spray them up my nose.
Brush licking is still game on - My wife asked me whether licking my brush was a habit or a conscious practice. Although 2BB work is definitely a conscious act, I had to admit that licking my brush after I rinse it is just a habit now. Fortunately it's a pretty safe one. I'm going to continue to lick my brush, 2BB, and even on occasion lick the back of my hand and use it as a wet palette.

References:
The following are the most significant of the references I used (that weren't already linked above). Obviously there is a lot of information out there on the internet and some of it is of questionable accuracy. It took some digging to figure out what sites had useful and factual material.

Wikipedia - Yeah, it's Wikipedia, but much of the information on it I was able to corroborate from other sources, and Wikipedia had lots of information all in one convenient place.
ACMI Safety - Although I listed it above, this page in particular is of great use.
eHow - Actually just this specific eHow page with a very concise summary of the ASTM D-4236 standard.
Earth Pigments - I don't actually use their products at this time, but they have wonderful fact sheets on their site about product and material safety.

Glossary:
Whew! If you've made it this far and you're still reading, great job! I've included a glossary of terms at the end here, more for my own benefit as a course of writing this post. Thanks for your time reading this!

Additives - Medium modifiers that change the properties of the paint in terms of drying time, viscosity, or cohesion.
Binder - A medium used to bind the pigment to the surface. For acrylic paints, this is the Acrylic Polymer.
Cohesion - A measure of a liquid's tendency to cling to itself. Often referred to as surface tension in terms of the application of paint. Flow improvers are used to reduce paint cohesion and allow it to flow from the brush easier.
Colorfastness - The ability for a pigment to retain its original hue without fading over time.
Dry pigments - Raw pigment material, separate from any sort of liquid medium.
Emulsion - A mixture of two liquids that are normally not mixable.
Glazes - Generally a formulation designed to extend working time of a paint and cause it to form a thin coating.
Inks - Generally formulated with a higher concentration of pigment and a thinner medium. Ink formulations can vary greatly between manufacturers and particularly between paint grades.
Medium - Refers to the vehicle of the pigment, typically a water-based liquid of some kind for acrylic paints.
Metallics - Paints with a metallic medium (generally flakes of mica) suspended in it. Generally the higher the ratio of mica to pigment, the shinier the paint. Normal "steel" metallics are made using black pigment.
Particle Size - Refers to the size of the pigment particles. Generally the smaller the particle, the smoother the look.
Pigment - Refers to the color agent specifically.
Retarders - An additive that extends the drying time of the paint to allow for more working time. Also referred to as an extender.
Viscosity - A measure of a liquid's "thickness" or resistance to being moved.
Washes - Generally a formulation intended to spread a thin coat of pigment over an area, but with enough flow to cause the wash to recede into crevasses.

From the Desk: Once Again Unto The Blight Dear Friends

2012-01-16T19:58:00.000-08:00

So right about now you're looking at this picture and thinking "Great, another random useless post. So glad I clicked a link to get here." Well, yes, it's another random useless post. I haven't gotten much done since finishing eVayl in terms of painting. I did some trimming, and some prep, and cleaned my desk, and worked on a blog project (which will be unveiled tomorrow sometime). But in terms of painting or assembling, I've gotten a big fat zero done. There's plenty of semi-valid reasons. In fact, let's play a game called Pick the Weakest Excuse...

I was ultra-busy with work for the last week and barely got time to sleep, but took this sweet picture of the view from my hotel room.
I have family visiting so anytime not consumed with work is taken up having fun with them.
The weather here is unseasonably cold an I can't prime anything.

Regardless of which one you picked, they are all true to varying degrees, but feel free to post a comment about what a huge slacker I've been so that I get a bit more motivation. [No really, go ahead and comment] Anyway, where I was going is this big empty base (see above) is also the base for my Throne of Everblight, which I picked up the other day. It's going to be a huge project so I'm going to do a series of posts on it. This will be the largest model project I've tackled yet, so it seems appropriate.

Oh, and I wasn't kidding. Check in tomorrow for a very special blog post.

Vayl, Consul of Everblight

2012-01-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

Now this model was a delight to paint. Great sculpt. If I had one complaint it was that the two Oraculi in her right hand look a little odd with the circle of whatever connecting them. I'm not really sure what else they could have done though, so I consider it a minor gripe. The cape took a tricky bit of pinning to do without letting the join show too oddly, but the rest was easy. I decided eVayl needed a slightly more epic base than most of my Warlocks have gotten so I did a little carved glowing rune action. It also served to tie the colors together better.

This was also the first time that I used The Army Painter grass tufts. These particular ones were the highland tufts. I have to say that I really like them. Very easy to work with and they look quite nice.

Overall things went pretty well with this model. I spent an average amount of time on it rather than trying to really pour over it and get everything perfect. I really don't want to get too bogged down at this point and keep my momentum up. There were some details I could have spent more time on like painting some pattern on the cloak, shading the metals a little more deeply, and doing some better pushing of the shadows. The glowing bits could have certainly used a little more work as well, but that's become somewhat of a sore point for me that I'm not going to get into right now.

This base actually made me quite happy too. Overall I'm looking forward to having this model on the battlefield.

Taryn di la Rovissi

2012-01-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

I've lost count of how many times I've misspelled this model's name. Nevertheless, she's done. One less merc to paint. It was a pretty pleasant model to paint actually. Simple, easy to get to, and generally a nice sculpt. She's got a lot going on, so I tried to create a color scheme that picked out different functional elements of her outfit without it getting too busy with colors. The blue shades permeate almost the entire model in one way or another.

I can't say I'm going to be playing her anytime soon, but I may get antsy to try out the Ashlynn theme force at some point and this is one more piece of that puzzle.

2011 Wrap Up, and 2012 Resolutions

2012-01-02T20:20:00.000-08:00

[Disclaimer: This post contains fluffy, introspective nonsense... Just like last year's did.]

After 5 years of doing this, it seems pretty rote, but I'm doing it anyway. 2011 overall wasn't a good year for my hobbies.

Last year's goals:
1) Enter KublaCon masterclass painting competition - Success! Not a win, but a valuable experience for sure. I'll definitely enter at the masterclass level again this year. In all fairness, this was my main goal for this year.
2) Close out unpainted factions - Fail! Seriously, too little effort, too late. I'm so close on most of them. Maybe this year.
3) Do a series of speed painting posts - Fail! Well, kinda. I did a couple, but overall my painting time this year was horrible and I just didn't get a lot done.

Models painted last year:
This year was noticeably lighter with a total of 52 models completed, and that's if I generously include the Solar System project for my son. I'm going to count those planets since having a one year old in the house definitely impacted my painting time (joyously I might add). Overall not a gangbusters year. However I spent a ton of time on the War Hog for KublaCon and really found value in doing the Road to Competition series of posts as a part of that effort.
Legion: 32
Minions: 2
Mercs: 1
Khador: 1
Cygnar: 7
Planets: 9

Goals for next year:
1) Enter KublaCon masterclass painting again. This is a no-brainer, and I've got plenty of lead time for it. I've already got a couple models in mind as well. As a part of this I'm going to do another RtC series of posts.
2) Finish reading my books on color theory. I've got two of them sitting around that I started but never finished. This is a pretty straightforward goal. The real trick will be whether I learn and apply something significant from them. I'll commit to chronicling my learnings in more color theory posts.
3) Use my airbrush once. This probably sounds like a dumb goal. I mean seriously, just once? The idea here is simple: If I commit to using it once, odds are it'll get me over the initial hurdle of trying it out and figuring out the logistics and I'll actually start using it more. [I'm doing the same thing with the gym.] Again, I'll plan to record my attempts in a set of airbrush tagged posts.

From the Desk: An alligator, a Sorceress, and a Gun Mage walk into a bar...

2011-12-30T21:03:00.000-08:00

... and the bartender says "Hey gator! What's with all the guns!?!"

Ok, sorry, not a great joke. Seriously though, look at this lineup of models I'm working on. I hadn't noticed it until this morning. I heard on Boosted Damage about how there was an increase in bust size for the Legion ladies, but Tarin here really takes the cake. In any case, it's more painting progress.

From the Desk: Yay for Vacation!

2011-12-29T10:23:00.000-08:00

I'm actually painting again, and not just a little. I'm getting a good 2 hours of painting in each day lately. It helps that I'm on vacation. I'm pretty focused on eVayl right now since it's my only unpainted Legion model, but also because it's a really sweet model. So far I'm enjoying painting this model since everything is fairly accessible. There's some awkward places to reach though, like her left cheek and the joins between her cape and back. However so far things are going smoothly. Not picture here is further progress on the Bull Snapper, and I started Tarin last night as well.

I found a little extra motivation recently when I put in my model collection into iBodger and noted what was painted and what wasn't. Even though I update my blog with that information, the iBodger representation gave me a different perspective by showing percentages:

Legion - 99.0% painted
Protectorate - 98.0% painted
Mercenaries - 97.4% painted
Cryx - 95.6% painted
Cygnar - 87.5% painted
Minions - 30.8% painted

It was easy to look at the various factions and see 1 or 2 unpainted models and just skip over them. But these percentages really strike a nerve in my inner completionist. Time to harness that OCD energy!

From the Desk: Legion Metals

2011-12-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

My buddy Lance suggested that I should do a blog post about how I painted the metals on Belphagore, so here it goes. This process is pretty straightforward, but somewhat lengthy. I'm not going to show any in-progress shots obviously since Belphagore is already done. First, let's look at the finished product...

I like to have a good pop to my metals overall, but I'm not a huge fan of non-metallic metals (NMM). So to accomplish a good amount of distinction between metal surfaces, I have to somewhat force and exaggerate the look of the metal plates. My end goal is to have metal that is shaded to represent a normal zenithal highlighting look, but still preserve enough metallic appearance so that it doesn't look overly forced. For this model I also wanted to introduce a little bluish tint to the recesses just to create a little more style. It gives the metal enough variation and interest to the eye.

Ok, so that's the end goal. Now to talk about the process. For the benefit of those who haven't read my older posts about philosophies on metallics, I'm going to go into some detail here on my reasoning. This reasoning has evolved over time and I am sure it will continue to evolve yet further. So here's the process I went through as I remember it for this model:

Basecoat black - I always basecoat my metallic surfaces black first, especially if I primed white. I just find that it helps the metallics to reflect a little better.
Basecoat GW Boltgun Metal - GW makes some of the best metallics out there for my personal style. I start with this darker metallic tone as the basecoat. This is a pretty sketchy basecoat too. A few missed or thin spots helps with the look of the armor I feel.
Wash GW Badab Black - I'm so addicted to this stuff. I use it all the time for metallics. It just helps get those recesses dulled back down and create good separation. This wash doesn't need to be even. It just needs to hit recesses real good. Nothing blows the look of metallics like deep corners that are reflecting light.
Heavy wash GW Asurmen Blue - This is just applied to the recessed sections. This technique works well for Circle armor as well, except using the green wash over bronzes. As I recall, I did at least 2 coats of this wash.
Re-basecoat GW Boltgun Metal - Now I go back and use thinned Boltgun to "re-basecoat" the raised portions of the plates. I use a thinner version of this to keep it from getting too bright. Again, I'm attempting to force some shading here and reinforce the zenithal highlight effect by not lightening up the surfaces that are pointed more downwards.
2BB VMC Black - Now I do some very deep forced shading by two brush blending in some slightly thinned black into recesses and on lower plates that should be darker.
Highlight GW Boltgun Metal - Now I start working highlights back up. Nothing revolutionary here, just hitting the higher angled plates that would get more light from above.
Highlight GW Mithril Silver - Same as the previous step, just less area being highlighted.
Highlight VMC Metallic Medium - Again, just like previous step. Note that the metallic medium is crazy bright and has no black pigment in it at all. I try to reserve this for specific points.

And there you have it! A mere, uh, 13 steps! Honestly I feel like time invested in metallics, even just 4 steps (basecoat, 1 wash, 1 shade, 1 highlight) really pays off in the long run.

From the Desk: Albino Gators (part 2)

2011-12-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to me! "Santa" brought me gators just like I suspected. The PP bundle was a pretty sweet gift since the only duplicates to what I already had were the Bull Snapper (for which 2 isn't a problem), and the Totem Hunter (which I may opt to paint a new one of anyway since I screwed up the base on the previous one). In addition to the bundle my buddies Henry and Lance got me the other 2 gator warlocks (Calaban and Maelok) which gives me the full spread. So I've gone from just a few unpainted items to a whole new faction. Yikes! Fortunately the Gators don't amount to a huge model count. A grand total of 15 models at this point.

I still have a number of decisions to make in terms of creating a cohesive looking force, which is my commitment in taking on gators.
First decision: basing. I'm going to do swamp bases, similar to what I did for my Swamp Gobbers. It will require a significant amount more work, but when the model count is so low it's easier to swallow. Plus I have a couple secret weapons to speed up the effort.
Second decision: theme color. I need something extra to tie together the army besides just being albinos in swamps. I like to include a color throughout the army. I'm still not decided on this. The Bull Snapper test somewhat forced me to re-think this color choice, primarily because he doesn't have anything else on him other than skin. I'm still kicking this one around.

One last note, after my previous post, my buddy Mike sent me a link to a BoLS post about speed painting albino gators which I hadn't seen before. It's an interesting read, but honestly I don't see myself using any of his techniques. It did however help me visualize an entire army of these guys, which I'm liking more and more.

Ok, time to get trimming and assembling!

From the Desk: Albino Gators

2011-12-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

Twas the night before Christmas,
and upstairs in my place,
I frantically struggled
to paint line an ace!

The gator was chomping away at my brush,
and I felt like my skills had turned into much.

Ok, sorry, not a very good rhyme. Honestly this whole post is going to be a pretty weak display of talent, so please bear with me. I'm also using this post as a way to track what I did as a part of this project before I lose the piece of paper I scribbled my notes on.

A couple weeks ago my wife asked what I wanted for Christmas and I half jokingly showed her the Privateer Blindwater Congregation Holiday Bundle which had caught my eye. It's not like I was looking to start another faction, but I told her if she thought the models looked cool that she could get that for me. Low and behold, I happened to spot a package arrive from PP a few days later. With the knowledge that I would end up with Gators to paint, I picked up a Bull Snapper as a test model and set about trying something quite different.

I wanted my gators to stand apart from all the other gators out there, so I kicked around a bunch of theme ideas. Fire (already done), lightning (still intriguing, but crazy), stone (boring), pink (pass). In the end, I came up with an idea of an albino. I started scouring the web for pictures of albino alligators and came across this excellent gallery of small albino alligators. Inspiration in hand, I set about forming a plan. The pictures are unfortunately set up to prevent download, so I couldn't import them into Kuler to analyze more closely. Fortunately a fellow painter/player told me about a Firefox plugin called Rainbow that lets you analyze colors right there in the browser. These pictures are the results of my first experiment.

So what did I use for the main skin? Well, here's my rough notes of the process:

Thin P3 Moldy Ochre wash
Thin P3 Midlund Flesh wash
Thin P3 Ordic Olive wash
Medium MWH drybrush over scales
Thin P3 Carnal Pink wash in limited places
Thin P3 Battle Dress Green wash in limited places
Slightly thinned RMS Jade Green stippled in key areas
Thin P3 Thornwood green wash in limited places to shade
Thin P3 CBB+Sanguine Base wash in limited places to shade
Thinned MWH to highlight

I'm still not completely sold on the effect. I think it's going to take a few more tries to really dial it in. But for a first attempt, I'm not terribly disappointed. I definitely have a bunch more work to do on this model though before I'm going to call it done.

Solar System: Neptune

2011-12-23T12:16:00.000-08:00

And I'm done! I'll include a photo of the assembled mobile after Christmas when I hang it up. Neptune was frustrating at first to paint, but then I did some crazy stuff. I did a wash of blue on it, which I started to not like while it was still wet, so I dunked it in my rinse water. After adding some whooshing clouds (technical term) it ended up pretty good I think. Not bad for averaging under an hour of painting time per planet.

Neptune, like Uranus, has only been visited by one spacecraft: Voyager 2 in 1989.
Neptune was discovered in 1846.
Even though you couldn't stand on the surface of Neptune (since it's a gas giant), if you could you would experience nearly identical gravity as on Earth.
Neptune's planet Triton was probably a captured satellite, inferred by it's retrograde orbit.
The winds on Neptune can reach a ridiculous 2,100 km/hr.

References:
The Nine Planets
Universe Today

Solar System: Uranus

2011-12-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

I'm getting close to done, and just in time for Christmas!

Uranus wasn't discovered to be a planet until March 13, 1781.
Uranus has only been visited by a single spacecraft: Voyager 2 in 1986.
Uranus spins on an axis nearly perpendicular with its axis of rotation around the sun. When visited by Voyager 2, its south pole was pointed towards the Sun.
There are rings around Uranus, but they, like its axis of rotation, are nearly perpendicular to its orbit around the Sun.
Even though it isn't the farthest planet out, it is the coldest planet in our solar system (below -200 C).

References:
The Nine Planets
Universe Today

Solar System: Saturn

2011-12-20T21:15:00.000-08:00

And now the famous Saturn. Interestingly Saturn is similar in composition to Jupiter. If it wasn't for Saturn's famous rings, it would probably be quite forgotten as a result of being so similar to Jupiter. However I found that I enjoyed painting Saturn far more than Jupiter.

Saturn was first visited by Pioneer 11 in 1979.
Saturn's specific gravity is 0.7, which means it would float in water (assuming you could find a big enough pond to put it in.
Despite spanning a diameter of over a quarter million kilometers, the rings of Saturn are less than 1000 meters thick. Those rings are made primarily of water in ice form.
Always overshadowed by Jupiter, Saturn has the second most satellites, currently counting at 62.
Saturn's day is a mere 10.5 hours, and that rapid spin actually translates to forces that cause the planet to shape into a flattened ball (wider than it is tall).
One of Saturn's moons (Enceladus) has ice geysers, which has the implication of potentially being the home of some form of life.

References:
The Nine Planets
Universe Today

Solar System: Jupiter

2011-12-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

Jupiter was not my favorite planet to paint. It's big, and the patterns were really hard to replicate. I also had trouble finding consistent photos. In the end I just decided to paint it interestingly and move on.

Jupiter was first visited by Pioneer 10 in 1973.
Although the 4 larger moons are fairly well known (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto), there are at least 59 other smaller moons.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a swirling storm 26,000 km across. To put that in perspective, that's more than twice the diameter of the Earth.
Jupiter is approximately 90% hydrogen and 10% helium.
Despite only having "trace" amounts of rock by mass and volume, Jupiter's core is probably rock consisting of 10 to 15 "Earths" worth of mass. Trace apparently means ~2% or less (by mass).
Outside of the core is the main bulk of the planet, consisting of (get this) liquid metallic hydrogen.
The different bands that surround the surface of Jupiter are clouds. Each band is actually blowing in opposite directions from its adjacent bands.
As gas giants go, Jupiter is about as big as it gets. Adding more material wouldn't significantly increase its size due to the gravitational compression.
Jupiter has dark rings, a huge magnetic field, emits more energy outward than it receives from the Sun, and generally just has a lot going on.

References:
The Nine Planets

Solar System: Mars

2011-12-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

I'm playing catch up now. I actually did Mars after painting Jupiter, but I am determined to post them in order. For painting Mars I decided to try and simulate the canals that run over the surface, so I used a stippling technique with some slightly thinned paint to create an irregular streaked pattern. It sort of worked. Good enough for galactic work at least.

The first spacecraft to visit Mars was Mariner 4 in 1965. Mars has been the destination for many spacecraft and landers for over 45 years now.
Despite being half the diameter of Earth, Mars has twice as many moons (Phobos and Deimos) and a volcano (Olympus Mons) which is 4 times has tall as Everest, which also happens to be the largest mountain in the entire solar system.
Mars has a very thin atmosphere with about 1% the atmospheric pressure of Earth. It is composed of mostly carbon dioxide.
Despite the thin atmosphere, strong winds can cause dust storms that engulf the entire surface of the planet for up to a month at a time.
Mars has polar ice caps at both poles, composed of both water and carbon dioxide (dry ice)

References:
The Nine Planets

Solar System: Earth

2011-12-07T09:29:00.000-08:00

Earth was probably the most fun to paint so far. There's tons of reference photos for it. Oh, and in answer to a question that was posted in one of the comments, these planet "models" are not smooth. The "sculpts" have raised sections on them to represent the patterned surfaces of the planets. The intention of the kit is to do a paint-by-numbers type of thing. I of course have abandoned the simple and added more personal fun to the project. The raised sections for Earth come in handy for obvious reasons. Anyway, without further ado, here's some little known facts about our home planet...

Due to erosion and tectonic activity, the Earth literally replaces its crust every half billion years, erasing any past geological history such as crater impacts.
The Earth's composition (by mass) is approximately 1/3 iron and 1/3 oxygen.
Earth is the only planet in the solar system where water can exist in liquid form on the surface.
The Moon's gravitation is actually causing the Earth's rotation to slow very gradually (2 milliseconds per century). That means in another 180 million years, we'll get an extra hour in each day for painting and playing!

References:
The Nine Planets

Solar System: Venus

2011-12-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

For all of those on the IABN feed wondering why you're getting these posts: I'm sorry. I'm not sure why these are showing up. It's only supposed to pick up posts from my blog with IABN tags.

Venus! Talk about an unpleasant place to visit. It's probably the most inhospitable planet in our solar system. I actually really enjoyed painting this one. I used a combination of washes and streaking and stippling to create the look of the whirling clouds that cover the entire surface of the planet. Speaking of which, let's take a look at some fun Venus facts...

Venus is the brightest object in Earth's sky after the Sun and Moon.
The surface of Venus is not visible through the complete cloud cover. These clouds are droplets of sulfuric acid, and they are pushed around constantly by permanent hurricane force winds.
Venus' atmosphere is crushing at 90 atmospheres of pressure. That's the equivalent of being half a mile underwater on earth.
It takes Venus 243 Earth days for it to complete one of its own days. In addition, it rotates backwards from Earth and has no magnetic field.
Venus is a mere 5% smaller than Earth, and has a similar composition as Earth.
Venus was first visited in 1962 by the Mariner 2 spacecraft.

References:
The Nine Planets

Solar System: Mercury

2011-12-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

Mercury! The first planet in our solar system. Researching pictures for Mercury had me suspicious for a while since they all appeared to be black and white. Then I discovered that's because it's just a big rock! Let's learn more...

Mercury's day lasts for a Mercury year and a half. Alaska's got nothing on these long days.
Mercury has no atmosphere because it all got boiled away from being so close to the Sun.
One side of Mercury is 430 C, and the other is -180 C. The slow rotation keeps the hot side hot, and the cold side cold. This makes for the most extreme temperature variations of any planet in our solar system.
If it wasn't for the gravitational compression that the Earth exerts on itself, Mercury would be the densest planet in our solar system.
Mercury was first visited by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1974.

References:
The Nine Planets
Universe Today
National Geographic

Solar System: The Sun

2011-12-03T15:12:00.001-08:00

Here's the first solar body for the mobile project for my son. I figured for my own education I'd spend a little time learning about each one as I went along, so rather than the normal painting type of post, these will be mini-educational posts! I'm sure most of you have already closed the window now, but for those of you still interested, here are fun facts I learned about the Sun!

The sun accounts for 99.8% of the mass in our solar system.
It's approximately 4.5 billion years old, which is about middle aged for its expected lifespan.
It's composed of about 70% hydrogren, 28% helium, and the rest is assorted metals. If you do the math, there's more than 10 times more metal in the Sun than in the entire rest of our solar system.
The Sun's light comes from the fusion reactions taking place, where hydrogen is turned into helium.
The Sun's output isn't constant. During a period of time in the 17th century, the Sun was less "active" and it caused a mini ice age on Earth.

References:
The Nine Planets

From the Desk: Project Solar System

2011-11-27T21:53:00.001-08:00

I'm starting a different sort of painting project now. My wife got a solar system kit for my son. He is of course too young to put it together himself, so I've been tasked with assembling and painting it. So rather than taking a quick and dirty approach to it using the very low quality craft paints and terrible brush, I figured I would use it as an opportunity to learn more about the planets and to paint something a little different. I'll be posting progress as I work my way through the planets.

5 Years of Blogging!!!!!

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

5 years ago on this day I started this blog. My intention was a simple one: to keep myself motivated on my painting. Little did I know how valuable it would be to have this blog. It has served as far more than just motivation, but at its core, it has been incredibly motivational. I've suffered through multiple burnouts, entered multiple painting competitions, and relished many finished projects here. So please indulge me as I step into the WABAC machine and review the journey briefly...

Stats:
What would a review be without some good old fashioned stats!
Total models painted: 323 (that's almost 1 model per week)
Total posts: 524 (that's about twice a week)
Published comments: 304
Current average hits per day: about 70 (Thank you IABN!)

Painting Skill:
I picked one of the first models I posted and one of the most recent. The difference is pretty striking. I'm honestly quite happy with how my skills have progressed given that this is still just a hobby for me. Painting Alexia way back then was a pretty big challenge. Putting her side-by-side with Rhyas is no contest. My blending is smoother, my metalics are far superior, my brush accuracy is better, and finally I'm sure I spent less time on Rhyas than I did on Alexia.
Basing is also something I go the extra mile on now. It's not enough to just flock and forget now. Even basic troopers get some sort of hand-made decoration to their bases. Overall I feel like I've struck a good balance of improving my quality while still getting models completed. If anything, that's the one thing that hasn't changed. Unless I'm painting for a competition, I like to keep moving on to strike a good balance between quality and completions.

General Blogging:
When I first started, blogging was pretty awkward. And my pictures were terrible to say the least. I'm certainly no master now, but after this many posts I've become much more comfortable with throwing up random posts. I've also learned how to take better pictures, make better use of Blogger, optimize the whole blog entry process to minimize the impact to hobby time, and generally feel competent about sharing my thoughts.

Final Thoughts:
First, I want to actually thank all the folks out there that posted good comments. Second, I can look back on the last 5 years of blogging for this hobby and really appreciate the investment in it. Third and finally, to all the other hobby bloggers out there, keep at it! The inspiration out there is part of what makes this hobby stay fresh for so long. Here's to 5 more years of painting like we have a pair!

Bethayne, Voice of Everblight

2011-11-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

This wraps up my current unpainted Legion models, and (until eVayl comes out) a complete set of all the warlocks and beasts. The pictures here are a little dull for some reason, despite shooting them multiple times. The metal for her blades is highly washed out. I really need an overhead light.

This model was pretty fast and easy to paint, with the exception that her right hand is covering her chest and made it a little rough to get in there with the brush. However the rest of it went pretty well. I gave her a much darker skin tone that most of the other warlocks, mainly to give a bit more color contrast with the rest of the surfaces. The blue/black leathers and metals needed some contrast so the darker skin tone pushes more into the purple to help achieve that.
Painting both Bethayne and Belphagore at the same time turned out to make things much easier. They had a lot of common surfaces to paint, but each one had more of one type of surface than the other in general. For example, Bethayne's flesh is much more obvious than Belphagore's, whereas Belphagore's armor is clearly more prominent than Bethayne's. So painting process wise it worked out well because I could mix paint and concentrate more on one than the other as I worked each section.

Well, that's it for today. My desk is remarkably barren at this time so I need to get to work assembling something to paint next, provided I don't get distracted further by reading Domination.

Belphagore

2011-11-20T13:40:00.001-08:00

This will just be a really quick post since I'm going to post Bethayne right away as well. Technically they aren't really "done" since I haven't sealed them yet. But since they are completed and I'm just waiting for my shipment of sealer come in I figured I'd go ahead and post them. After my recent experience with the Krylon satin sealer, I've decided to go back to my tried and true Testors double coating. Anyway, another post coming right up!

From the Desk: Paired Painting

2011-11-16T08:25:00.001-08:00

Quick desk update here. I'm painting Bethayne and Belphagore together so that they match in color scheme as much as possible. The colors used are identical, but the patterning and shading has some variances in how it was applied. Overall though they are pretty consistent so far.

I'm not entirely sure why these pictures turned out so blue-ish, but it gives a general idea of the progress. I tried to do a little color correction, but honestly I think my background caused most of the problem and it turned the whole "touch-up" exercise into a level of effort far beyond a "from the desk" type of post.

This pair represents the last of my unpainted Legion at this point, although I am anxiously awaiting the release of eVayl at the end of the month. I was hoping to have these done before the end of the week since our Foodmachine tournament is this Saturday, but with the Domination book release today I may not get much painting done for the next couple days.

Hex Hunters and Bayal, Hound of Everblight

2011-11-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

Hex Hunters finally done! No fancy post today. I'm totally sick with the flu. Perhaps I'll muster enough energy to paint a bit, but not enough to go into normal detail about these guys.
These were actually nice sculpts to paint. I think in hindsight I should have painted Bayal separately and spent a bit more time on him so that he really stood out better.

Rhyas, Sigil of Everblight

2011-11-08T11:41:00.000-08:00

Next up in my catch-up postings is Rhyas. She's both ninja and warcaster and all around pretty awesome. I have to say that this model was easy to really pour my time into. Everything was easily accessible for painting, and there's great delineation of the various surfaces which makes the model very readable. When I was painting Rhyas I kept Saeryn on my desk as well so that I could try to get these two to match as much as possible. I have to say I'm quite pleased at how well the pair goes together.

One specific thing that worked really well on this model was the black leather. I feel like the color tone and shading all worked out better than most other Legion models I've done so far. Now admittedly I spent a fair amount of time on it and wouldn't use this same detailed process on a unit, it was still a good step forward for me.

Next up will be the Hex Hunters!

Kallus, Wrath of Everblight

2011-11-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

Here's Kallus! This was an intriguing model to paint. On the one hand this is a relatively simple model to paint in that most of the surface is metalics. On the other hand, I wanted to paint Kallus so that he stood out well and the various areas were easily readable by the eye. With so much area being metalics, there's a unique challenge to make the distinct metalic areas pop and stand out from each other, and yet keep all the non-metalic surfaces in balance as well. Thus I tried to get a good balance of contrast and brightness between the metalics and the non-metalics. I also tried to use forced shadows to make the metalic areas readable from each other.

So did I succeed? Well you can be the judge. I feel like I half succeeded. Some portioned worked out well like the skirt and hair. Other surfaces like the hands and hilt didn't work quite so well, but were ok. The face however was really hard to get to and so I don't feel like it worked out nearly as well.
Next up will be Rhyas!

Vladimir, Dark Prince of Umbrey

2011-11-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

Attention Komrades! Tonight vee dine on victory! Vee have krushed our enemies! Vee have stolen zier vomen! Vee have pillaged zier fortifikations! Vee... Ahem! Sorry. Got carried away there. Let's try that again...

Good evening and welcome to what I hope will be a much more regular posting schedule for the remainder of this month. I've gotten my life back into a better semblance of being organized and that means I can spend a little more time on my painting hobby (including posting).

Vlad here was actually a (belated) birthday gift for my buddy Henry. I enjoy fueling his Khador obsessions (not just because it gets him away from playing Cryx) and Vlad was the latest way to do that. This sculpt is actually the Hurricane Katrina sculpt from long ago. I've had this model sitting in my box for ages, and finally got around to painting it. I would have finished it a couple weeks ago but I got sidetracked and stalled on basing it, so things got excessively delayed.

Overall it's not a terrible sculpt, but definitely not great from a painting point of view. I don't really fancy the dagger arm being flat against his body, and the face was a real pain to get at for detail work. Overall this isn't close to a best paint job, but some parts worked pretty well. I'm especially happy with how the bronzes turned out overall. I used a lot of tonal variation on them using inks to help make them pop.
The red plating was a bit of a shading challenge for me. Normally I would use a complimentary color to shade with, but for these plates I wanted to try keeping the hue the same to emphasize them being enameled armor plates.
The color scheme was directly taken from Henry's other Khador models, just with darker colors to reflect Vlad's brooding nature.

One annoyance doing this model was the final sealing step. I'd gotten a tip of using Krylon satin sealer instead of the Testors gloss/dull coats. So of course I decided to try it out on this model. Unfortunately I put slightly too thick of a coat on it and it made the model a bit gritty. I've done some further tests and the satin coat seems to work fine, just in a lighter coat than I did with the Testors coats.

Battle Report: Play It Out

2011-10-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

As I hoped, painting progress last night was suspended in order to get a game in! 25pts of experimental mayhem always makes for a fun time. I hadn't tried Rhyas yet despite her being painted and ready to go for weeks now.

The Lists (25pts):
Me: Rhyas, Carnivean, Protector, Harrier, Shredder, 10 Legionnaires, 5 Incubi
Lance: Venethrax, Nightmare, 10 Mechanithrals w/ 3 Brute Thralls, 10 Blood Witches w/ Blood Hag, Necrosurgeon, Necrotech, Bloat Thrall

This was my first time fielding Rhyas, so I wasn't really going in with a game plan. I just wanted to put Rapport on the Carnivean and see it go to town. I was also hopeful to leverage her feat to drop the Carnivean on my opponent's caster. When we actually deployed and I saw the sea of infantry and read Venethrax's abilities, I nearly surrendered right out of the gate.

The Throwdown:
I tried to make effective use of the terrain in the middle to mitigate part of the Cryx flood by keeping the rough terrain and building between my forces and the Nightmare and Blood Witches. This really helped me out and let me concentrate on clearing out Mechanithralls. My Legionnaires performed admirably all things considered, but Venethrax's feat is brutal. At some point during the feat round I think there were 15 clouds on the table. That feat was challenging for 2 reasons. First, it brought my troops to a screeching halt pretty quickly. There was some timing I could exploit so that my Legionnaires/Incubi were able to start their activation in key clouds, but it still held them back pretty dramatically. Second, it blocks LOS even for my beasts. If it wasn't for that, I could have probably dropped the Carnivean on Venethrax and killed him. Instead I was forced into an attrition battle. Using my own feat I was able to sneak the Carnivean around and destroy the Nightmare with relative ease thanks to Rapport, but at the cost of Venethrax swooping in and taking out the Carnivean quite easily.

It was at this point that I looked at the battlefield and stated that it looked like it was a foregone conclusion that I was screwed, but let's play it out anyway for kicks. I had Rhyas, the Protector, the Shredder, 2 Legionnaires and 3 Incubi left, whereas Lance had Venethrax, 4 Mechanithralls, 2 Brutes, the Necrosurgeon, full Blood Witches and the Blood hag left. I was outnumbered 2 to 1, but we played it out.

The Endgame:
Somehow I pulled out a victory. After discussing the battle with Lance afterwards, there were a couple key factors that swung the battle back in my favor. First was I had time to reform my forces and make some key strikes to finish off critical targets like the Necrosurgeon. Second, Venethrax switched to using Lamentation instead of Draconic Blessing. This meant Venethrax was walking around with lower arm, but causing problems for Rhyas casting. If Venethrax had just left the bonus armor on and camped focus (putting him at arm 25) which would have been nearly impenetrable for Rhyas and the rest of her forces. Instead I was able to lure him into going for an assassination run but with Rapport it gave me enough transfers to survive. In the end Rhyas had 1 point of damage left when her Shredder took out Venethrax.

Thoughts on Rhyas:Wow 5 fury is hard to work with! Such a small control area. Rhyas is mildly amusing, but not especially flexible from my perspective. She needs to keep her forces pretty tightly together. Still though, it was something new to try and she does provide good support to troops. Between her feat and Dash she gave great support to the Legionnaires.

Also, once again, I have to say that it's always good to play out a game. I've sort of found that my late game is better than my early game. Probably because I go into a game with a "plan" to try to execute and when that play fails I have to start improvising and making more effective use of the forces I have.

From the Desk: Last In-Progress Update for Hex Hunters

2011-10-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

This will be my last update on the Hex Hunters before final pictures of them in a completed state. They are in various states of near completion. Bayal is completely done (as pictured) except for sealer. Most of the others are just down to touch-ups, with about half needing the metal edging/dots painted (which is a really obnoxiously tedious task). These pictures make them look like they need a lot of touch ups, but it isn't really that bad. I really want this project done given that I started on these over a month ago now. I'm hoping to be done by the end of the weekend, but I've got multiple WM/H games lined up, so they may not get done until next week.

Although I generally really like these models, they are tedious. Squads are always rough to do, but highly detailed squads like these make it especially hard. It's one of the big reasons I haven't gotten Knights Exemplar yet. Doing final details on these guys on an individual basis still seems like the best plan.

Next on the desk is Bethayne and Belphagore, but (amazingly) they are still sitting there with just primer and no paint on them. I nearly started them the other night but somehow mustered enough willpower to stay focused on the Hex Hunters. In any case, it will be a refreshing change to start them. In the mean time, assuming all goes well, there should be a whole slew of photos of recent games showing up in the next couple days.

Crushing Theorymachine: Kallus

2011-10-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

For the first time in over 3 months, I played a game of Hordes/Warmachine! Talk about a long dry spell. It was great to actually throwdown again and especially to field a bunch of models that I'd painted but never played with. Since I'm going to end up writing this post over the course of the day during breaks at work, it's going to be a hodgepodge of random thoughts. So, let's get started!

The Lists:
Me: Kallus, Nephilim Protector, Nephilim Bolt Thrower, Nephilim Soldier, Shredder, 5 Raptors, Anyssa, Forsaken, Blackfrost Shard, 1 Spell Martyr.
Lance: Jarl Skuld, Mauler, Earthborn, Impaler, Runebearer, Horthol, 3 Longriders, 4 Krielstones.

My list didn't really have a solid plan to it. Kallus, the 3 Nephilim, Spell Martyr and the Blackfrost Shard were all models I'd painted but hadn't played on the table since painting them so I wanted to give them all a try. The Raptors and Anyssa were in there simply because I wanted more practice with them. The rest was just logical additions to round out the list. There was a bit of poor planning in terms of leveraging Kallus' stronger features, but I'll talk more about that later.

The Battlefield:
I'm a huge fan of using the random battlefield generator for making maps so that's what I did. (If only there was an iPhone app for random battlefields!) The end result was a clump of rough terrain, water and walls near the middle, and a big forest on the side. I won the initiative and after careful consideration figured that it would be good to go first and position myself near the forest for cover. This also meant that the Earthborn would have to move away from the juicy terrain near the middle in order to engage me, and I certainly didn't want to meet him near that mess.

The Throwdown:
The battle was unfortuantely a bit one-sided. I made effective use of the forest and worked down the longriders while delaying the heavy beasts. This was pretty key, and eventually Anyssa was in the troll backfield causing some additional chaos. This was hugely useful because she was easily in LOS of the Raptors to grant them the bonus and together they took down the remaining Longriders, Krielstones and the Impaler. The Soldier was highly effective as well, with the combination of flight, eyeless sight, and Kallus' Ignite, it made him a fun cruise missile to launch out of the forest and into the Mauler. Unfortunately he wasn't able to take out the Mauler entirely and got snacked. Next round though, the Forsaken managed to blight bomb the Mauler into extinction (one of the first times I've pulled off this maneuver on a beast actually). At this point the troll force was down to Jarl, the Mauler, and a couple Krielstones, whereas my Legion force was only really down

The Endgame:
Eventually the Earthborn came crashing in on my flank into the Protector but failed to kill him. However despite the Protector, Kallus, a rapid Shredder an Incubi and a bonus 2 dice blight bomb from the Forsaken, the Earthborn still lived! However without reach he was pinned back away from Kallus by the Shredder and Protector and was left with few options. Kallus had 2 fury on him for transfers, had tenacity up and was engaged (putting him at def 15, arm 19) and was undamaged. Jarl tried to scoot around and drop a couple shots on Kallus and then the Earthborn trampled over the Shredder to get to Kallus but in the end it wasn't enough. After that it was just mop-up.

Thoughts on Kallus:
I should first point out that I don't generally read the forums at all. Lance told me that the general consensus about Kallus seems to be somewhat negative which I was surprised to hear. I tend to ignore all that groupthink anyway and find what works for me so this battle was a fun test to see if Kallus was really more of an infantry-oriented warlock like I thought he would be. What did I come away with?

1) First, Kallus is pretty amusing to play since he's so darn tough. Between unyielding and tenacity he gets pretty chunky to deal with. This gave me a lot more confidence to just roll him in. I probably would have been far braver with him in this game except that the darn Earthborn was able to steal the POW of his sword and that made things substantially more dangerous.
2) Having Kallus hanging back to provide specific support and then roll in as a hammer afterwards worked pretty well. There was a natural tendancy to push him right up front, but he and the Soldier have the same damage output. Holding Kallus back to throw Ignite and Massacre on the Soldier made more effective use of the damage output overall.
3) Most of his "key" features didn't come up in this game for a variety of reasons. Dark Guidance really eats a lot of his fury for a turn, and with so much ranged support in the Raptors I just didn't have a need for it. However if things had gotten to melee, having the option of throwing up DG could have made a huge difference.
4) The feat is amusing. It means that clearing charge lanes just gets twice as hard on that round. It's sort of like having a backup tarpit. Certainly though, it's a defensive and/or delaying tool and not a smash-your-face tool and I often have trouble leveraging the more defensive feats. This one in particular I found tricky becauase I was never really sure when to expect that the troll line would crash into mine. Against ranged lists it would be even harder to decide on the timing since there's a danger of just getting plinked to death. This leads me to my final thought...
5) When I first read Kallus I immediately though "Oh awesome! I'll want Swordsmen!" However I don't own Swordsmen so I fielded what I had. In hindsight, I think an all-melee list with Kallus could be a real danger. Unyielding only helps if the target is engaged, and a ranged list could just take an all-melee Kallus list apart. Having some ranged options (or something to tie up ranged attackers) is pretty key.

Overall, I dig Kallus and I'm looking forward to fielding him a bunch more. I'm particularly keen to try out Warmongers with him. However all the theorymachine in the world doesn't amount to anything in comparison to actually playing a game.

From the Desk: Why am I still awake?

2011-10-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

It's nearly midnight, and I have to be awake at 6:30am. What the heck!?! Basically I got distracted with a bunch of tasks. My kitchen remodel is essentially complete now with just a couple minor things left to be resolved tomorrow. It will be nice to have the dining table back for playing Warmachine on again. So I spent a bunch of time moving stuff back into the kitchen. Then I was getting my freshly primed Bethayne and Belphagore onto painting cans and getting bases started for the Hex Hunters. And then I got distracted with updating my iPhone to iOS 5 which is taking far longer than I expected. If I don't watch out, I'll end up getting distracted with something else and staying up past midnight, and seriously, that's on my Murtaugh list! In any case, while I wait for this upgrade to finish, I figured I'd post my latest status.The Hex Hunters are really feeling like the end is in sight. My next step is to do all the spines. At that point I'm going to switch to doing individual models for final touch ups and detailing to get them to a level I'm more happy with. The back armor pieces really need more work, but I'm going to save that for the individual model work. As detailed and long of a project as these guys are, they are actually quite enjoyable to paint.

From the Desk: Not for the squeemish

2011-10-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

So my plan to get a little work done on my Hex Hunters every night has fallen through pretty badly. Why? The typical "life is busy" reasons. I had a wisdom tooth pulled (as featured here) this last week. Plus the kitchen remodel in my house has been an ongoing fiasco. Advise to all you would-be home remodelers out there, make sure you have a solid contract with your contractor that has penalties to them if they aren't meeting the schedule. Anyway, that's another story that I won't get into here tonight. Instead I'll get on to the painting progress thus far.

The Hex Hunters are coming along well. At this point the basic work for everything is done except for the black leathers. There will be lots of detail work to do, but that's the next phase of my plan. I really like the process of doing the basecoating and majority of the shading/highlighting of each area (one at a time) before doing final detail work. In this way, I get the majority of the hard work done on the entire unit done at once. Then I move on to doing details on each model individually, which is easier for me to handle rather than trying to do all the details at once. Needless to say though, I still have another solid week of work before I'm done with the painting, and then some additional time for basing work.

And finally my desk update includes Kallus. He's getting a lot more attention than the Hex Hunters for obvious reasons. He's nearly done now except for some serious metal work and then some final contrast adjustments to bring everything together better. I should probably start working on a base as well so that he doesn't sit on my desk waiting for a base for a week. In any case, this is a pretty sweet model overall and I'm looking forward to having him on the table.

From the Desk: And 3 Days Later...

2011-10-06T22:57:00.000-07:00

It's ironic that when I get good motivation to work on a unit of models that life erupts into chaos and kills my painting time. In the last 3 days I just got enough time to do the basecoating of the red sashes. Well, actually I also got started on Kallus, but that's it. And there's more life about to erupt over the weekend, so progress is going far slower than I was hoping for. And now it's late, and I'm sleepy and... uh... ... ZzZZzZZzzzzzz.....

From the Desk: More Progress on Hex Hunters

2011-10-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

Quick post, more for my own motivation than for information. I totally failed to get a post up yesterday, but it's just as well. All I did last night was do the basecoating for the green fabrics. Tonight I wrapped up most of that work, at least until the final cleanup work. Next up will be to work on the reds.

I have to admit, having the one model as a prototype with just basecoating done is actually quite helpful for the rest of the unit. It gives me a good reference point to work from. I'll have to consider doing this again next time I paint a unit.

From the Desk: Staying on Task

2011-10-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

One of the great benefits of blogging about painting is the motivation it can provide. Trying to post some progress each day can really keep your feet (or brush) to the fire. In order to get these Hex Hunters done, I'm going to use my blog as motivation. My goal is to post some progress each day, regardless of how small. So for those of you checking in each day, I'm sorry in advance for what will hopefully be many boring posts as I slowly get these guys done.Today I managed to get the skin mostly done on all 11 of them, which is a pretty decent accomplishment all things considered. My next step will probably be to do all of the green cloth since it's pretty isolated.On a different note I need to confess that my painting pace got sidetracked by more than just chaos in my house from a kitchen remodel. I've also been dabbling with app programming for iOS. I'm not really sure what I'm going to try building (map generator perhaps), but it's sort of interesting to play with.

From the Desk: Lots going on

2011-09-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

Once again my desk is a flurry of activity, although it doesn't really feel like much is getting done these days. You can see a general lay of the land here. I've got some close ups of specific things on here below, but a couple things of note that don't have close ups are the reading material on the right and Tarin di la Rivossi who has been sitting primed for multiple months now. The reading material is of special note though. The latest NQ issue (which is pretty interesting) was something I picked up yesterday with Kallus. On top of that is a book about color theory that I've been particularly enjoying.

Here we have Kallus. I picked him up just last night. He's not a particularly complex model, so I'm jumping him ahead in my paint queue. I've already started trimming and assembling him while I work on this post. His stats are pretty interesting to me since he provides a fair amount of troop support. It's something I've been hoping for in Legion for quite some time. Only time will tell if he's decent.

Now this Vlad is quite a bit off the beaten path for my blog. This just so happens to be the special Katrina Relief edition of Vlad from years ago. I'm painting him as a birthday gift for my friend Henry who (I believe) doesn't read my blog. This project is mostly done but I'm waiting for the base to be crafted by my buddy Lance. For this project I tried to match colors as closely as I could to the color scheme Henry is using for his Khador army. I'll be very happy to wrap this project up and give it to Henry for a rather late birthday gift.

Rhyas is pretty much done. She's even sealed. I just need to take proper photos of her. Unfortunately the construction in my house is still going on so I can't set up my photo setup properly. Hopefully in a few more days. I really am getting sick of this situation too. On the plus side, I'm getting that much closer to fully painted for Legion!

Here we have a shoddy picture of stuff that's in various states of assembly. The Rackham dwarf, Bethayne, and Belphagore are all in progress here. I'm having trouble getting much traction with these projects for some reason. Probably because of all the other things going on, but there's certainly the fact that the last project on my desk is...

The Hex Hunters. These are going to take me a while to get all painted. Since painting the prototype, I really haven't made any progress unfortunately.

Well, that's it for now. Once again I'm up late blogging and should be going to sleep. Perhaps this weekend will yield some progress on at least one of these projects!

From the Desk: Why I Hate Basecoating First

2011-09-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

When I paint, I generally tend to complete a section before moving onto the next. Usually I paint skin first, then on to armor, then cloth, and so on until I'm done. However for the Hex Hunters I wanted to do a prototype of the color scheme just to make sure I had it locked in as to what would be what color. Hence, here's the prototype. I didn't paint the metals but it gives me the general picture. I think this will work out pretty well, but it's hard to look at this phase and see how it's going to come together. There's so much shading and highlighting that needs to get done, and when I hold up one of the Blackfrost Shard models (as a reference for the color scheme) it makes for a shocking comparison.In any case, there's 10 more of these guys to paint as well, so I better get crackin!

From the Desk: Mobile Purgatory

2011-09-19T21:23:00.001-07:00

This post is sort of a test of the Blogger app for my iPhone, in addition to an actual update from my painting desk. Amazingly my painting purgatory is starting to lift and I'm getting some projects moving.

I've started working on a competition piece: this Rackham dwarf.

I'm also nearly done with Rhyas.

Ok, that's it for tonight. I'm now going to push publish and see how this mobile blogging works.

Painting Purgatory: Picking on my own models

2011-09-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

Time to continue with the color theory analysis of my old models. Rather than doing the complete breakdown analysis on all of these, I'm just going to give the lesson learned from each one. Again, not critiquing painting techniques, just color choices.

Right out of the gate I've got a total eyesore. This model is an example of something where I picked out random colors because they looked nice individually. It was very early in my painting, and might be among the first 10 models I painted.
Lesson learned: Don't pick colors individually, but pick out the colors and set them together on my desk together, and stare at them for a couple days before making a final decision.

This is a sample from a whole army of marines I painted in an "Angry Hornet" theme. Now honestly, the scheme is so dead simple it's hard to go wrong. It's predominantly a monochromatic scheme, with just a little bit of other color thrown in. All things considered I can't slam these too much, however...Lesson learned: Black should never be straight black, but rather have some hue to it. Straight black generally doesn't exist in the real world.

Here's a group shot of several of these guys. I painted quite a few, and a variety of space marines as well. In a big group, they look pretty striking.

Although more colorful, this Terminator is still pretty good. The same problem with the black exists with the white.
Lesson learned: Just like black, keep pure while usage very minimal.

So again, a monochromatic scheme that works ok. Here's the interesting expansion though: The hair (purple) makes a color bridge between the blade/mask (blue) and the armor (red). Now it's not a perfect bridge, but it does somewhat work.
Lesson learned: Color "bridges" can help tie a model's scheme together, but the bridging color needs to be a careful choice.

This Jain Zar model on the otherhand was an interesting example of how I started doing some edge highlighting. The color problem of course is that pink isn't a good highlight color for red usually. There are other problems given the spattering of random colors, but I think that should be obvious by now.

This model represents the first significant attempt I made at freehand work. Needless to say, I didn't do much more of this for a very long time. Honestly, this model is just a complete train wreck of color. Now normally a Harlequin is a pretty colorful character, which can make them tricky to paint. One trick I heard was to set up a triadic color palette (3 colors fairly equidistant on the color wheel) and use that as the core of the color scheme, with variations on that theme as needed. Honestly though, I find Harlequins to be an enormous challenge.
Lesson Learned: Schemes with a lot of different colors are really hard to pull off. Sticking with fewer colors is easier to plan.

This Imperial Assassin is a good example of when I started trying to do more of the GW-style highlighting, with bright highlights on all the edges. One thing that worked well here actually was using yellow to lighten and highlight the green armor rather than adding white. It provides a warmer feel to contrast the cooler green tone.
Lesson Learned: Don't use white to lighten a color for highlighting, since it usually makes the color look chalky.

Ok, it's 9pm and I'm running out of steam on this post, so let's speed things up. Pink, purple and black was a good core set of colors. They work well together. However the grey highlights for the black armor was the first mistake. The green gun was a second (although lesser) mistake. Grey highlights tend to dull down and distract the eyes from the otherwise harmonious scheme. Using a purple or even blue highlight for the black armor plates would have created a much better look overall. And the green gun? Well, never opt to paint metal items with non-metal colors just to be cute. Color conveys a lot about what type of material is present (as discussed previously).
Lesson Learned: Highlighting and shading of black can bring in even more color to a scheme and help tie the overall look together.

Again with the green? And now I threw in brown too?!?! Ok, this one is even quicker.
Lesson Learned: I made some very questionable choices in college. Must have been all the drinking that affected my decision making.

And here I close out the post with something really special. Again, a total train wreck of color. Primary colors all around. It's a mess. But, there's a reason I included this one. This was the first model that I used a drybrushing technique on. I was at my LGS and someone demonstrated it for me. That day I learned the value of painting with others. Practice takes you some of the way, but learning techniques firsthand from other people can really make a huge difference.
Lesson Learned: Always try to paint with other people!

Well, that rounds out a thoroughly long and boring post. Thanks to anyone who actually stuck it out this long. I promise to only do one more of these posts at most. I should note that although I'm still going to be doing more Painting Purgatory posts, I have actually been able to put brush to model in the last week and am making some progress. However my house situation is still pretty confined so I'm not likely to get anything based on finished for a couple more weeks. So there's more color theory, desk action, and purgatory to come.

Painting Purgatory: a Flashback and a Resource

2011-09-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

Right about now you're probably looking at this photo and wondering what's going on. Although clearly no match for my current painting skills, this model was indeed painted by me. It's from about 18 years ago when I was in college (yes, I've been painting that long). However, I'm not posting it as a part of a nostalgic flashback. Instead, I'm going to drag out a bunch of my old models for review as a part of an exercise on color theory. I should note that my intent in these reviews is mainly for color use and not for painting techniques or skills, although I will probably add a little historical commentary just for fun. So let's get started with this Greater Daemon of Slaanesh!

Focus: Whenever I look at a model with a critical first eye, I tend to be super conscious about where my eyes go. In the case of this daemon, they are immediately drawn to the boots. Why? They are really bright. The horns somewhat pull the eyes back up, but it's still not enough to balance things out. I also notice that it takes a long time before my eyes even pick out the face of the model, despite its size.

Story: Next, after noticing where my eyes go, I pay attention to the general tone and emotion of the model. In this case, it seems dark and quiet. Why? Well, for one thing, it's really dark blue. Not just that, but there isn't enough variation in color to draw out the dramatic elements of the model. Color choices can play such a critical role in helping "tell the story" of the figure. Nothing about my color choices here really help tell a story. The darkness of the skin causes his face and outstretched hand to become indistinct, and that's really where the story of this model starts.

Readability: Now, I look at the color choices to see if they make sense for the material they are representing and whether they help my eyes to pick out the details. For this daemon, I'm 0 for 3. Dark blue skin, although amusing and potentially appropriate for a "chaos daemon", doesn't make a lot of sense. The brown for the boots on the other hand does work, since most leather is some shade of brown. But then there's all those green bits. Are they leather? Armor? Who knows! The green color choice makes it not only harder for the eye to pick out, but harder for the brain to "read" what it is. The dark blue skin, dark green and dark aqua claw all just seems to blend together. This makes the readability quite poor.

Harmony: Lastly I look at the overall harmony of colors. Now sometimes i'll want clashing colors on purpose, but that's an outlying case. Normally I want colors that all play well together. It helps all of the above things I've talked about. In this case my report card arrives with an F. Blue skin and yellow-brown boots? Ouch! And what's with that pinkish-purple badge on his chest? Must be first price in the ugly contest. Ok, all kidding aside, if you break out all these colors and toss them on a color wheel, the whole thing looks pretty chaotic. Don't be fooled either! Dark colors help obscure a conflicting palette, but it's still there.

So that's a general overview of how I approach color for my painting now. I'm no expert though, as even my recent painting shows. But these 4 aspects form the building blocks of my color theory now. I'm going to post more of my older models, but I'll skip this level of analysis. I started with this model not just for its age, but for it's complete failure in all 4 areas.

One last thing before I sign off for the night. I was reading various forums and came across this really great 4-part series on photographing miniatures. I've posted on this before, but for those of you looking for more good examples of setting up a way to photograph your work, this article has lots of good information and uses pretty minimal materials to accomplish it (other than the camera).

Painting Purgatory: Color, Emotion, and Technology?

2011-09-05T07:40:00.000-07:00

Let's take a few steps to the left today. A friend of mine sent me a link the other day to an amusing little web gadget called The Color Of. Now since you've already sprinted off to the link, tried it out a few times, and then finally come back to my blog (I hope) I'll explain why I wanted to share this. There's lots of information about color theory out there. It explores color in terms of psychology and physics, using sound principles to help artists understand how to use it effectively. This tool however does something almost opposite of that.

The Color Of basically harvests our collective social consciousness from the internet, takes a random sample, and fabricates a "color" swatch for you from whatever word you want. I use the word "color" liberally here since the output is really an image that has many colors in it, but you can think of it as a swatch of colors all mashed up. The process is pretty straightforward and the simplicity of this little widget is remarkable. I wouldn't classify this as a scientific tool by any stretch. Think of it as inspiration rather than a logical process.

So what good is this to miniature painters? Well, think of it as sort of an inspiration engine. Trying to figure out what sort of colors to use when painting your angry troll? Type it in! Guessing at what would give a sense of dignity to a pirate? Enter those keywords! The tool really is pretty limitless in that respect. Now you may get odd results obviously since it is highly random and can pull in images that arguably have nothing to do with what you typed in. However that vast randomness can work to your advantage. Try typing in "cygnar", "lefthanded", "extra large" or even "green" and you'll get something interesting out. You can even click on individual pictures that it found if you want. You can also save the produced image for reference.

Well, that's your daily dose of random color theory for today. But before I go, one last tip. If you produce a swatch and want to examine the colors in it in more detail, you can always throw it into the Kuler tool which I posted about last year. Enjoy!

Painting Purgatory: More Thoughts on Color

2011-08-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago (while I was gone on vacation) there was a painting class taught by Mathieu Fontaine at a relatively nearby LGS. I wasn't able to attend obviously, but some of the people on a local painters yahoo group posted their thoughts and learnings from the class which made for fascinating reading. Now I should point out that the people on this yahoo group are pretty serious painters, many of which have won awards and/or been studio painters. So when these guys kick around tips, I pay very close attention. It also helps that I get to talk with some of them at least once a year at events like KublaCon. Matthieu of course is a fairly well known multi-GD award winner and teaches masterclass workshops quite frequently. I wish I could have attended the class, but the highlights from the yahoo group will have to suffice. So what are some of those highlights?

Shading color choices: When picking a color to shade with, choose one that is one step in either direction from the complementary color of what you are shading. And don't use black. - I've talked about this before, but this refinement is an interesting revelation for me. When you combine complementary colors together, they tend to cancel out each other's intensity. So for example, if you are attempting to shade blue, rather than add red to the blue to create a shading color, use orange or purple. This will help preserve the color intensity better. And of course, using black or the straight complementary color will just dull down the overall appearance of the color. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish of course, this might be an appropriate option.

7-8 color palette: Sticking with a more limited pallete can actually make for a better end result. - The concept here is pretty straightforward actually. By limited the number of colors used, you create more harmony in the overall composition. The trick here comes in the form of picking the right colors such that the end result is still dynamic and interesting to the eye. Some people have even done a more limited pallete with remarkable results, such as Eric Johns' famous Ramos which was painted using just 3 colors.

Use warm/cool to emphasize depth: Warm colors appear to "pop out", while cool colors appear to receed. - This is an old traditional 2-D technique, but applies equally well to 3-D painting for miniatures. There are both physical and psychological reasons for this, but warmer colors (yellow for example) tend to feel closer while cooler colors (blue for example) tend to feel farther away. Consider this painting. The yellow-ish figure appears closer despite the fact that physically she's oriented farther away. The same applies to minatures, and I've used this technique with my highlighting sometimes, especially faces. Using a warmer tone for highlights will help the surface appear closer, while using cooler tones for shading will make those shades seem to receed even farther back.

There's so much to learn about color that it's impossible to learn most of it without making a career out of it. Still, for us humble painters looking for tips, there is a lot of simple color theory that can be applied without too much effort. No doubt I'll have more posts on the topic in the future as I continue to unearth more of these little gems.

Interested in books on color and composition? Here's some suggested reading:
Color and Light: A Guide for Realist Painters by James Gurney
Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers
Interaction of Color by Joseph Albers

Painting Purgatory: Speed Painting Is The New 40

2011-08-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

So I discovered today that the new blogger editing interface doesn't protect me from my own html editing mistakes and screws up the layout if I don't close tags properly. Lovely. Anyway, now with that mini-rant out of the way, here's my latest update.

A while ago I was planning to start a series of posts about speed painting, but that project sort of burned out quickly. However since that time I've noticed a lot of revitalized interest in the painting community in terms of painting armies quickly but still having good results. Dipping has been around for a while, but to be honest I can't stand the idea of it. For one thing it still requires the longest effort of painting which is getting solid base coats. Another reason is that if you ever want to strip the model, you're out of luck. And finally, I just have a personal revulsion to the methodology (no offense meant to dippers out there).

However, glazing and washing are techniques that get you similar results but can save you time over the dipping method depending on how you go about it. When I was painting many of my Cryx models, I used glazes and washes over straight white primer and found that I got a lot of good results. There is a catch though. These techniques can sometimes leave you with less consistent look to the surfaces, but that may or may not be a benefit given the model and your own style preference. Personally I like the variation in the surface colors because it gives a more natural look. There are times, like when you are trying to simulate enameled metal, that this breaks the visual cues of the material being implied.

In a recent No Quarter article, studio painter Matt DiPietro demonstrated the "underpainting" technique and it seems to be getting more and more attention. My first link to share is Adary's Scrapbook where he's been making attempts at this technique with good success. If you look closely at the last photo you can see how the black undercoat darkens the tone of the color in key places (like knees and fabric folds) where light wouldn't be hitting it as much. My second link is to a tutorial on Hand Cannon Online by Ghoul (who is an amazing painter). He gives a very good description of the process and paints a whole unit. He also gives some very educated history of the technique from well before miniature painting.

Seeing a revitalization of "old master" techniques being used in miniature painting is pretty interesting. As I continue to listen in to various painting communities, I encounter more and more of these sorts of things happening. The past is ripe with knowledge and experience, we just have to tap into it!

Painting Purgatory: Reflections

2011-08-25T22:12:00.000-07:00

I know there isn't a conspiracy against me, but sometimes it feels like it. I got back from a month long vacation out of the country just a few days ago. During that time there were contractors working on remodeling the kitchen and dining room of our townhouse. In order to accommodate that effort, everything got moved out of those areas into the spare bedroom, garage, and whatever other space we could make. The project was supposed to be much further along, but due to extensive dry rot and foundation problems the project is way behind schedule. So our 3Bed/2.5Bath townhouse is more like 1.5Bed/1.5Bath, which is a pain especially with an 18 month old. Anyway, this has put a serious freeze on any painting activities for the time being while the work gets finished. So even if I can't get any proper painting in, I can catch up on a month's worth of reading from the painting community and spend time posting some of the other ideas I've had for blog posts. Honestly, I had forgotten what a stress relief painting is for me. It'll be nice to have our house back to working order, but equally nice will be the ability to clear out my painting space properly so that I can get some good cathartic relaxation in. In the mean time, I'll be posting a bunch of random thoughts about painting inspired by the catchup reading I'm doing.

So the first item that struck me as interesting was a very recent post on the Wyrd painting forums here. It's a discussion about how to tie a group of models together theme-wise. There's some beautifully painted models in that thread, but the discussion itself is pretty interesting. There's as many ways to tie together a group of models visually as there are to paint a model. There's obvious methods like a uniform color scheme across an entire army which is one of the most common. Other folks have used unified basing to bring together disparate models. I myself used this for all my Cryx "pirate" type models. And then, as is beautifully exampled in this post, a couple key colors can be used for elements of every model in the group to tie them together visually while not making them overly similar. Now these are just some simple examples, but there are plenty of others. Another example is my friend Lance's Lava Trolls, which are tied together by a visual theme of fire. Now what method you use depends on a number of factors, not the least of which is the similarity (or dis-similarity) of the models being painted. This thread on the Wyrd forums was more relevant than other games since the Wyrd crews tend to be much more varied in style. In any case, the discussion here got me thinking about creating a unifying look to a group of models, particularly in light of starting a Skaven army soon, so I thought I'd share this with folks out there.

So what do you do to create a uniform look to a group of models? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

From the Desk: Uh oh! What's this? Rats!

2011-07-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've found myself asking what the heck I've done. I picked up the Warhammer starter box (Island of Blood) with the intention of starting a Skaven army. How did I arrive at this point? Well honestly I'm still loving Warmachine and Hordes, but sometimes I find myself not quite up to the brainpower challenge for it. My work is sometimes quite mentally taxing. When that happens on the weekly gaming night, I find myself to be a pretty meager opponent. Warhammer being more of a "beer and pretzels" game will be a nice option for those times when I just don't have the capacity for the intricacies of Warmachine. As much as I enjoyed Malifaux before, it's even more mentally taxing than Warmachine, so it has fallen by the wayside.

So what's my plan for Skaven? Well quite honestly, it's going to be a while before I get much done since I'm going on a family vacation in a couple days. However I've started to mull over a theme for this new army. That theme: AquaRats! This was sort of a goofy decision, so let me elaborate. First off, I was very inspired by the theme work my friend did on his "Magma Trolls" recently. You can read lots about it on his blog here. The theme really ties them all together and they look striking on the table. So in that same spirit, I wanted to try to have a solid theme like this as well. So I was looking at my pile of Skaven bits and debating what I could do. Well, first of all, I picked Skaven for a couple reasons. First, I dig the models. I really like them a lot actually, and I think I can paint them relatively fast as well. Second, I was born in the year of the rat! Coincidence? I think not! Second, I'm an Aquarius, so going with a water theme was a quick inspiration. I like the idea of a swarm of rats all wearing various shades of blue so that when they rank up, it looks like a flowing stream.

So with a theme idea chosen, I need to start deciding how to make that theme really solid and obvious in the army. I'll be posting a bunch more as I work through the details. It's going to be several weeks before I start any real painting anyway, so I've got lots of times to think about how I'm going to do things like convert a Doomwheel into a Waterwheel.

Nephilim Protector

2011-07-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

And here he is! The third of my Nephilim. This actually rounds out my collection of beasts for Legion with at least one of each kind. The irony being that I've been playing Menoth the last couple weeks (gotta try out the battle engine). So while my Legion force is enjoying a bit of a vacation, it's getting closer to fully painted.

The Protector here was quite different from the others. The obvious amount of metal covering him made it a little different of a project to tackle. One side effect as well was figuring out where to put the sigil on him. I ended up using the back of one arm which worked out pretty well, despite my initial fear of it looking odd.

What went well:
* Painting all three at once - This helped a lot. There was enough variation in them that I could take a break from the uniform work and do something specific to keep things fresh.
* Metal patterns - Doing bright highlights on the patterning of the armor plates really made them pop nicely. I really like the overall look. Plus using a blue ink wash gives it a nice tint as well that ties much more of the model together.

What could have been better:
* Flesh - I think the flesh could have been better. Some of the recesses could have been darker to create better contrast, and some places could be a bit smoother.
* Metals - Overall I'm pretty happy with the metals, but some areas could have been cleaned up a bit.

Nephilim Bolt Thrower

2011-07-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Two down! Again, brief review on this one. I think the Bolt Thrower was my favorite of the three sculpts. Not my favorite to paint though, due to the inaccessibility of some of the areas of the model. But sculpt-wise, it's pretty amazing. The muscles, armor, crossbow, and pretty much everything has a lot of nice detail to it. This one also afforded some variation in color with the wood grain. For that I used a base of Rucksack Tan, then painted thin lines using VMC Pale Sand, then washed that with slightly thinned VMC Wood Grain. Quick but effective.

Ironically, after I sealed it, I noticed an oversight. It's annoying when that happens. However it's the back side of the crossbow where it's hard to even notice, so I'm not going to worry about it. The metal is basically painted as wood instead, so it's not very obvious anyway.

Ok, so one more to go. My goal is to have him done by tomorrow night, but I still have a lot of metal highlighting left to do, not to mention basing him. Back to work!

Nephilim Soldier

2011-07-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

Geez, almost two weeks since my last post. I'm really falling off of the pace I was hoping for. Nonetheless, I've finished up the Nephilim Soldier. The other two won't be far behind. Note that I'm now switching over to using my iPhone for pictures instead of the previous lightbox and kodak set up. This is much quicker for getting photos to the blog. Plus right now the lightbox is torn down and the space is being used to store stuff while we remodel our kitchen. I'm just going to do a quick review of this model and spend more time when I finish the last of the Nephilim.

Out of the three, I think I liked painting this one best. Everything on the model is easy to get to, and the wings afforded some extra color to the overall model. He doesn't have nearly as much metallic work to him (which is why I finished him first), so I wanted to put a little extra punch to the sword. Overall I'm fairly happy with it. Having never even proxied a Soldier before, I'm looking forward to giving him a try soon.

Ok, back to the painting station. Two more Nephilim to go!

From the Desk: New "Camera" Comparison, and more

2011-07-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

So I recently upgraded my phone from the "CyberShot" to an iPhone 4. I was curious to compare the photo quality of the iPhone 4 to my Kodak EasyShare. Below is a side-by-side comparison, but with a couple key differences...

To be fair, the photos weren't taken in the same place. The Kodak photo (left) was taken in the lightbox. The iPhone photo (right) was taken on my painting desk without the benefit of the lightbox to properly bounce light around, nor with the assistance of a tripod. The net result is still pretty competitive though. I have to say, for the ease of management, the iPhone is taking pretty much just as good a photos. There's a brightness shift, but nothing terrible. I may start doing most of my photos this way just because it's so much easier.

In addition, I've been working on my Nephilim. Here's a shot of the 3 together. Skin, wings and major chitin are all done. Now it's on to the armor, which will probably take me a good week to finish.

Blackfrost Shard

2011-06-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

Stupid Starcraft 2 is ruining my painting pace! These guys ran into other slowdowns as well, including needing to recharge the dremel, a wedding, and spending time prepping and assembling the Nephilim (which are now in progress). Enough excuses though! If I'm going to get to my 1-1-1-1 goal I need to stay focused. In the mean time, quick notes on these guys before I go to sleep.

What went well:
* Squads of 3 are easy - Painting 3 dudes at once is much easier than 10 or even 6. I was able to spend lots of time on them.
* Adding some red - The red sash on Sevryn threw in just enough extra color but doesn't imbalance the model. I'm thinking this will look great on the Hex Hunters.
* Correcting as I went - Since it was just 3 dudes, I could go back and make lots of corrections as I went.

What could have been better:
* Deeper shadows - This is something I probably need more of in general, but I think it would have really helped these models to pop more.
* Little details - There were plenty, and I could have spent a bunch more time tidying them up.
* Something to tell them apart - I probably should have come up with something that could make it easier to differentiate the 3 models quickly, since they are supposed to be individual characters. As it stands, I just painted a V on the bottom of Vysarr.

Ok, enough for now. Back to painting.

From the Desk: Week of ZzZZZzzZzzZzzZzzzz.....

2011-06-19T23:12:00.000-07:00

This week was sort of a wash. I was in San Diego for business for the better part of the week and didn't get as much done as I had hoped. However the weekend was a bit more packed with activity. The Blackfrost Shard is nearing completion, with just details left to do mostly. I should have them wrapped up by middle of the week. As you can see, the leader here is looking pretty good.

I've got a plan to be down to 2-1-1-1 unpainted by the time I go on vacation to Canada near the end of July. These guys need to be done by this next weekend, and then the 3 Nephilim done before I leave. Knocking these guys off the list will have me one step closer. In addition to having those done, I'm aiming to pack up the Hex Hunters and Rhyas and paint them while I'm on vacation (since my wife has graciously given me a green light to bring a painting kit.

To that end, I got the Nephilim assembled and (just this evening) primed. We're having a bit of a temporary heat wave, so I availed myself of the cooler evening to do some late night priming. I also got Rhyas and the Hex Hunters primed so that I can go ahead and start packing them into a painting kit.

From the Desk: Nephilim Putty Party

2011-06-13T20:40:00.000-07:00

Confession time: I finally broke down and bought Starcraft 2. This coupled with more work travel will likely impair my painting/modeling productivity. In fairness to myself though, I did hold out quite a while. And it is pretty rockin. Anyway, that's not what this blog is here for, so...

One of the tips I got from Derek Schubert's sculpting class came in really handy this last weekend: stick the putty to your off-hand thumbnail. It sort of makes a little putty palette, and I found it works really well. I just kneaded up some, stuck it to my thumbnail, and then I could slice off a bit with my sculpting tool easily. The thumbnail makes a good surface because the putty sticks enough to not fall off, but not so much to be hard to remove. It's so simple and yet such a helpful tip. And why was I putting this into practice? Well...

My Nephilim are almost all assembled! The Bolt Thrower is going to have his quiver attached after painting simply due to the amount of problems it will cause for accessing parts of the model once it's on. The Solider just needs his sword/arm attached which will require a little putty work. The Protector is in a similar state, but his arms and polearm are going to be a bit more work to get all together. I'm trying to decide on a pinning strategy still.

I also tried out some Krylon Satin Finish last week. I can honestly say that appearance-wise, it looks pretty much the same as my double coating of gloss/dull. I haven't really tested it for durability, but I'm very likely to make this switch for things going forward once I run out of Testors supplies, especially since the cost is so much better.

From the Desk: Parallel Projects

2011-06-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

The poor Blackfrost Shard have been sitting on my desk, primed, for months. Two days ago however, I finally started putting paint to them. These models are quite detailed, and thus make them both interesting and a bit daunting at the same time. I don't think I've had so much motivation to paint something for a long time. First, they are quite nice models. Second, they are badass on the table. And third, completing them brings me back down to a single unpainted squad. These guys will probably take me a while though. I'm still kicking around whether to introduce some red into the color scheme or not.

On an "SPQR" note, I also finished trimming my 3 Nephilim. I like to be getting my next model all trimmed, assembled and primed before I finish my current painting project. It's more than just the smooth transition from one painting project to another. There's time lost waiting for putty and primer to dry and if I'm burning that time in parallel with painting, I'm getting good use from my time. Getting these Nephilim done will bring me down to a single unpainted beast, plus it will give me a whole batch of new options on the battlefield which I'm really looking forward to.

Anastasia di Bray

2011-06-07T20:47:00.000-07:00

It feels great to be back into a relatively normal painting swing. Knocking out Anastasia here was quick and delightful. It's not the most interesting sculpt for sure, but I can honestly say it was pretty fun to paint. Perhaps because of my recent efforts on the War Hog. In any case, it was a big morale boost for my inner muse.

What went well:
* Small - Yep, painting a small single model was great. I felt like I could spend quality time on it and still make quick progress.
* Retries - I think I painted they eyes 3 times before I called them good enough. Each time they got better, despite her eyes being tiny. It's hard to see in the photo unfortunately (more on that below).
* Pants - Of all the parts of this model, I think the pants came out the best of all.

What could have been better:
* Photos - ARGH! These pics are terrible! I'm not entirely sure why. It's probably a lighting problem, but I'll need to experiment more. It seems that every time I have to tear down my photo set up (due to visitors) that I have trouble getting it tweaked back to normal.
* Face and eyes - After Derek's class and seeing his models up close, I'm inspired to step up my game on the face area of models. However I'm realistic about just making progress through practice and not trying to jump straight to amazing.

From the Desk: New Paint Goal

2011-06-05T21:25:00.000-07:00

Anastasia is really coming along well. Not much left to do at this point other than some tweaks and some additional work on the face. Ironic given that the face was where I started.

In order to keep myself from buying more models than my painting pace can keep up with, I'm always trying to keep myself aware of what's unpainted. In the past I just had a general count but units tend to make those look weird at times. So I've come up with a new scheme: 1-1-1-1. Just like the Highlander format, I'm going to aim at reaching only 1 unpainted warcaster/warlock, warjack/warbeast, unit, and solo.

Note that this will be across my active factions of Legion, Protectorate and the Ashlynn theme force. I have several models that will fall out of this tracking, specifically McBain, Cryx stuff, and Minion stuff. Why? Well, honestly, I never really play Cryx, I'm not interested in playing Minions, and McBain, well, I'll probably paint him eventually but I'm not itching to get him on the table.

So where am I at now?

Warcasters/Warlocks:	Rhyas, Bethayne
Warjacks/Warbeasts:	Nephilim Protector, Nephilim Soldier, Nephilim Bolt Thrower, Belphagore
Units:	Blackfrost Shard, Hex Hunters (with UA)
Solos:	Anistasia Di Bray, Gun Mage Captain Adept

So not that far. 2-4-2-2 is pretty reasonable. I'm hoping to close in on 1-1-1-1 by mid July at the latest. The shocking thing to me is that so far this year I've only painted 18 models, and it's nearly halfway through the year. I have a sinking feeling that this is going to be a slow year for painting unless I can "pair up".

From the Desk: Recap, Notes and Progress

2011-06-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

In an effort to stay blogging, I'm going to aim to do more of my "From the Desk" posts with random tidbits of information. We'll see how long this new resolution lasts.

Poor Anastasia here as been sitting on my desk, primed, awaiting paint, for a couple months. After coming off of the big competition effort, I wanted to do something relatively fast, but still feel like I could pour quality effort into it, so this was a nice coincidence. This model is quite small and fairly simple. After seeing Derek spend an hour and a half on a face, I'm a bit more inspired to be practicing painting faces and eyes in more detail. I've definitely learned in the past that painting more (and spending just above average effort each time) goes a long ways towards improving my skills in particular areas. To that end, I've decided to focus on more models with clear faces and eyes, and also to find small opportunities to practice freehand work as well.

In other news, the classes at KublaCon left me with a list of things to follow up on. Here's the summary:
* Try out Reaper liner paints - Derek recommended these. I picked up the triad and tried out the brown liner. It's definitely interesting stuff. Pre-thinned for quick use. I see myself using these more and more.
* Paint freehand using the "constellation" method - Basically sketch a design, pick out points, transfer the points to the model, then fill in the design. More on that in future posts.
* Airbrush - Yeah, I totally bought an airbrush already after seeing Justin use it and answer a bunch of questions. Lots lots more on that in the future.
* Fine mist spray nozzles for primer - Justin recommended GW Skull White because the new primer cans have "fine mist" nozzles. I've got one reserved at my LGS to try out and see if I notice a difference.
* Krylon Satin Finish sealer - Another Justin recommendation. Gotta see if it's very different from my current 2-coats method. This would be nice not only because it would be a single coat to seal, but also because the local store that I got Testors supplies from closed recently.
* Weathering techniques - More on this later, but I want to try out Justin's techniques: hairspray/salt, dry pigments, and dot oil filter.

Ok, last note for today. While painting last night I watched a delightful film titled Perfume. Great movie! Loved it! Absolutely nothing to do with painting, but totally interesting concept and well executed. I love it when I find movies that are interesting but don't require me to pay complete visual attention to them (thus allowing me to paint while watching).

War Hog

2011-05-31T15:14:00.000-07:00

Apologies in advance, this post is going to be like 3 posts in 1, and longer than a normal gallery entry. I'll start with the normal gallery entry stuff and then move on to the Road-to-Competition stuff.

So here's my competition War Hog, in all his final glory! I have no idea how many hours I spent on this guy. Overall this model was pretty cool. Organic parts, mechanical parts, and just generally pretty interesting. He was pretty big and complex though, which made painting him pretty challenging. I should note that I didn't seal him since he is unlikely to be used on the table, and also sealing him would have affected the effects on the metals that I spent a lot of time on. So he's likely to just sit on the top shelf of my models cabinet where all the other best stuff sits. Perhaps sad, but honestly I'm not really very interested in playing Farrow at present, and regardless of whether I did play them or not, I had intended to paint this model.

What went well:
* Metals - I seriously feel like the metals worked out really well on this model. I spent a lot of time on them, both in terms of weathering and shading. I'm one of those people that like the look of metallic metal paints rather than NMM.
* Flesh - I spent a lot of time here too. It's not perfect, but I feel like the extra effort really paid off.
* Overall composition - Much of my time near the end was making little tweaks here and there to bring the overall composition together. I gathered a lot of feedback from people/places I trust on this. That leads me to...
* Getting feedback - Definitely very helpful. Not just friends getting in person viewings, but I also posted on the BrushThralls forum for feedback and got some really helpful critique. I'll definitely be doing that again for future competitions.

What could have been better:
* Not getting exhausted - Ugh! By the end, after having been working on it off and on for almost 2 months (just painting), I was ready to be done. I was pretty sick of looking at it in fact. I need a better way to tackle such large projects if I'm going to do them this seriously.
* Pigments - In all fairness, this was the first time I used dry pigments, so I'm still getting the hang of them. They were too thick in some places. I definitely like them though, and I'm looking forward to using them more in the future.
* Some details get lost - The model is huge and complex with a lot of details. I feel like some of the detailing work I did wound up lost in the overall complexity of the model.

Ok, so all that aside, time to talk about the competition itself. This year I entered the "masters" level which is still an "open judging" system, but did not place at all. According to the competition organizer, I was super close to getting a bronze. I was in good company actually, as there were other masters entries that didn't place, much to my surprise actually. There was a 40K Tyrant that was pretty impressive I though, but didn't get anything either. I can honestly say I'm not terribly disappointed. Why? Well...

After the awards ceremony I got a chance to sit down with Derek Schubert and he spent probably 20 minutes giving me an in-depth critique of my model. It was very education, and I am very grateful to him for his time. I've included notes about his feedback below, but before that I'll close with some things that I'm taking away to keep in mind for next year:
* Smaller model - Yeah, this one was too big. It's impressive, but smaller is better for the competition I think.
* Avoid metals - I think my love of metallics and trying to refine that style doesn't mesh well with the judges' perspectives. I'm probably better off avoiding them next year.
* Forced lighting perspective - This is something I'm still not comfortable with, but I think it's something I need to keep in mind.
* Telling a story - The model needs to tell a story much better. Overall composition is one thing, but if the model is able to convey a story then I'll have succeeded much better. It's not enough for the War Hog to be angry. There needs to be more of a sense of what's going on. I think my model selection for last year needs to take that into account.

	The blending/shading on the muzzle needed to be tightened up considerably. Totally agree with this. I just sort of lost my steam in this area.
	There should be reflections of light on the red of the gauntlet. Totally disagree with this one. I get where Derek's coming from, but this is a style thing that I just don't buy into. Forced light perspectives are a mixed bag. When you force the lighting perspective in a particular way, you must look at that model from that perspective to make sense of it. Just not my style, but it was interesting feedback.
	The shading/transition of the hoof didn't work. Totally agree here. I blew this. It probably looks ok in the photo, but honestly the angling on it was wrong.
	The plating "bumps" needed stronger contrast to stand out. Yeah, I mostly agree with this. They just didn't work out as good as I wanted. They needed more raise to their surface and just didn't have it to work with.
	The blue hose stood out too much, and the busted pipe was somewhat unnecessary. This was something I hadn't even considered. The blue hose definitely stood out too much, and there wasn't any other blue on the model from that angle to balance with it. In comparison, the red hose worked well because there was plenty of red to balance with. The pipe, well, I'm torn on that. I like having it there, but it does make the whole thing a bit more busy. Point taken.
	Mohawk needed more shading/highlighting to make it pop. Well, I'm torn on this. To some degree I wish I had done more on this. But on the flipside, I didn't want to be highlighting all the strands and making it look too gaudy. I've seen that too much already, and I got some very good advice from EricJ on the Wyrd forums about hair that I still very much subscribe to. I'll have to mull this over a lot more before I can decide whether I should have taken this advice.
	Brighter highlights for the metals. Yeah, I mostly agree here. Overall there were plenty of opportunities to push the metal highlights farther. Derek picked out this section as an example where I could have put highlights on the lower half of the holes to emphasize reflections. Definitely a good point here. Overall there were other comments about metals not being smooth enough, and I sort of get that as well. Still more to learn with metallics.

Ok, I can't really handle posting anything more about this model. I'm done, and well past ready to be done. Time to move on to something faster and crank out some army stuff. I'll start thinking about the next competition in a couple months. In hindsight, I may not have even gotten a bronze, but I definitely feel like I painted like I had a pair!

KublaCon 2011 Summary

2011-05-30T22:44:00.000-07:00

So KublaCon has come to a close once again, and as before I had a very good time. What follows is a whole slew of photos and some notes about my experience of the con. Many of these photos are of, shall we say, sub-par quality. Hopefully Santa will bring me a better camera this Christmas.

On Friday evening there was a 15pt WM/H tournament that had a 1 unit and 1 solo max limitation. The Sacramento PG Jimmy ran the event and I had quite a lot of fun, despite getting my butt kicked in 4 out of 5 of the games. However I did receive one of the 2 sportsmanship awards which was a poster of the new Wrath book cover!

Overall, great event. I think there were 24 people there in total, with a great representation of factions. I think I saw everything except Skorne and perhaps Minions.

Next day I dropped in to attend a class by Derek Schubert on sculpting. Although I floated in and out, the class was quite good. I learned a bunch of random little tricks and techniques to assist with the sculpting process. Being a novice in the realm of sculpting, it wasn't hard to learn a lot. Some of the tips were simple things like having a small sponge and water on hand to moisten tools with, putting the mixed green stuff on your off-handed thumb as a temporary working area, and how to create basic frames for sculpting on to.

For those of you unfamiliar with Derek Schubert, he's done freelance sculpting and painting for Reaper for several years. His class was interesting in that not only did he give a lot of helpful tips for basic sculpting, he also talked about materials and the overall casting process along with considerations to keep in mind about that process. Overall, delightful class.

At the same time as the class, there was a 50pt WM/H Steamroller tournament going on. There were 19 or so people for this event, again with most factions represented. Given that I didn't participate in the tournament I can't really comment on the event, but it definitely seemed like a huge battleground.

My day was rounded by participating in one of the speed painting competitions. The rules were pretty straight forward. They provide a brush (terrible synthetic with curved bristles), paints (also pretty terrible craft paints), and a primed model. Everything was the same for each participant. We got 45 minutes to paint as good as possible. Amazingly, having never done something like this before, I got 1st place in this group, which qualified me for the masters speed painting. Here you can see my poor little samurai warrior.

The next day was all classes for me pretty much. First up was another class with Derek where he basically spent about 90 minutes painting a face on a model and sharing a wide variety of pieces of information. I really enjoyed this time because it afforded the opportunity to just ask Derek a lot of questions about his process and techniques. Pictured here are a couple of his models that he passed around for close examination.

During the same time slots as most of these classes I was taking, there was a 35pt tier 2 WM/H tournament going on. Again, not having participated in it, all I can say is that at this point I think the WM/H players were starting to wane in strength as this was the 4th event.

The next two classes were with Justin McCoy of Secret Weapon Miniatures. He was teaching about weathering using a few different techniques. These classes were outstanding. Now to be fair, all of the techniques Justin demonstrated were completely different from anything I do. I'd read bits and pieces about them, but never seen them properly demonstrated. These classes were one of those "Ah ha!" type moments.

Justin demoed the salt and hairspray technique, chipping, using pigments, and oils, all for weathering a vehicle. I also particularly enjoyed that he brought an airbrush and demonstrated using it as a part of the process. He had a number of good tips, and as a result I went out and bought an airbrush starter kit myself. It certainly helped that by his recommendation, I was able to get a basic double action airbrush and compressor for a mere $90. I'm very much looking forward to practicing some of those techniques in the future.

Ok, I'm just throwing this in for commentary. Seriously people! Just because it's a convention and everyone is indulging in a weekend of geekly decadence, but honestly! And take a shower while you're dropping that fistful of cheese balls!!

Before rounding out my day, I was in the masters speed painting competition. Same as before, however we got 2 terrible brushes. My lowly model is here, which came in 4th out of the group of 9. In all fairness, Derek was in the masters here as well. I have to say, it was a very amusing challenge and I'm looking forward to doing it again next year.

What follows are pictures of models submitted to the painting competition. My own entry did not place in the masters, but I'll go over that in more detail in another post tomorrow.

RtC: To The Competition!

2011-05-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 2 days!

Well, today is the opening day of KublaCon, and I'm ready! There were a number of small refinements to the model since my last update over 3 weeks ago. I'll post final pics of this guy later, but here's a quickie one before he heads off to the competition display case.

Overall I'm pretty happy. I'm not really expecting to place well in the masters, but it's a goal I set for myself regardless. I've put a lot of time into this model. I'd conservatively estimate at least 50 hours, and perhaps as many as 75. I'm really ready to be done with him.

One thing to note is that I decided not to seal him like I normally would with other models that I use. I spent an enormous amount of effort on the metallics, and applying a sealing coat could easily throw them off.

While I'm at Kubla I'll be endeavoring to take lots of photos and post them each night, particularly of the Warmachine/Hordes events.

Gun Mages (take 2)

2011-05-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

Yikes! To say that I've been in a painting slump would be a gross understatement. I just checked my blog and it's been more than 2 months since I finished a model. So without further ado, here's my second set of Gun Mages, complete with officer.

Ok, so what happened to the SPQR series? Well, a couple things. First is that the posts felt awkward. I do plan to pick up the SPQR posts from time to time, but not quite as the regular installment that I had intended. Instead I'll do them sporadically as tips and techniques come up. Trying to do it with the Gun Mages here felt pretty forced and was holding me back from getting them painted.

Second is that I just needed to get something finished, and these guys were already in progress. I've been working on the War Hog for so long now that I really just wanted to be finishing something. The War Hog is still in progress and will get done this week. However I just needed to feel some sense of accomplishment (however meager) to give me a little juice again.

Anyway, nothing special here. Speed painted and not that great (by my standards), but they are done and just itching to be used in that Ashlynn tier list!

Make Your Opponent's List

2011-05-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I played an amusing game where my opponent (Henry) built a list for me from his model collection, and I built one for him from my collection. We played a 25pt game and (in the spirit of a learning experience) used the following friendly rules:
* Must use every point, included jack/beast points
* Models included must have a legitimate chance of coming into play (no Incubi without any models to pop out of)
* 2 proxies items allowed
* Simple Killbox scenario

Lists:
My list for Henry: High Reclaimer, Templar, Crusader, Vigilant, Reclaimer, 5 Cinerators, Herne & Jonne - Tons of SPD 4 stuff, hardly any warriors to generate soul tokens, and of course a merc unit that is notoriously random for effectiveness. I was quite pleased with this chunk of lousy.

Henry's list for me: Grissel, Slag Troll, Krielstones (6 + UA), Runebearer, Gudrun, Pendrake, Swamp Gobbers, Bone Grinders (6), Bog Trog Ambushers (10) - Wow! Did the Skornegy here! Lots of awesome spells and features that... only affect Faction models. Hahaha! What a lumb of terrible!

Battle Summary:
The quick synopsis is that I started off by surrounding Henry on all sides, with Gudrun sneaking around behind his forces, the Bog Trogs coming in on a side edge, and the bulk of my force approaching from a third angle to trap him in. The first hit on the High Reclaimer (aka "HR") came in the form of a Rift blast from Grissel against the Crusader which just reached the HR too, scoring 5 points. At that point he backed off from that battle line and towards his Cinerators. The next hit on the HR came from the Bog Trogs. They rushed in from behind and despite the Cinerators' best efforts, a couple Bog Trogs slipped around behind them. I used a lot of careful placement by running them instead of charging to keep the Cinerators relatively pinned in. One lone Bog Trog got a charge against the HR in his back when he had no focus on him and scored a whopping 10 damage! My 3-angle attack was working well, but I was taking heavy casualties in the process, losing all the Bog Trogs, half the Krielstones, and half the Bone Grinders. On the other side of the table, only the Crusader and Herne & Jonne were destroyed. I got lucky on two specific things though: First, the Templar ended up about 1/4" outside of the HR's control area at a critical point, which severely handicapped it's ability to cause damage, and second, the Vigilant didn't end up in B2B with the HR. The last 4 points on the HR came from a lucky second Rift blast damage. The HR had put clouds out to block LOS, but the remaining Gobber stood in the cloud just right. Then Grissel dropped a rift on him. Fortunately for me it scattered onto the HR, and the blast damage did plenty to finish him off.

Learnings:
* Even a marginalized model can create a good combo. Pendrake's bola combined with the Slag Troll pretty much wrecked face on the Crusader. It allowed the Slag to reliably hit and use his focus for boosting damage and taking the extra shot.
* Maneuvering can grant a lot of power. Although the Bog Trogs didn't kill any Cinerators (and in all fairness, I didn't want to be handing out soul tokens), they were able to use their reach as an advantage. By positioning them on opposite sides of a Cinerator at their reach range, the Cinerators had movement problems due to potential free strikes.
* When possible, flanking forces your opponent into tough decisions about how to split their defenses. By coming in from 3 angles, the HR had to use Cinerators on one side, Jacks on the other, and then focus for clouds to keep himself safe. It allowed me to pick which engagements happened and when/where they took place.
* This format is awesome! Totally loved it. I'm looking forward to doing this again. It really forced me to hunt for hidden combos in a ragtag set of models, and that I feel translates well when trying to build a competitive list.

Game 2:
Ok, actually, this was a throwback game of Battletech, and I'm throwing this in just for fun. I hadn't played Battletech for ages and Henry was kind enough to offer a game as a refresher course. The game ended up being pretty short. We spent a turn advancing towards each other and then the first volley was exchanged. Henry shot at me and missed. Then I fired back...
Lance (spectating the game): You should shoot everything and try to take out his head.
Me: I shoot all my guns!
Henry: Ok, let's start with the PPC. Roll to hit.
Me: 7! Does that hit?
Henry: Yes, exactly. Roll location.
Me: 12! What's that hit?
Henry: Uh, the head. Roll to see if you get a critical.
Me: 8!
Henry: Oh dear. That's 1 critical. Roll location.
Me: 3! What's that do?
Henry: That's the cockpit. You just killed my pilot.
Me: Neato!
Lance: That's going to make for great salvage! No damage except for killing the pilot.
So, it was an amusing albeit short refresher of Battletech.

RtC: My Time Management Sucks

2011-05-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 27 days

More pictures than normal for this update of the War Hog! I've made significant progress, despite the fact that I'm doing a terrible job managing my time and staying focused. One of the most important hurdles I overcame this week was to get everything base coated. Well, almost everything. There's one warjack head that isn't completely base coated. However it's 98% base coated at this point, and that's helping my focus an awful lot. Now I can get a better sense of the overall look of the piece. At this point I'm definitely noticing that the head draws the majority of the attention. I'm very curious to get feedback from my readers though about the overall look at this point (including the base).

So what's working well for me so far? Lots!
* Using dry pigments is working out great. I'm still a total amateur with them, but the results are pretty compelling none the less.
* Working a section at a time is very helpful. I'm not completing a section entirely, but I work it to a level of medium satisfaction and then move on to another area for a bit. This is keeping me fresh, but also helping me think about the overall look of the model as I go.
* The new pot of bronze paint I got is really working well. It's actually from the Golden Acrylics line. Golden Acrylics are hit and miss, but when they hit, they sure are good.

My wife was looking at it last night and said "Are you almost done?" I chuckled and said that I was probably about 50% done time-wise, to which she gave me a confused look and wandered off. So what are some of the major things left to do? Here's my list of things that haven't really gotten much work at all: teeth, tongue, eyes, right-hand/axe, rope, right leg, warjack heads, and the boiler. Lots of stuff still needs additional passes to tighten it up, and there's lots of little details (like putting some pink on the flesh where it's stitched together). I'm still debating whether to put a tattoo of some kind on him too. Perhaps something like a serial number or instructions. I'll see where things shake out time wise once I'm closer to done before I start adding more work.

For my painting readers out there, you may want to wander off now because I'm going to insert a gaming rant. I proxy-played a couple of Farrow forces the other night with my gaming buddies who were kind enough to put up with a pile of proxies. I'll skip the normal battle report and jump right to the rant. OH MY GOD DO FARROW SUCK!!! Seriously, I hated playing them. The War Hogs I fielded did almost nothing in both games. Maybe it's just a huge learning curve and they aren't my playing style. I'm willing to chalk it up to that. But here's my gripe: They are SLOW, and they don't have the arm stats to survive the beatings they will receive on the way to the battle. I wanted to like them. I really did. I love the models overall. But it's really hard to get excited to paint something when you realize it isn't fun to play. Ok, rant over. Nevertheless, I'm going to finish this beast for the painting competition and then he can menace my painting shelves.

RtC: Never Satisfied

2011-04-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 34 days

So I've made some significant progress on the War Hog over the last couple days, but I still have a long ways to go. At this point almost everything is base coated to some degree, with a few small exceptions like the rope, teeth, and any brass metals. This is helping me get a better feel for how the whole model is shaping up tone/contrast wise. I can already tell I may need to make some significant alteration as I go along. The good news is that I'm getting much happier about how the skin is working out.

Over the weekend, while painting, I was thinking about how much I've learned on this specific project by taking a lot longer...

First, thinning paints really does help. I've been forcing myself to thin the paints a little more than I normally do, and I've found it to be really helpful. I'm doing a lot more layering instead of 2BB, but the results are still pretty good. Forcing myself to do this has been challenging, but definitely valuable.

Next is that I've found I really need a completely separate set of brushes and rinses for metalics. I'd moved to a separate rinse for metals a few months ago, but while I was working on this project, I definitely started to notice little bits of metal lingering in the brush despite a thorough rinsing. Being very disciplined about this is actually pretty easy. I marked my metallic brushes with some tape on the handles to make it easier to keep them straight.

Working on just one project drives me crazy. I normally have a primary focus, but I've set aside everything else to focus on just the War Hog for the last 3 weeks now and I'm getting a little frustrated. I'll probably try to wrap up my SPQR Gun Mages this week just to have a sense of accomplishment. I'm also really antsy to get back to painting Legion models.

The last thing is that I'm never satisfied. I'll call a model done, but I'm never 100% satisfied with it. This is sometimes frustrating, but I feel this attribute is what helps drive me to be a better painter.

RtC: Change is Good

2011-04-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 39 days

My painting process is getting thrown sideways in a number of ways on this project. First it was having to put the model on a base before painting it. Now I've found myself in the position of having to get most of my base coating done before doing highlight and shading work. This is a departure from my normal process where I tend to work a single area to completion and then move on to another area. On the one hand, I feel it's a good thing to change up my process to see if something different works better. On the other hand, I'm worried that changing my process on what is meant to be a competition piece. I guess only time will tell.

This photo shows the current state of the flesh, but I've only done base coating and highlighting. There's a lot of shading to do now and to bring the tone back in line with the rest of the piece. However I'm likely going to start working on another area before doing the shading. I think this will help me with my overall composition which is where my biggest skill growth area is now I feel.

Ugh! 39 days to go! I'll never make it at this rate. I need to sleep less and paint more.

RtC: How many days left?

2011-04-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 44 days

I really need to get cracking if I'm going to have this thing done in time for the competition. Tonight's progress is small, but important. I did the black base coating for the major sections that will be metal. Also I got the loincloth to a point that is nearly done. It needs a glaze or two to smooth out the colors still, but it's close. It's pretty late though, and I desperately need sleep. Hopefully this weekend will produce some results as well.

RtC: Hog the Base

2011-04-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 49 days

I'm actually writing this post during the course of mounting the War Hog model to the base I'd prepped. Why? Well, it's a little nerve wracking so writing the post at the same time is both cathartic and gives me time to pause and think through my next step. I apologize in advance for the odd wording/tense of phrases in this post.

The first thing I need to do is drill a first hole. Something to note here is that the two pieces of metal I used on the base were some random scraps of metal I found in a parking lot that I just happened to like the look of. There's one pictured here. They have convenient holes in them so I just need to make sure my pin holes go through there to avoid any really unpleasant drilling. So after using a spare one as a guide, I've picked out a spot for the left foot pin to go through and will drill that hole.

Ok, with that hole now drilled, I need to do something really terrifying. I decided to leave the round tab on the bottom of the hoof for added stability and drill out a larger space for that tab. So I got out my 1/8" drill bit and *shudder* my power drill. I don't have a smaller drill handy that can hold such a bit so I'll just have to be very careful. I've done similar stuff before, just not on a base that I'd already put multiple hours of work into. Anyway, here goes...

Success! No cracking of the basing material or anything. The weight of the drill did most of the work for me so that I could focus on keeping a steady hand. I did a test fit and it's perfect. Now the next step is tricky, but one I've done a number of times: Drilling the second hole. My process here is pretty straight forward. First I measure out the distance between the pins in the feet (1 3/32"), then measure and mark the second hole on the base. This is a little more complicated since I have to either aim for the hole in the metal piece, or avoid the metal entirely. Ok, I totally got lucky here. It just barely slips into the corner of where that plate was. Time to drill!

Ok, not as smoothly as I was hoping. I had to adjust my drilling angle just a bit, but it got sorted out. After an initial dry fit, I just applied some glue and there it is! Miniature and base are now one. There's some clean up to do once all the glue dries, but now I feel like I can proceed with confidence on painting the hog itself. I'll explain the current state of the hog himself next time, but it's getting late and I'm still recovering from the flu.

Finally, a comment to my readers who posted feedback on the base: Thanks! I got a lot of consistent feedback from here and other sources as well. At this point I definitely think dirtying up the hoses more will be necessary, but I'm going to wait until I get further along in the project before I make those changes.

RtC: Lots of Painting While Sick

2011-04-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 52 days

Well, being home sick has the advantage that I got some painting done. It's all work on the base, which I'm calling mostly done at this point, although I may go back and make some adjustments after I've started making progress on the War Hog itself.

I should note at this point that I'm inviting critiques from my readers. Obviously constructive criticism is what I'm looking for. Obviously I'm just looking for feedback about the base itself, since the War Hog is still absent.

I used a bunch of different techniques in working on this, most notably though is using dry pigments. I'm still sort of building up my comfort and familiarity with them, but this base was an obvious target for using them. For this work I actually tried out pigments from Vallejo, Secret Weapon, and MIG. For the most part they preformed pretty equivalently, although the Vallejo ones seemed to require less work to break down some of the chunks of pigment.

From the Desk: (De)Motivational Material

2011-04-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

Quick update for folks out there. In case you hadn't heard of the Crystal Brush painting competition this year at Adepticon, here's a couple links to check out. Fair warning, the stuff entered here is absolutely amazing. The Crystal Brush is attempting to set itself as the premier painting competition here in the states. Salute being the big one in the UK.

Here's the winners.

And here's a link to all the entrants.

I always enjoy looking at these high-end painting competitions even though I don't have a chance of placing in one of them. Although it's easy to find such amazing works to be de-motivational, I tend to look at them for inspiration and ideas. Anyway, just some eye candy for folks out there that might not have heard of this competition. With a $10,000 grand prize, it's hard to simply gloss over this as "just another painting competition".

RtC: Base Progress

2011-04-02T14:18:00.000-07:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 56 days

As I should have expected this. My motivation and free time have both dwindled dramatically. Business trips, getting sick, and more house guests have erupted during the last 3 weeks. Nevertheless, I'm trying to make some progress.

So I started doing some work on the base. Pictured here is a bunch of the components for it. The main reason for working on the base this early is (as I mentioned before) the weakness of the legs. This was a significant problem given my normal painting process. I typically attach models to an empty spray can in order to hold them better while painting. However since this guy is so massive and with such a thin right leg, I quickly realized I needed to better secure him somehow. Attaching him to the base is my only logical recourse. Normally I wouldn't do this unless absolutely necessary, but for some specific models (like the Carnivean and his cousins) I've changed this process. When I do, I typically leave long pins sticking out the bottom of the base to attach it to the spray can.

So anyway, here's the base at about 75% assembled. I wanted to create a sort of mechanical laboratory feel to the base. The biggest chunk of work here was in casting out the metal plating. I searched high and low for textured plasticard that matched what I was looking for but found nothing. However while scouring my LGS, I came across a very large base (70mm) that had the right pattern and some InstantMold product. That evening I cast out the mold which was a piece of cake. Then I pressed in a bunch of black Milliput and I had exactly the patterned steel plating I wanted. Then it was just an arduous task of shaping it to a circle and carving out a square space in the middle. Once that was done I added the metal grill and additional metal pieces.

Here's the fully assembled base. It's now sitting in my garage as the primer dries. Today I'm hoping to get started painting it and drill out the necessary pin holes to mount the War Hog to it. With only 8 weeks left, I'm starting to feel the pressure to really get rolling on this project. Time to carve out some serious time and really paint like I have a pair!

RtC: It Never Fails...

2011-03-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

No matter how much time I spend looking for mold lines, I always miss one or two. No exception with the War Hog project. I found a couple places that needed clean up. I knifed/filed them down and then used some of the brush-on primer to clean up the spots. Totally worth the extra mile on this project.

I also discovered a bit of a problem. The right leg (the mechanical one) isn't very strong and started to bend while I was moving him around by the pins sticking out of his feet. Normally I'd paint him completely separate from the base, but I think in this case I'm going to need to get him on the base so that I can better secure him.

Speaking of basing, I've started putting together my idea. I got some great inspiration from David's comment (link) and I'm doing my own adaption of this to match my goal for the War Hog. I'm not going to share too much more yet, but this picture shows my collection of bits I plan to use.

Well, it's late, and I'm still recovering from my work travel this last week so I'm going to cut this post short so that I can get some sleep and get an early start on this basing project tomorrow.

Feralgeist

2011-03-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Super quick post. Here's the finished Feralgeist that I painted the other day. Nothing amazing really. I decided to keep it in the pink theme. I sorely debated whether to try and make it lighter in the center and darker near the high points. I sort of wish I had, but it's done now. If I end up painting a second one for whatever reason, I'll do the reverse of this one.

RtC: Underpainting Trial

2011-03-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

If you picked up No Quarter #34 and read Matt DiPietro's article about underpainting, you may have found yourself curious just as I did. Well, I decided to try this technique out. Now I need to at a disclaimer here: This is the very first time I've tried this specific technique, so my execution was less than optimal. In the past I used to prime models black and then drybrush white to get an idea of surfaces. This process was new for me. With that caveat out of the way, let's see my results.

	First, I started with my freshly primed Feralgeist. I chose this model due to it being a good candidate for multiple wash layers. I followed the article as closely as made sense. The grey coat covered probably 80% of the surface, and the white coat covered probably 30%. My first note here is that doing light shots of primer like this left some graininess that I'm not used to having when I do solid coats. No matter, it seemed to have little effect on the final product.
	First, I did a wash of P3 Carnal Pink, probably about 1:3. It was thick enough to give a strong tint of the pink to the entire surface. At this point I definitely noticed that the underpainted coat has a noticeable effect on the pink wash layer.
	Next, a thinner wash of half P3 Carnal Pink and half VMC Pink. This was probably at about 1:4, with a drop of flow aid thrown in for good measure. At this point, the underpainted coat is becoming less obvious.
	Now a wash of just VMC Pink, at roughly 1:5 with a couple drops of flow aid in there. Again, even less obvious of the underpainting.
	Now a wash of half VMC Pink and half P3 Beaten Purple. About 1:5 with definite flow aid added.
	Ok, I have no idea what happened with my camera here. This step was where I went back and re-higlighted some areas with slightly thinned (1:1) P3 Carnal Pink to bring some surface back to a brighter shade.
	Next, I did a very controlled wash of P3 Beaten Purple and some VGC Violet ink. This was something like 2 parts paint, 1 part ink, 3 parts water, 2 parts flow aid. By controlled wash I mean that rather than washing the entire surface, I just washed the recessed areas that I wanted to darken. It is at this point that my step-by-step comes to an end because...

... Where'd the underpainting go? Ok, perhaps my wash technique was not entirely the best option here. The article really only does 1 or 2 washes on top of the underpainting, and they tend to be darker colors. So I'll admit, my test is probably not entirely reflective of the way the technique should be employed. In any case, here are my takeaways:

1) Underpainting via 3 primer coats (and necessary black painting the recesses) takes time.
2) The technique definitely works better with just a couple washes.
3) Taking the time to underpaint definitely gives a much better sense of where to highlight, particularly if you follow the zenithal highlighting methodology.
4) This is not particularly compatible with my own painting style.
5) I'm glad I took the time to try it out, and hey, my Feralgeist went from blister pack to done in 2 days, which is a record for me! (I'll post the final model tomorrow)

So, will I use this for my War Hog? Probably not.
Will I use it for select future projects? Very likely yes.
Do I recommend other people try it out? Absolutely! See if it works for you! Trying out new techniques is what it takes to step up your painting.

Until next time, paint like you have a pair!

Spell Martyrs

2011-03-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

Adding another 1pt option to my army building is nice. I can't imagine that I'd ever field 3 of these, but in a large game at least I've got the option. On the actual gaming side of things, I've been wanting to round out all my 1pt options for list building, so adding these gets me nearly complete. All that's left is the Feralgeist, which is currently in progress.

All things considered, these were pretty quick to paint. Everything on the model is easily accessible to the brush. I didn't want to spend a ton of time on them, but I could easily see myself getting one more just to do a premium paint job on it just for kicks.

What went well:
* Athanc stone glow - I think this worked out pretty well. I didn't go all-out trying to OSL their chins and such, but it works.
* Overall composition - I tried to keep the rest of the model darker for the most part so that the glow would stand out better, which I feel that I accomplished.
* Black armor plates - I reproduced the same scheme from Anyssa for the black armor and it worked out pretty well. I really should have made notes this time.

What could have been better:
* Metals - The little dots and edges of Legion armor continue to drive me nuts. Those parts could have been cleaner.
* Blending on Skin - There's some splotchy places, particularly with the sanguine wash. I didn't notice it until after I'd already sealed it unfortunately.

SPQR: Adding That One More Step

2011-03-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

Philosophy
Regardless of what your goals are, an essential quality of speed painting is about efficient use of time. I would imagine that most people out there are already working on multiple hobby projects at once. I find generally that gamers tend to have some level of awareness at how to optimize things. However there's some value in exploring the topic in case there are little nuggets of wisdom out there. In terms of efficiency, there are two primary areas that I focus on: workspace and multitasking.

Having a dedicated workspace for hobby projects can make an enormous difference in terms of efficiency. My workspace has evolved over the years that I've been painting. It started as a box of paints and brushes accompanied by whatever mug I grabbed from the shelf. Later it turned into a large portable serving tray. Today I have a dedicate desk, shelf space, paint racks and lamp. There are many articles out there about workspaces, and I've included a couple in the list of references at the end of this article. Focusing specifically on efficiency, it's important to organize your workspace so that the most commonly used items are within arm's reach, and you know exactly where to find them. Having plenty of area also helps so that you aren't shuffling things around frequently to accommodate whatever you shift to work on. The key here is to evaluate your space every so often to ensure you are getting the most of out it.

As a visual aid to my philosophy on multitasking, I've included a photo of my desk. Since I wasn't able to put labels on the items, consider this a bit of a scavenger hunt. I've got a can of primer because I'm waiting for a model I just primed to dry. I'm working on basing the Spell Martyrs. My Gun Mages patiently await their next SPQR step. My War Hog relaxes on the styrofoam where he awaits the next step in his progress. And on my tool rack, a piece of clay experiment is drying (more on that another time). As you can see, I've got 5 different things going on at once. The value in doing this is that while one thing dries or cures, I can be working on another thing. In some cases, I'm waiting for inspiration to strike and having them within visual range helps. This is more ambitious that my typical, but the point still applies. If you're able to keep juggling back and forth between assembly and painting, you'll make good use of time when something needs to sit and dry/cure.

Practice
So back to my Gun Mages. As a part of my goal of speed painting in order to get better, I'm taking one more step on the coats. I'm going to two brush blend (2BB) to deepen the shading.

For reference, here's the UA model from the unit as of the end of the previous post.

And here he is after 2BB some P3 Coal Black into the deeper areas. As you can see, this definitely deepens the shading as the recesses have much more coverage at this point. The 2BB technique can yield pretty good results in a short amount of time once you get good at it, but it takes a fair amount of practice. I forced myself to practice it on models that I was speed painting in order to get that practice in. Combining washes and 2BB techniques like this can work well to step a model above just basic tabletop quality.

Total painting time: 30 minutes. This time it literally is 30 minutes to paint this step for all 7 in the unit. Although the 2BB technique is relatively fast for the results, it isn't as fast as wash techniques.

References:
* Matt DiPietro's PP painting desk
* CMON Article about basic tools, including workspace
* YouTube video of Ron Kruzie using the 2BB technique at Gencon (terrible video quality, but you can get the general idea)

RtC: Assembly Finished

2011-03-11T09:11:00.000-08:00

Countdown to KublaCon painting competition: 78 days

Assembly is finished for the War Hog! The last of the work was just getting the tusks and right hand attached, and then doing a bunch of gap filling around some of the major joints. The places where his skin is stitched together required some particular attention. Normally I might have just skipped that gap filling and used dark washes to disguise the joins. For competition purposes though, I felt it was really important to fill those gaps properly. It stretched my green stuff skills a bit since those stitch joints were somewhat fiddly to fill in. However, that work is now done, so it's time to move on to priming next.

Speaking of priming, I read the recent NQ article about "underpainting" and it got me thinking as to whether that might be a good technique for this. However, never having used the technique before, I honestly have no idea. I'm planning to do a test model using that technique but I'd love to hear from other folks out there about it. Post your comments!

Ok, and now for something more life-related. Part of my lack of progress on painting the last month was due to this project. My father-in-law and I spent a bunch of time working on my back yard area. The pavers and deck are all new, and it was a ton of work. But the end result has transformed the space into something much more functional and tranquil. Anyway, now that this project is complete, I should be getting more painting progress done.

Now it's time to start working out color schemes for this beastie and get on task.

SPQR: Speed Painting and Quality Results

2011-03-09T23:40:00.000-08:00

Goal #3 for 2011: Do a series of posts on "speed painting".

It's high time I got started on this goal! This is the kick-off post for the SPQR series I'll be doing on an ongoing basis to tackle the large topic of speed painting. My goal is to give a balance between the "philosophy" of speed painting, and concrete examples of speed painting in practice.

Philosophy
The term "speed painting" has a pretty wide spectrum of definition for time, technique and quality. Those definitions vary primarily due to different goals, which each painter needs to define for themselves. Are you looking to get a painted army on the table? Are you looking to improve your brush handling techniques? Is your available painting time limited and you're looking to balance quality and completion? The goal is what will drive what type speed painting you undertake.

In my case, I have 2 goals. The secondary goal is to get stuff painted for playing with. But my primary goal is really to improve my skills. My underlying theory is that I can always buy another copy of a model rather than strip and start over if it isn't perfect. I've been doing this sort of balance between speed and quality for the last couple years and I've seen a noticeable improvement in both brush accuracy and blending quality. One key factor to this improvement is that I always take time after I seal a model to review what I liked and what I didn't like, even if I don't blog about it. Occasionally I will set aside the speed painting mentality and go all-out on a model just to test where my upper limit is, but I can honestly say that taking this specific speed painting philosophy has indeed improved my skills.

Ok, enough of the philosophy, let's start a real example...

Practice

For the practice portion of these posts, I'm going to start with this unit of Gun Mages. They've been sitting in my paint queue for quite a while now, and although I don't expect to be playing them in the very near future I do want to get them painted. I should note that this is my second unit of Gun Mages to have painted (the first unit being here), so I've got the upper hand on these so to speak.

	Here's my starting point... a white primed model. I'm actually painting the whole unit at once, but I'm only going to show one model for the purposes of demonstrating the progress. I'm using a "wash over white" technique to help speed up the process of the major areas. The idea is that the washes over white do a lot of the hard work in terms of highlighting and shading. It's certainly not competition quality, but for tabletop standards it gets good results. Note that I'm not going to discuss other primer color options here. This technique is specifically for white primer.
	First painting step, base wash with Trollblood Highlight 1:1 (paint:water ratio). You'll notice that the coverage here is pretty good. Some white shows through, but not a whole lot. I'm starting with a more gray base before going to blues just to give it a more military feel.
	Step 2, wash with Cygnar Blue Base 1:2:1 (paint:water:matte medium). The coverage here is significantly less, but it does create a translucent glaze over the entire thing. The reason reason I include matte medium rather than glaze medium is that it 1) helps glaze even the top surfaces, and 2) helps reduce reflectivity in the recesses.
	Step 3, wash with VMC Dark Sea Blue 1:3:1 (paint:water:matte medium). Similar goal as the previous step, just darkening things. Now normally there's a lot of advice about painting the recessed areas first, and moving to the higher areas to avoid making mistakes on completed areas. The reason I'm doing the washes first is simply that washes tend to be messy, especially when working fast. Doing the washes first means I won't slop on other areas later and cause more damage.

And there you go, about 1/3 of the model's entire surface has already been covered using this technique. It's not outstanding, but it gets the job done.

Total painting time: 30 minutes. Ok, let me add a caveat there. I did paint 7 of these guys at the same time ("assembly line" style), but it was about 30 minutes of actual time spent mixing paint and applying it. There was drying time in between, but I'm not going to count that. The reason being that I spent drying time working on other projects at the same time.

Feedback!

If you've made it this far, thanks! I'm planning to keep these relatively short and work my way through my backlog of unpainted models, so expect more in the near future. This being the first post in what I hope will be a continuing series, I'd love to get feedback on what would be useful in future posts.

Anyssa Ryvaal

2011-03-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

I feel compelled to point out something amusing about the Anyssa Ryvaal model: She's got a sword on her back. Now normally this wouldn't be so interesting, and when put along with the other Raptor models since they all have swords. However Anyssa's stat card has no melee weapon listed at all. Not even the blades on her bow. She only has the bow on her stat card. Again, not necessarily odd except that the PP conversion rules are pretty clear about having to preserve the weapons of the model per the stat card. Ok, now that I've gotten that out of my system...

It's always a little challenging to get back to painting after an extended break of multiple weeks. This model was definitely no exception. Trying to pick out all the details on a larger complex model was really testing my patience. It didn't help that I ended up taking her to a tournament before she was completely finished and having some paint get rubbed/chipped off. However she's done now, and I'm moving on to some other speed painting projects to have more of a sense of accomplishment.

From the Desk: A Complete Lack of Progress

2011-03-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

There are balances in my life. Work vs personal. Family vs hobby. Speed vs quality. Sometimes they swing towards more hobby time and this blog gets a lot of updates. Sometimes they swing the other way. Right now I'm getting very little hobby time. Anyssa is sitting on my desk, waiting to be spray sealed, and I don't have her to show yet. So instead, I have these two pictures.

The last couple days I was on a business trip. I had high hopes of getting some model trimming and assembly work done. However working dinners and wine and 1:00 am emergency calls got in the way of any hobby progress. However the trip was very fruitful. These pictures are from my hotel room. This whole month is pretty busy with business trips. And when I'm not on a trip, I'm going to be finishing the landscaping work in my back yard. So the hobby is taking a bit of a hit right now.

This is usually when I would post some philosophical exposition about the hobby and all this thinking I've been doing, but not today. Instead, just pictures, and a couple updates on projects:

Anyssa is nearly done. I'll have pictures posted of her this weekend.

I've started painting my second unit of Gun Mages. I've got an initial post ready about "Speed Painting with Quality Results" that I'm going to turn into a series. Hopefully I'll be able to start that soon.

Speed painting is about all I'm going to have time for during the month of March, so it's a good time to step back and acknowledge the "reality" of my situation. Ok, that started to get dangerously philosophical. Enjoy the pictures!

Tournament Report and Something More

2011-02-28T22:57:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I was at a 25pt tier fight tournament at my LGS. The super quick summary is that I ended with 3 wins and 1 loss. And that 1 loss was because my opponent made his tough roll on Borka and my remaining attacks missed. The unfortunate part was that 1 loss was in the first round, so my 3-and-1 record didn't actually net me a 2nd place either. Anyway, there were 16 people there. The faction spread was quite interesting: 3 Legion, 2 Menoth, 1 Circle, 3 Trolls, 2 Mercs, 2 Cygnar and 3 Khador. The whole tournament was a pile of fun and everyone had a great time.

Ok, with that summary of the tournament out of the way, I'm going to do something different for the rest of the summary. I attempted to take pictures of several of the painted models at the tournament to showcase how there are some very dedicated painter/players at the LGS.

	These trolls were painted by my buddy Mike. His new painting blog is here. I really like what he's done with the obsidian theme to his troll army.
	It's a shame this picture didn't come out better. This chap's Gun Mages were really nice. The color scheme is really striking and the work on the browns in particular was quite nice.
	These Troll wealps were painted by my buddy Lance, who also has a new painting blog here. He's started a new Troll army and painting them using a "magma" theme. He refers to these wealps as "briquettes".
	These were Alan's new Rhulic force that he's been working on. I managed to snap this group shot because it was, unfortunately for him, his destroyed pile.
	Another model by Lance, this Devastator is a cool example of an aged and damaged jack. For this tournament, Lance was loaning it out to Henry who is still assembling his Khador army.
	Unfortunately I have to admit I didn't catch this fellow's name, but he had been working on his Cygnar jacks and this one really caught my eye.
	Mahir's Nemo was definitely striking in color. This particular battle was an amusing "old man" fight between pNemo and pDoomshaper.
	This shot was less about the models, and more about the situation. It was Khador on Khador and I was stunned at the scrum taking place. And yes, there was a wrecked Spriggan in the pile too. Go Karchev!
	And finally this Woldwarden, who was about to deliver a might thump to eSeverius' noggin!

Ok, well that about wraps it up for me tonight. It was awesome to see so much dedication to painting at the tournament. But now, time to get some sleep. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to seal up Anyssa and post pictures.

Saeryn, Omen of Everblight

2011-02-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

This model was actually completed a couple weeks ago, but due to extended visitors I wasn't able to reassemble my photo area. So finally I'm getting back into the painting swing and getting caught up on projects that were partially started. Tomorrow there's a 25pt tier tournament at the LGS, so I'm in a bit of a scramble to have things ready for that as well. I've been working on Anyssa the last couple days and just finally got her in enough of a state that I can use her on the table. I'll have pics of her in a couple more days when I finish painting her. For now though, I want to ramble on about Saeryn and where my head has been in regards to painting lately.

Overall Saeryn was a pretty enjoyable model to paint. After my feeling of moderate success with Vayl, I wanted to spend some extra time on this warlock as well.

What worked well:
* Black armor - I spent a lot of time on the black armor pieces, and despite them being a bit washed out in the photos, the highlighting worked out pretty much to my liking.
* Green cloth - Using the colors from Vayl as a template, I again spent a lot of time focused on the green cloth parts of the model. My real goal is practicing my color theory, so it does look a little "overdone" in contrast to the rest of the model.
* Leather straps - I'm not sure what I did on these, but overall I like how most of them turned out.
* Base - For some reason, the basing material turned out great, looking like broken layers of slate. No skill. Just random luck on this one.

What could have been better:
* Skin - The shading on the skin was hit and miss though. The outstretched arm was a little odd to work through and I'm still not comfortable with the end result.
* Metals - As usual, I'm not completely happy with the metals. It's not that I'm unhappy with them, I just feel like they could have been so much better. I suspect it's because I don't shade them down enough and the highlights are just too bright of metallic.

Time for some rambling thoughts... So lately, in addition to being busy, I've been in a bit of a painting funk. I'm working on Anyssa right now and it's hard to focus on maximum quality. I'll elaborate more about that particular model when I post the final pictures. In general though, it's been hard lately to sit down and paint for more than an hour or so, which really undermines my focus on quality. Honestly I need to re-frame how I go about painting probably, especially in light of my goal to paint the War Hog for KublaCon this year. It's a big multifaceted model that will require a lot of hours of work. If I'm ever going to pull it off, I need to be able to summon a high focus on quality on a routine basis.

Ok, enough rambling. Time to sleep and dream of winning tomorrow's tournament!

From the Desk: Musing About Mood

2011-02-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

Continuing my trend of contemplative posts (due to a busy home life), I've been thinking about how to create an overall mood for a model. It's easy to say that I want to do this, but the actual execution is something I tend to fail at routinely. As I start to work out a scheme for my War Hog, I'm examining my own process of how I go about painting. I typically fall into a trap of having an army scheme and just painting to that with some slight variations. This pretty much excludes any concerted attempt at a holistic painting approach. But let's back up a bit and look at some examples of creating mood.

Yesterday a friend of mine forwarded me this link to a post on the PP forums. The paint job on this Adeptis Rahn is quite impressive. However it's not just the blending quality, basing, OSL execution, or color choices that do it. The overall mood is what makes it impressive. The whole piece gives an overall feeling of arcane power and darkness. The paint scheme really ties the whole thing together and draws the eyes to key places. It's easy to look at it as a completed work and see the whole composition, but staring at a primed piece of metal can make it hard to invoke the "mind's eye" and see that end state before it happens.

Of course, there are numerous other examples of this, not the least of which are Ramos and Tiriel by EricJ. Both of these are examples of dark mood, but there are plenty of others as well. I've found CMON to be a valuable resource for this by looking at some of the top rated models and artists and getting a better feeling for whether a model seems to exude a singular feeling or not.

So what do I take away from this in terms of my War Hog? Well, that's a tough question. As a model, the War Hog itself is a frankenstein of components and surfaces. Marrying them together into a single vision is going to be a challenge, and something I need to put decidedly more thought into. My first impulse is to create a mood of rage. Pure... animalistic... RAGE.

From the Desk: Random Inspiration

2011-02-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

Like most people, my life is a roller coaster. Sometimes I get a lot of time to paint, like 2 weeks ago. Other times I get almost none. I have house guests for the next month and this is cutting into my hobby time (rightfully so). My photo area has to be taken down whenever we have guests too, so anything I do manage to complete won't get posted until the end of the month.

On the flip side, I have come across various sources of inspiration, and one in particular I wanted to share was this thread from the BrushThralls forums. It's a showcase of a number of top-quality painted models from a variety of artists. I'll warn you though, this thread can potentially break your will to paint if not taken in context. I recommend keeping two things in mind while viewing it (and any other painting blogs for that matter):
1) The artists painting these models are doing them for painting competitions and pour many hours into them.
2) Instead of focusing on how well they are painted, look for ideas on color schemes, bases or even just little features that jump out (yeah Butcher, I'm looking at that base of yours).

From the Desk: The Forest for the Trees

2011-01-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

Another weekend comes to a close, but I got some good work done. Among the various projects I hit was finishing up these little trees. I got the inspiration when I found some moss balls in Michael's. I'm a big fan of using felt templates for terrain elements because they provide clear delineations of where that terrain element begins and ends. However they don't provide very much ambiance. So I wanted to create some simple trees that could be put on the templates to spice them up a bit. Here you can see the final product in action, currently being occupied by a few Striders. What follows is a quick description of how I constructed these trees.

First I made these trunks. I sort of did several steps at once, so let me summaries. I cut out small circles of matte board, put a small nail through the center, then used some caulk and stuck it to a small tube. The tubes were just some simple hard plastic pieces of tubing that I cut to length. Sticking out the top is a wood screw which is intended to hold the moss ball. Once all these dried I was able to move on to the next step...

To simulate the bark, I grabbed some bandage tape from the first aid kit and just wrapped it around the tube.

Next I added the moss balls to it. Pictured here are the moss balls that inspired the whole thing. They are roughly 2" in diameter and are light but relatively solid.

After that I glued some garden sand to the base and was all set to paint. The base was relatively straight forward; just base with a dark brown and drybrush a tan on top of that. For the bark, I drybrushed a medium brown onto the bandage. This gave a somewhat decent looking bark effect for the trunk of the tree. After all of the paint dried I put some random flocking onto the base and called it done.

And there it is! A completed tree! Another simple piece of terrain to upscale my battlefields.

RtC: Slow and Steady... is Boring!

2011-01-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

Weekends are great. I don't really get a big block of time to work on stuff, but I get plenty of small slots to get stuff done. Today is a good example of that. In addition to the work in this post, I also got some work done assembling Annyssa Ryvaal, and some work on my upcoming SPQR series. More on that later.

First of all, I wanted to start getting the main body together. One of the challenging pieces to line up is arms that have these sorts of indentation sockets. I read a tip once of using a drop of paint to line up holes, which is what I'm (sort of) doing here. Unfortunately I ended up with a bit too much paint, but it will still serve my purposes. While that dried, I moved on to other parts.

Putting together the torso looked easy enough, but of course I chose to make it more difficult. The tail was the real reason. I wanted to pin the tail but quickly discovered that the bottom half of the torso has quite thin metal in the slot designed for the tail. So I opted to use a technique I've used before where I run a single pin through the middle of the torso to hold everything together. This photo is the before shot, with the pin obviously too long. The process is simple enough though. Drill the holes, put green stuff at the joins, put a bead of glue on the pin, and jam the whole thing together. The glue dries quickly enough to hold everything in place while I then proceed to smooth out all the green stuff. In this case, I went ahead and added on the tail as well.

Next was the head, which I kept simpler. Again, I ran a bead of green stuff around the edge (after scoring the surfaces to improve the join) and smashed it all together. Because part of this join included his mohawk, I added some extra green stuff and did some very basic sculpting to make the join look relatively seamless. The big problem I ran into here was the gaps around the neck. Rather than knead up more green stuff, I decided to let this part harden a bit first before I decide to tackle those spots and smooth things out.

Lasty, I went ahead and assembled the leg and arms. These were straight forward pinning and placement (with the aid of paint drop marks). There's some putty work to do to make those joins look a little nicer, but at this point I'm running out of time and need to get some sleep. I also finished the last of the assembly work for Annyssa Ryvaal at the same time which was a nice bonus.

The next step will be to start building a base, put on the remaining two pieces, and do the putty work to clean up joins. Taking my time to pay attention to all the assembly details is taking additional time, but I definitely feel it will be worth it in the end.

RtC: Progress is Progress

2011-01-26T20:59:00.000-08:00

Some nights I get a lot done. Others... well, it's a struggle to get anything done. If I know that I'm going to have a tight evening for time, I tend to focus on things where a small amount of time can still net progress that feels good. This evening was one such evening. I opted to get some assembly work done on the War Hog. I had about an hour so I reviewed the pieces to assemble and strategized on where to start. This model will require a fair amount of putty work, I determined which pieces were key to get done first so that putty could dry before moving on to other parts. The big key part here was the lower body. I scored these two parts and put them together with putty. I needed to do a slight bit of cleanup for the rope that runs around the waist due to a break where the join was. Easy enough though.

Next I worked on putting the smokestacks and aggression dial on to the upper body. While not strictly a key part to get done, these were easy to put together with just a bit of putty work.

Lastly I assembled the left arm, putting the hand onto the forearm. Although the join surfaces are pretty substantial, I opted to pin these together. I tend to be a little extra crazy about pinning even though it takes some extra time. I've rarely felt like pinning was wasted effort however, and with my dremel in hand, the work is pretty quick.

Well that's all for tonight. As I mentioned, progress is progress. This model has a target date of May so I feel a slow-and-steady attitude will serve me well.

From the Desk: "Go To" Colors

2011-01-25T23:35:00.000-08:00

Everyone has them. There's those 4 or 5 paints that see more activity than anything else. They are your "go to" colors. The ones you fall back to for whatever reason. In the myriad of discussions I have with folks about painting, this topic came up the other day and it was suggested I post about it, so here it goes.

Theory:
Whether it's personal affinity for a color, or familiarity with how a specific paint performs, painters will find their own specific paints that they like. These colors may change over time, but a painter will tend to favor specific colors for stretches at a time. Let's look at a couple reasons and examples.

Utility - Some paints just present a lot of utility to them. They have flexibility to them that enables multiple tasks to be done, or simplifies specific tasks. The GW wash Badab Black is an excellent example of utility. It's really useful for black-lining around surfaces, or shading metals. P3 Menoth White Highlight on the other hand is really handy for lightening up a color for highlighting purposes. Paints chosen for utility tend to cause specific effects, whether that be through they way they flow or the color tone they introduce, as with the two above examples.

Performance - Some paints just perform better, specifically in coverage and consistency. GW metalics for example perform very well over pretty much every other brand of metals in this area. P3 Khador Red Base is another good example for it's good coverage despite being a red tone, which typically has challenges with coverage. Paints chosen for performance tend to stay as favorites until a better performing paint is found to replace it. These paints are also less likely to have a specific impact to the painting style directly.

Affinity - This has to do with what colors someone likes, and it obviously much more varied than the above reasons. Different people just like different colors. There's certainly some psychology to play into that, but I'll skip such discussion here. Needless to say, paints chosen for affinity do not themselves directly affect the painting style, but allow the painter to express their own artistic style.

Whatever the reasons, it's good to know when you favor particular colors and why you favor them. It's a good exercise from time to time to set aside a go-to paint and try out something new. Doing so can be frustrating, but will ultimately make one a better painter.

Practice:
Ok, now that the theory is aside, let's talk about my own go-to colors to give you some concrete perspective. I've included some pictures of my own models for reference.

P3 Sanguine Base
Sanguine Base has become a favorite color for me for a couple reasons. Firstly, the rich red color gives a feeling of warmth, but provides more than just a typical red color. Second, I like how well it covers and blends. It's a tone that works well for shading both blues and greens. Here on this Raek is an example of using the Sanguine Base to shade the light blue flesh given a sense of warm flesh on the undersides.

P3 Coal Black
Coal Black has long been a favorite for me. I once read a tip from of not using black to shade with because it appears less natural. I experimented with using Coal Black instead and fell in love with the results. It provides a deep cool blue tone to shadows which has become a staple effect for me. I've found that VMC Dark Sea Blue is also a good substitute for P3 Coal Black. The two aren't exactly the same, but close enough that the dropper bottle format from VMC provides an added level of convenience well worth the tonal shift. Here on Kraye's horse, I used Coal Black to shade to create a cooler contrast with the base.

P3 Bloodstone & RPP Blood Black
Ok, I'm cheating a bit on this one by lumping two together. Both of these are rich brown colors. Bloodstone in particular is a complex color. Blood Black has a rough equivalent to P3 Umbral Umber which I had used previously before I found the RPP color. Although they are ideal colors for working leathers (as exampled on this Death Marshall), I find that they are useful in a number of areas, including both subtle and deep shadings of greens.

P3 Cryx Bane Base
Cryx Bane Base is more of a utility color than an affinity for me. I use this color for everything from gray cloths to rocks to flat steel plates. It has a rich greenish gray color to it which I've found that works well with a number of schemes. Here on this Vassal I used it in the deeper shading of the robes to provide a little harmony with the yellow and red colors. I have to say that I'm really fond of how well this particular paint blends, particularly using the 2BB method.

Using them together...
It's not uncommon for me to use more than one of those colors on a single area. On this Ravagore's chitin for example, I used Coal Black, Sanguine Base, and Blood Red in washes and 2BB to bring out the surface characteristics of it more. The colors are not applied uniformly though so as to create plenty of character to the chitin.

So what does knowing this do for me? Well predominantly my go-to colors are dark shades. I tend to work my way down from lighter colors and shade down more than highlight up from dark colors. Knowing this helps me to plan my colors and process better. I will often start with a base coat that is somewhere around 75% brightness of my overall look and work from there, although sometimes I'll even work from a white primer base and only shade down, working special highlights in as needed. In any case, knowing what your go-to colors are and how this affects your style can help to better develop your use of color.

Raptors

2011-01-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

Finishing up a unit is a nice feeling. I can honestly say that it's not very often that I finish a unit and really feel like I hit a home run on quality, and this one is no different. However getting these Raptors finished up was a major accomplishment for me. Five large based models is a fair portion of painting to get done, and I'm really looking forward to playing them more often now.

I'm going to skip the normal summary and just highlight that the photos and the speed painting were the downsides, but some of the speed painting on the black armor pieces was the upside. It's pretty late and I'm sorely in need of sleep.

RtC [Road to Competition]: And So It Begins...

2011-01-23T22:44:00.000-08:00

Once again, KublaCon is on my radar for the main painting competition to enter this year. This year I've decided to paint a War Hog for my entry so I figured I would chronicle the entire effort on this blog. Everything from initial planning through the final event. The series is going to span several months (since KublaCon is Memorial Day Weekend) so I'm going to tag these posts with the RoC label for easy reference.

Why did I choose the War Hog? It's certainly new and cool, but I chose it for other reasons than that. First of all, it has both "organic" and "machine" components to it which will challenge my abilities. This is also a good opportunity to display different techniques on the same model which can help win the judges' attention. Second, it's a good sort of model to draw attention to the PP line of models, which I enjoy trying to do. Third is that it's a larger model, and I wanted to focus on a larger model as my single entry rather than a smaller one. With my selection solidified, it's time to start the ball rolling. The next step is to go ahead and unbox the model and start looking over the parts.

Here are the various pieces for the War Hog, freshly unboxed. There are 14 total which could be a little intimidating. I went ahead and spent tonight prepping the pieces by trimming and washing them. I spent about 45 minutes on this step since making sure to catch as many ragged places to trim during this phase saves plenty of headache later. Since this is a serious competition piece, I decided to take the extra step of washing all the pieces with warm soapy water and scrubbing them with an old toothbrush. This helps get rid of any residue. Overall the pieces were in remarkably good condition and relatively little trimming was necessary. The biggest work was on the edges of the axe blades where a lot of filing was necessary.

My next step will be to begin assembly once all the pieces have dried. Here is pictured the assembly instructions from the back of the box. Due to the large number of pieces, I'll need to do it in sections so I'll need to spend a little time strategizing how I want to do that assembly. That's enough for tonight though, as I have other projects I want to get some work done on at the same time. For example I want to get Saeryn assembled so I can prime her tomorrow, and the Raptors are down to just final touch ups.

From the Desk: Being Sick Is Sometimes Good

2011-01-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

Being sick sucks. But sometimes there are hidden benefits. The last two days I stayed home from work and managed to get some terrain making and painting in. To the right here is a picture of the simple hills I made, along with a Khador monolith. The monolith is really going to be a gift for a friend. I got the inspiration from this blog post. I'm not great at terrain making, and generally don't have the patience for it. However I wanted to get more terrain together for my own area. Part of my inspiration to do this was the Warmachine Battlefield Generator which creates a random terrain layout. I've become quite fond of this tool, but quickly discovered that I don't have all the terrain pieces needed to properly support following the random layouts it generates. Hence, I'm on a simple terrain making kick. I'm also sick of only having felt templates all the time.

I also got a serious amount of painting time in on my Raptors. Units are always a little soul crushing for me, but 5 large based infantry at once is a bit more so. I'm just going for tabletop standards on these guys since anything higher would probably drive me insane. Overall though, it's going pretty smoothly. Last night (after taking these photos) I finished up painting the armor edges which was a major hurdle. Now I can focus on details. The armor edging is always tedious and exhausting to do, so having that part already done really lifts my spirits.

In the realm of trying to meet my 1-1-1-1 unpainted goal, I did a quick tally of unpainted models and found I have the following counts:
* 4 Caster (2 Legion)
* 1 Jack
* 3 Units (2 Legion)
* 3 Solos (1 Legion)
Now there's some fudging in there. Two of those units are rolling in their UA's rather than counting the UA as a separate model, and one of those solos is actually the 3-pack of Spell Martyrs. But the principle is sound. I'm really quite focused on slimming this down. I've recently been very interested in the Farrow but I'm trying to keep focused on painting down my backlog before I start a small Farrow army.

Battle Report: Double Impact

2011-01-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

Last night I played an alternative battle format that my fellow gamers and I have been working on for a couple weeks now. The format is called "Double Impact". I'll post the detailed rules for the format in a few days once we've cleaned up the language, but the basic concept is sort of a tag-team format, where each army has 2 warcasters, with one warcaster off the table at any given time.

The Armies:
Me: Thagrosh, Vayl, Carnivean, Scythean, Typhon, Shredder, Forsaken, Striders w/ UA
Lance: Mohsar, Kromac, 2 Feral Warpwolves, Woldwyrd, 6 Bloodtrackers, Nuala, 5 Wolf Riders, Lord of the Feast, Feralgeist

The Throwdown:
Vayl and Mohsar were deployed first which really set the tone for the game. The battle quickly turned into an attrition game, pinging at each other and trying to wear things down. Vayl used Chiller on the Striders in order to reduce key targets' DEF to make it easier to lay some attacks out from the heavies. An early strike got a Carnivean spray hit on Mohsar, and Typhon was a rockstar at laying out sprays on Bloodtrackers and Wolf Riders.

The Endgame:
The triggering effect was Typhon getting into position to drop 3 sprays on Mohsar. On the last spray, Mohsar took the damage and croaked, putting Kromac on the board. At that point my turn was done, but Kromac was within the strike range of Vayl. He rolled up, jumped into melee with her, and then proceeded to go to town. However, due to a cruel twist of dice fate combined with Vayl having Tenacity on her to put her at DEF 16, Kromac missed with a lot of attacks. He landed enough to take Vayl out at which point Thagrosh landed on the table. This put an interesting twist since Kromac could then continue to land blows (and easier too since Thagrosh is only DEF 14). However Thagrosh is an effective ARM 18 and was able to absorb the remaining hits pretty easily. At this point it was a quick matter of the Scythean headbutting Kromac to the ground and the Thagrosh went to town like a master sushi chef.

Highlights:
* I still love my heavy beasts. Legion heavy beasts are just a ton of fun to play.
* I definitely need more practice with Vayl. She seems great, but has a number of features that I need to remember, and learn how to sequence her abilities. Honestly though I find her to be pretty interesting.
* Mohsar's feat has an old school Severius-style crushing feel to it. Not being able to reave fury is a huge pain, especially for a beast heavy list.

Reflections on the Format:
The format seems pretty fun. We're continuing to make tweaks to try and get it refined. There were a number of rules questions that came up while trying it, but most of them were easily resolved. I definitely like the tag team idea and this gives enough tweak to the format to introduce something new without throwing everything sideways like Frankenstein or Casterjackapalooza do.

Vayl, Disciple of Everblight

2011-01-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

First finished model of the year! I told myself that I wanted to get to a point of having a 1-1-1-1 unpainted system for my Legion army, so this gets me closer. This puts me at 2-0-2-1, so not terribly far off from reaching that. Unfortunately this photo is rather grainy, and I'm not sure why. For this model though, I was issued a challenge by a friend to not use my "crutch" paints for some part of it. So I left out the colors I typically use for Legion flesh: Underbelly Blue, Trollblood Base, and Sanguine Base. It created an interesting color challenge for me to reproduce something close to those colors. It turned out to be easier than I thought. I used combinations of flesh tones and strong blues which worked well, and then added deep red tones to do the shading with.

What worked well:
* Despite the graininess of the photos, I feel like the blending of the cloak worked out quite well. I went with a more yellowish tone that previous Legion models and I like this shade better.
* The basing worked out well. Due to her wide robe I needed to put something wider, which meant adding some elevation. This base is simple but effective.

What could have been better:
* The blending on the flesh isn't so great unfortunately.
* The armor is ok, but I feel like it could have been done a little better. I really struggled with how to improve it but just couldn't fine a solution that I liked.
* I'm going to say that the feathers could have been better, however I really am pretty satisfied with how these turned out. I have yet to find a solution for small feather like this that I like. Only the Shepherd seems to have turned out to my complete satisfaction.

From the Desk: Vayl, Photos, and Prepping for 2011

2011-01-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

In order to produce more consistent photos (angle, lighting, distance, etc) I put together this little mounting system. The idea is that it will reliably hold my standard model mounts (empty spray cans) and the old broken tripod of my camera so that I get consistent results. This will be very helpful For putting together step-by-step photos without having to drag the models into my normal photo box (which is not meant for models still attached to paint cans). So how good is this little set up? Let's take a look at my very first attempt at such photos, using my current in-progress model: Vayl.

My before picture isn't really much of a before. I'd nearly finished her at the point I had this set up ready for testing. So the before and after is of her skin. At the time of writing this, I've finished painting her, but need to construct a base for her. The robe is a little annoying in that it flows out well over the edges of a small base. I typically try to create more interesting and raised bases for warlocks, but Vayl is definitely going to require something extra unfortunately. If it wasn't for the basing needs, I'd have her wrapped up tonight most likely. But the need for gray stuff to dry and whatnot will mean she needs to wait until tomorrow.

Here's the after picture. This is the point at which I've determined what additional steps I need to make sure I take when doing these sorts of photos. First, my removing the camera from the mount caused the mount angle to shift a little, which causes some differences in the camera angle. Second, cropping separately causes some inconsistencies between the pictures. Third, I didn't mark the alignment of the model, so it's not facing exactly the same as the first photo. These are relatively easy to fix as a matter of process though by just doing some simple markings as I do the first photo.

2010 Wrap Up, and 2011 Resolutions

2011-01-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

[Disclaimer: This post contains fluffy, introspective nonsense... Just like last year's did.]

Once again, I find myself at the beginning of a new year, and it's time to look back at the previous year.

Last year's goals:
1) Focus on a KublaCon painting entry that I am really proud of - Check! Last year was awesome for KublaCon for me. I'm still pretty psyched about how well I did. More than just that, I got a lot of useful feedback that helped me improve my painting.
2) Close out my unpainted Malifaux backlog - Uhh.... not check. I've still got several left, and I'm not making much progress on them.
3) Refine my own "style" of painting - Uhh... sort of check. I've been trying to do this, but in all honesty I haven't been doing a good job of it. It's hard for me to really elaborate more except to say that I'm more keenly aware of where my weaknesses are in my painting style.

Models painting last year:
This year turned out to be pretty similar to last year. All things considered I find that to be a feat unto itself given that I have a child now, along with a job that has become more demanding. The total comes to 69 models, 3 over last year. This year had a number of beasts as I was really working hard on my Legion army.
Legion: 27
Mercs: 18
Protectorate: 3
Circle: 2
Cygnar: 7
Khador: 1
Minions: 1
Malifaux: 5
Other: 5

Goals for next year:
1) Enter the KublaCon painting competition at the masterclass level. I promised myself if I got a gold in the open level, I'd move up to the masterclass level the next year. Last year's entries were good, but I need to step up my quality even further. Amazingly I am already thinking about what I'm going to enter.
2) Close out my unplayed factions. I'm really only playing Legion now, and I'm thinking about starting a minion "army" just for fun. But I really want to get done with the remaining models for the other 3 factions I don't play actively. It's only 12 models actually, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal.
3) Do a series of posts on "speed painting". This is a project I've started working on already (in terms of research and planning), but I want to make sure it takes shape. Look for this to start happening in the next couple weeks.

Well the evening hours are burning up, and there's models on my desk to paint. It's time to put the keyboard aside, pick up the brush, and paint like I have a pair. Happy new year everyone!

Tuesday Nights at the LGS

2010-12-30T12:54:00.000-08:00

I'm one of the fortunate players who has a fairly thriving WarmaHordes community in the area. Not just that, but within a 2 hour driving radius, there are at least 3 game stores that have table areas and hold tournaments. My favorite and closest LGS not only holds monthly tournaments, it has an active press ganger who organizes Tuesday Warmachine gaming. Normally I have trouble making it to Tuesday Warmachine night, but since this was a vacation week, I was able to swing in for a couple games.

Before I cover a quick battle reprot, I have to give our PG (Ray) a shout out. This guy is great for a number of reason, but here's a couple things I really appreciated this week:
* He was purposefully organizing games, putting himself at the bottom of the wait queue for a game.
* He takes the time to know who all the players are, and suggests match-ups for players so that they get a good gaming experience.
* He strikes just the right balance of being polite and delivering some friendly smack talk.
* He's quite a sharp player and makes a very worthy opponent.

Ok, now for a quick battle report. I got 2 games in, which I'll try to recount with extreme brevity...

Game 1:
Me: Absylonia, Scythean, Carnivean, Raek, Stinger, Shredder, Forsaken
Wing: pVlad, Beast 09, Destroyer, IFP, Manhunter
Outcome: Victory!
Summary: I hadn't played against pVlad in MK2 yet (amazingly) so this was a bit of a learning experience. During his first strike he laid out good damage on both my heavies, but since he didn't kill them, Absylonia feated and it put me in a strong position. My counter-strike cut Beast 09 down to 3 boxes left and slaughtered half the IFP. From there it was a grind match that ended up with pVlad alone against Absylonia, a Stinger and a Shredder. Under Blood of Kings he is a tough customer, but I managed to pull out the win with a Stinger poison charge in the back.

Game 2:
Me: Absylonia, Scythean, Carnivean, Seraph, Stinger, Shredder, Forsaken, Deathstalker, Sorceress
Ray: Grim, Blitzer, Impaler, 5 Scouts, 10 Burrowers, 2 Fell Callers, Chronicler, 6 Nyss Hunters
Outcome: Victory!
Summary: This was a serious knock down drag out fight. I managed to swing around to Grim's flank with most of my army and started pushing towards him while using the Sorceress to put a temporary hold in the middle of the board with her wind ravager ability. I got a the drop on the Blitzer and took it out, but the burrowers with bonuses from the Fell Caller were just overwhelming, taking down heavy beasts pretty quickly. Absylonia and Grim were toe-to-toe for 3 turns in a row before Grim finally went down. In the end Absylonia was only left with her Scythean while the trolls still had at least 15 guys on the board still. However the early slaying of both troll beasts put Grim in a rough position such that he couldn't generate enough fury. This was a tough battle but very fun and a great learning experience.

Madelyn Corbeau

2010-12-29T12:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, I know. She's all "American" style. The color scheme was half accident, half on-purpose. I wanted to try out the color scheme, and Ms Corbeau seemed like as good a subject as any. I'm not going to belabor this post too much. It's mainly nice to have one more unpainted merc done. Just 2 more to go!

What went well:
* The reds turned out pretty well I feel. Despite all the bad press about red as a color, I seem to have a knack for it. Either that or I've got some sort of color blindness.
* Overall composition of this model is not too shabby. I feel that the concentration of lighter colors (combined with the shape of the sculpt) draws the eye up to her face nicely.

What could have been better:
* The flesh is pretty weak for some reason. I've never had good luck with flesh. I need to just take more time on it I suspect.
* The whites appear somewhat dirty, but not on purpose.

Ok, time to see if I can squeeze out one more model before the new year.

Ravagores

2010-12-23T22:38:00.000-08:00

There are times when I paint a model just for the bliss of that model's sculpt. There are times when I paint a model because I desperately want to field it in my army and I strive to paint everything I field, even if the model is a complete eyesore. And then there are times when a great sculpt and great stats come together. The Ravagores are one such example for me. So much so that I bought 2 of them after proxying them only once. I can't exactly pin down what it is, but the "Carnivean chassis" for Legion beasts has always been fun to paint despite its size. Getting these guys done was more than just fun though. This solidly relieves my feeling of being such a whore for fielding two of them with eLylyth. In tribute to this accomplishment, I'm going to return to my old-style analysis entry...

What went well:
* Painting both at once - I had debated doing them individually. There were merits to both. I actually like having variations between my Legion beasts, but doing them together provides a certain economy of scale that's hard to argue with.
* Alternate chitin - When I first started going with the red chitin on the one Ravagore, I had my doubts. However the end result turned out quite striking I think. It gives each of them a distinct feel, makes them identifiable from each other, but they still seem to fit in theme.
* Slight pose alterations - The "red" Ravagore got a bit of a pose alteration so that he was a bit more straightened out and accentuating the breath attack. I didn't like the original angles of the pose, so making a shift was needed. I think the way these two worked out was nice yet subtle.

What could have been better:
* Flames - I'm not entirely happy with them. Ironically, they look better in the pictures than in person. There was something just not right about them. However I did them last, and by that point I was ready to be done. Putting more time into them was unlikely to yield significantly better results so I just called it completed so I could move on.
* Little mistakes - After sealing them, I found a couple more little places where skin base coat had gotten on the chitin. They aren't obvious, but spotting them ticks me off. I need a better process for the final inspection of models before I seal them.

Well, that's it for tonight. My painting desk is now finally rather clear from several months ago where I was feeling overwhelmed.

Absylonia, Terror of Everblight

2010-12-17T23:01:00.000-08:00

My painting pace seems downright terrible these days. All things considered I feel like I'm making good progress considering my circumstances (work/baby), but I'm still having trouble getting things completed. However, I managed to get Absylonia here finished out tonight. My photo setup is still in desperate need of tuning, so the photos are pretty badly off from the real life viewing. However I'm happily trading time away from fixing my photos to just get painting done.

Nothing really special to report about this model. Pretty standard techniques for my Legion stuff. I tried to spend a little extra time on her, but honestly my skills (read as: patience) have slid off a bit and it's nothing really special to talk about in my opinion. I'm in the midst of the 2 Ravagores at the same time so it was hard to stay focused on this model while the two big beasties were staring at me from across the paint table. Speaking of which...