From the Desk: Color and Shape and Time

Things are a bit slow for me right now. Work is busy, had my birthday, and other random things have been slowing down my updates. Plus, I've been working on eSkarre, and this model is magnificent. It's worth putting tons of time into, which is what I'm doing. Probably another week of work at my current pace.

So, in place of a normal update, the following are some photos I took recently at an Orchid show, and down at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Part of my paint goal this year is to get better with identifying and choosing colors. Taking photos of different subjects is part of that goal. So, without further delay, here's some photos with some personal commentary.

	The stippling effect on the petals here is remarkable. I've been intrigued by stipple patterns in nature as opposed to smooth color transitions as seems to be the norm for many things.
	The colored veins of the petals here are remarkable. It inspires me to use this sort of pattern for my Legion models. Here though, the edges of the veins are pretty fuzzy and not clearly defined as one might think.
	The bark and moss was particularly interesting to me here on this mounted orchid. The mount point of the orchid has a lot of color variation. Oranges and greens are both present, and create an interesting effect between them.
	These stalks are a good example of a striated surface, another natural pattern I've been fascinated with. I think the key here is that the striation have a lot of color variation in a very narrow space.
	Now this was just alien. How does this happen in nature? The pattern has a fairly crisp edge to it, creating stark contrast. The effect makes the petals look painted and unnatural.
	More curiously mounted orchid color. Here there's an interplay between green and white, which creates less interest to my eye.
	The weathering on this hydrant is pretty interesting. I can understand why it weathers so heavily on the base and the top, but the other random weathering places are curious. The color interplay is interesting as well. The is a combination of smooth and stalk transitions from the yellow paint to the oxidization.
	This has two intriguing surfaces to me. First the bolts: They have clearly been exposed to the elements for quite some time, and the oxidization has completely obscured any metal. The color of the oxidization ranges from dark brown to a fairly bright orange. There's even a hint of yellow present. The wood on the other hand has a reverse effect from the exposure. Instead of layers building up, layers are being stripped away. As the paint is worn off, it reveals the surface pattern of the wood, showing the grain of the wood as well as nicks in the form of paint being left behind in the lower (protected) surfaces
	More weathering, as above. Something interesting here though is the layer of oxidization and deposit on top of the graffiti. The graffiti paint becomes like that of a tattoo where it seems to be below the surface.
	I don't know what it was. Don't ask. Some sort of former-plant matter. It was hard to the touch. I loved the effect of the sun on the surface of both it and the sand. The complex and minute shadow effects reveal the true pattern and shape of the material more than the color variation of the surface.

From the Desk.... sorta...

I got a question recently about my photo setup, so I figured I'd do a quick post. I would have done this sooner, but eSkarre got started the other night and the model is just so majestic that it instantly sucked up 2 entire evenings... and I only did the base and skin/face/eyes so far! Ahem, anyway...

I've gone through a number of iterations to get to this point. It's important to note that I read many articles on this, and yet my photos could still be better. I'll cover my own plans for improvement later.

First of all, I don't use a fancy camera. It's a fairly simple Kodak camera, not designed for high end work. It has the necessary features though (timer, macro mode, disable flash, auto-white balance). I always use the timer and a mini-tripod when taking pictures to eliminate blur.

Next, I have a lightbox. My first lightbox was a cardboard box where the sides had been cut out and replaced with white tissue paper. This worked fine, but my father (who is 1000x the photographer I am) found a collapsible lightbox for me which I like much better. It also came with a background to use which has worked out really well.

Lighting is the real challenge when taking pictures I've found. The camera doesn't need to be expensive, the background material only takes a little tweaking, and photo software can be found for free online. But lighting can take a long time to refine. I use 3 lights, as pictured here. The real key is getting the right balance of light intensity between the left and the right.

As you can see from the picture, my photo setup is pretty easy to teardown. When we get visitors, my setup has to get torn down so that our visitors have a place to sleep, but the bed does make a really good place to do this. It probably takes about 10 minutes to set up and 5 to tear down.

Well, that's all there really is to it. I also use Google's Picasa for photo "editing", although I rarely do more than just crop images and sometimes a minor contrast tweak. My biggest opportunity for improvement is to replace all the bulbs of my lamps with sunlight spectrum bulbs to improve the color balance. I've also heard a tip to use a piece of white foamcore on one side of the lightbox to improve light fill, but I haven't tried that yet. In any case, happy painting and picture taking!

Nightmare

Hooray! I actually have a second painted Cryx warjack. And this one was a delight to paint. There is definitely a certain advantage to only painting models that I'm interested in painting. Then I'm not dragging my way through models that I'm only painting so that I can field them. I won't, of course, debate the competitiveness of such a model selection strategy.

I used the same scheme as I did for Deneghra on this one. Only fitting as the story on Nightmare is it's the jack that rescued her when she was cut in half by her sister, Haley. So I kept the same NMM scheme with rusted iron, dark green plates, and clean steel blades. Also the lava base reinforces that unity with Deneghra. I've been quite happy with the relatively uniform look of my Cryx force, and even though they aren't painted to as high of quality as I could do, I really enjoy the look of the force together.

One of the most fun parts of this model were all the glowing runes. They are sculpted as raised runes on the surface of the armor plates (and a couple of skulls). In order to really bring them out, I started with Iosan Green covering the raised portion and a small bit on the surrounding surface. Then I used Necrotite Green on the raised rune itself. Then to really step up the glow, I used some Cygnus Yellow in select spots to enhance the brightness of the runes. Typically I used it where rune lines cross, or on any dots, but also on a few rune ends. For the very top central runes I used a little pure white on the points where the lines cross to really enhance the glow. I'm really pleased how these turned out.

The NMM effect on this model is not so great, but I decided to limit the amount of time I spent on all the Cryx models. It's an interesting exercise to aim for the balance of speed and quality and see what turns out. I honestly do not regret doing this either.

Well, on to one last Cryx model!

From the painting desk: Weekend Binging and Dremel Trials

This has been a ridiculously good Saturday for me. To the right, you'll see my progress on the Cryx Nightmare. I only just started it late last night, so I'm pretty stoked to be this far along on it. It's mostly down to details (runes, rib bones, chains, etc). It's a very fun model to paint. I've always been fond of the look of the Cryx Helljacks though, and Nightmare here tops the list.

In addition to this progress, today has seen a pile of other progress and fun. I got eSkarre primed, all my remaining Legion models trimmed and cleaned, did some minor conversion work on Thagrosh and the Deathstalker to position their arms a bit better and did some generic cleaning up of my painting desk.

Today was also movie day with my wife; we saw Bolt in 3D which was immensely fun. I also watched Babylon AD (not terribly interesting), and probably half a dozen episodes of the A Team on Netflix streaming (I love it when a plan comes together).

I got a little bit of a test run with the Dremel today when working on Thagrosh. I have to say, the Dremel is pretty sweet. Just some quick notes on my experience so far:

• Getting the drill bit aligned is very important so that it doesn't have a warble to it.
  
• The recommendation of sticking the bit into wax first seems unnecessary as my bit never got hot.
  
• Letting the Dremel do most of the work and not pushing very hard is very smart.
  
• Starting a very minor pilot spot for the Dremel helps in making the drilling process much smoother.
  
• The Dremel makes for a much straighter and cleaner hole than using the pin vise.
  
• I'm going to need to find a way to enclose my drilling efforts to prevent metal dust from spreading around. It's not a huge problem, but with more drilling will cause more shavings and dust, and although my new super mini vac is awesome, I'd like to prevent any waste being thrown around if I can.
  
• The Dremel is WAY easier and safer than I was expecting, and I'm sure my hand will be thankful for it doing the work.
  

On the Legion front, I'm still kicking around what I plan to do with them for sure. I'm focused on finishing Cryx and Trolls before starting Legion, so I still have time, but it's starting to weigh on my mind more to make a decision. I really did enjoy the color scheme for the Nyss mercs I painted, so I'm likely to stick with that for the troopers. However for the beasts, I'm still undecided. I'm definitely going with a rocky/snowy basing scheme though. Ok, that wraps up this edition of "From the Painting Desk". It's nice to be back in full swing of painting again. Just enough time to squeeze in some more work on Nightmare before I turn into a pumpkin and fall asleep. Happy painting out there!

How To: Building a Game Board

If you're like me, playing is an important part of the hobby. And in order to play, you really need a good playing surface. I've posted pics of battles in the past, many (like the one to the right) from my own home on the game board I built. Recently the need to build a game board for Lance came up, so I figured I'd use the opportunity to write up what I did to inspire ideas for others.

There are some key guiding principles at work in the design of my own board. First, I wanted a 4'x4' playing surface, which is the standard for Warmachine and Hordes. Second, I wanted it to have a balance between form and function, providing a moderate level of battlefield setting without being inflexible. Third, it needs to be storable so that when I'm not playing, my wife isn't threatening to throw it out. As cool as the classic foam battle boards are that I often see tutorials for, they didn't meet my criteria. Hence, this project was born.

Materials: The following are the specific materials I used for my board.

• (4) 2' x 2' wood (or MDF) panels, 3/8" thick - I was able to find pre-cut 2' x 2' panels at my local "Big Giant Hardware Store". MDF panels are nice as they usually are smooth and free of warps, but are more expensive. I used 3/8" because that provided the best rigidity to weight ratio.
  
• 2 strips of heavy duty cloth - This cloth is used to create the "hinges" for the boards so it should be decently heavy duty. I got mine from my wife's scrap fabric drawer, but a local fabric shop is likely to have scraps that they will give away.
  
• Felt (of an appropriate color) - For my original game board I found this great stuff that was basically static grass paper. I've never seen it since though as the model train store I got it from closed. Felt however works great and any fabric store should have a variety of colors. I recommend get more than the 4' x 4' square so you have some slack to work with.
  
• 2 Part Epoxy Glue - This stuff is available at most hardware stores and comes in a double-syringe type of applicator.
  
• White Glue - For this project, I used Tacky Glue which I got at a local craft store. It's a little more concentrated than the normal white glue like Elmer's.
  

Step 1: Lay out 2 boards next to each other. Make sure to line them up carefully. Ideally you want to make sure you get any bowing in the wood to match up. Apply some epoxy along 1" or so of the edge of both boards next to each other. Then press down a piece of fabric to the epoxy to join the boards. This will create the hinge. Do this with the other 2 boards as well. Give the epoxy a few minutes to initially set before moving on. Ideally you can give it an entire day sitting out flat before moving on so that the epoxy sets really well.

The reason for using fabric to form the hinge is that it's very low profile and doesn't require woodworking techniques to inset the hinge. A normal hinge would stick up in the middle of the table creating an uneven surface.



Optional step: Here I drew a deployment line. This line is drawn with a permanent marker 10" from the end of the board. The line just faintly shows through the felt. This 10" line is specific for Warmachine/Hordes of course, but the same practice could be applied as appropriate for other games. The reason for drawing the line on the wood under the felt is so that during the game it isn't an obvious reference point when trying to estimate distances.



Step 2: Cut and glue down the felt. I just used normal scissors, laid out the felt, and cut it to fit. Then I used the Tacky Glue to glue it down to the wood. Note that I've glued it on the same side the fabric hinge is on. This will obscure the hinge as a side effect. However the primary reason for this is that when the board is folded up, it keeps the felt safely protected between the boards instead of exposed.



Done! Let it all dry. When you are ready to play you just put the pairs of boards next to each other. An optional step would be to put a third hinge on the back so that the 2 pairs then fold up against each other as well. I have opted not to do this just to make it a little easier to move around and on the rare occasion when only 1 board is needed.



When you're done playing, you just fold both boards up and store them away. The whole thing only measure about 1.5" thick, so it slides easily out of sight behind/between/under something. And there you have it! Hopefully this inspires others and if you come up with enhancements to this idea please leave a comment.

Cephalyx Drudges

Now this is my kind of squad. Notice the subtle majesty! Hands replaced with saws, swords and drills! Tubes that go from faces to crotches! The stink of being somewhere between alive and dead! That's right... these are the Cephalyx Drudge Mind Slaves. This rounds out my third Cryx unit.

I spent more time than I expected on these, despite them not really being too much above tabletop quality. The blending breaks down in a few places where I used washes and it pooled too much. I mostly followed the NQ #14 guide to painting them just to understand what they were doing with all that mixing of different colors. It was interesting. The flesh really does have a lot of interesting tone to it.

I experimented with one of the new GW washes (Devlan Mud) on this one. You can't really see where I used it anymore, but I was fairly impressed with it.

One thing I'm still not sure about is using metalics. I'd been experimenting with NMM techniques on some of my Cryx models, but not all of them. The Cephalyx and the Revenants all use real metalics, whereas everything else uses NMM techniques. It creates a little inconsistency in the overall army, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

Anyway, here's some pics in groups of 3...

And a group shot of everyone including the Slaver...

Unfortunately I just set my photo setup back up and didn't get the lighting right (again), but it's close enough.

Random Stuff #951

So, today's post is really just a dumping ground for a bunch of thoughts and events.

I played another 1000 point game on Friday with Lance. Harbinger and eFeora against Zaal and Xerxis. It was a righteous brawl. No detailed report here, but the highlight for me was that the combo of eFeora and the Harbinger was awesome. Some pics...

For Christmas, my folks got me a mini 2-speed dremel which I am very much looking forward to trying out next week once I have a little more spare time. My in-laws are headed out tomorrow, and I have to go back to work tomorrow as well, so my normal routine will resume which I have mixed feelings about.

It's fairly cold here in the bay lately, so I may have to shift into assembly mode for a while as the cold weather sometimes plays havoc with primers and sealers. Ironic since I've actually got the Cephalyx Drudges almost done now (just a last bit of highlighting, cleanup and basing) and they'll be ready to seal. I'm thinking I'll finish up my remaining Cryx models before tacking anything else.

87? Really?

[Apologies up front. I'm an engineering manager, and thus sometimes that side of my brain takes over and looks at metrics.]

So the year is up, and I was looking back at how much I painted this last year, using this blog as a tally sheet. 85 models! I couldn't believe I'd painted that much! There's a pretty good variety in there too. It was actually quite shocking to see how much stuff I'd painted, and how the effort had distributed out:
Cryx: 32
Mercs: 31
Menoth: 15
Trolls: 1
Cygnar: 1
Circle: 1
Minions: 1
Khador: 1
non-PP: 2

All things considered, I feel pretty good about my progress this last year. I developed a number of skills, entered KublaCon with an entry I felt good about, and overall got a lot of painting done. Compared to 2007 where I only painted 47 models, I also feel like my speed has really picked up, and I'm painting on a more regular basis with less downtime due to burnout. It probably helps that I've scaled back on other activities and learned how to manage my time better.

So what does 2009 hold for my painting hobby? After some not-so-serious thought, here's my top 3 goals for the year:
1) Close out my unpainted models down to 2 factions at a time.
2) Start a Legion army.
3) Enter KublaCon again with entries I feel even better about than last year.

Sorcha

No, I haven't started playing Khador too now. This is a Christmas gift for Sean who is playing Khador a lot now. I've wanted to paint this model for a while and I figured this would be a good option. He's undoubtedly already got Sorcha, but hopefully this alternate sculpt will find a place in his collection.
Admitted, digressing into rules for a moment, I think Sorcha would be a really fun caster to play. However she has a reputation of being a real pain to play against and one of the leading "power gamer" casters. Perhaps if people see effort put into painting her well, it will take the sting out of playing against her. Hey! A guy can dream!
I spent a pile of time cleaning up details on this model as I went along. The white on the armor never did end up looking great to me. My blending is just not quite clean enough still to pull off white armor plates.
The coat on the other hand worked out quite well. The "imperfections" in the blending tend to create a sense of texture. That coupled with a fair variation in color created an effect I was quite pleased with.
The metals were again part of the new style I've been working on. Lots of blending in black paint to create a more dramatic shading and highlighting on metals.

Holiday Link Dump

Today is another link dump day! A couple of random things I came across that were interesting to me on the Privateer Forums. Perhaps no one else, but at least now I won't lose these links.

This was a post about creating molds for bases which I found very interesting. I'm definitely going to try this out for myself.

Legion paint scheme
This was a post of some Legion models for which I somewhat liked the color scheme. Not entirely, but it's helping me decide what I want to eventually go with.

Terminus

Now this was a big model. Lich Lord Terminus is probably in the top 5 largest models I've painted. This is the latest addition to my Cryx force. I kept in style with the other Cryx models I've painted, and also focused on a balance of speed painting and quality. As a result, I got him done pretty fast, mostly due to the use of washes and 2 brush blending techniques.

Still having a little bit of color balance challenge with my photo setup again, so the blue/yellow shifts between the left and right sides. Kinda screwed up the saturation which makes the blade of the sword look all white. It's actually painted to look like carved bone. Oh well.

The armor was the standard formula I've used before. The skirt and darkened armor plates was CXH then 2 brush blended with CXB and then black to shade them.

The wings were a whole different issue. I did a number of passes and washes, starting with a base mix of half Rucksack Tan and half Midlund Flesh. Then I did a heavy wash of Battlefield Brown and "sponged" and "rubbed" some places clean of the wash to restore the highlights. Then I did 2 more heavy washes of Umbral Umber and Black in controled areas and 2 brush blended the washes at the edges to smooth them out. This created a deeper and richer shading for the wings which have a lot of surface complexity to work with.

There were a number of features of this model that I didn't like so much, nor make a big attempt to work with. The face/mouth are an example. He actually has a gun barrel in his mouth, but honestly I thought it was kinda silly. There's lots of detail under his chest as well which I didn't put much work into other than the standard washes. I could have done a bunch of OSL work, but again, the focus was on finishing in a timely manner. Overall I'm happy with the results and don't regret any of the shortcuts I took.

Random Resource Day

While I'm in the middle of a meeting at work, figured I'd post an interesting resource that I found on the Privateer forums today: Tartan Generator.

December Goal

Well, the whole "showdown" idea has devolved into just setting goals for myself. So it's time to set a December goal. Given that it's the holidays, and I'm likely to be busy with visitors and activities and such, I'm going to set a modest goal.

First, I want to get Terminus done. It's a great model, and he's already assembled.

Second, I picked up the Blessing of Vengeance last night and it's an awesome model. Highly positionable. I'm totally bumping it in the priority queue.

Third, well, I'm not sure there will be a third, but I'm going to shoot for getting the 4 Shredders done.

Well, that's the plan. We'll see how I do. I'm not expecting to make it, but hopefully I can carve out enough time to finish these.

Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile

This rounds out my November goal for myself. The Master Gunner himself. Overall I can't say I especially enjoyed this model. It had an awful lot of detail for such a small figure. I don't mind too much detail, but this one was quite busy with details. It made it difficult to do the model justice. Admittedly, I did decide to call it quits fairly early. However, this rounds out my remaining mercs, and he is a badass on the battle field. Not only does this close out my unpainted mercs, but I met my November goal, which feels good. I'm getting quite fond of setting monthly goals as a way to pace myself.

Cephalyx Slaver

This model got a bit of an unplanned bump in my painting schedule. I'd been eyeballing it for a while and love the look of it, but and planned to wait until I was ready to do the whole squad of Cephalyx Drudges as well. However, I finally couldn't resist the itch to paint it and got him primed and prepped the other day. Poor Dougal is in progress still while this guy got preferential treatment.
I pretty much followed the painting advice in No Quarter #14 for this one. However there were a few differences. First, I added some shading to the deeper folds using armor wash, and shaded some of the lower sections as well. Second, since the article didn't have any advice on the metals, I decided to start using a basecoat of Pig Iron, then a heavy Metal Wash, then actually paint over the lower portions using Thamar Black in order to make the metal look like very dark iron. Then I picked out highlights using Cold Steel. The hinge points got Blighted Gold and Shining Gold treatments to make them stand out and give the metal arms a little more character.
Due to holiday visitors, I had to tear down my photo setup and reassemble it today. Unfortunately, I seem to have gotten the lighting positioning wrong. So the color balance is a little off, but not terrible. You can see how the right side of all the pictures is a little more yellowing from the tungsten bulbs, but the left side is more balanced (due to sunlight bleed from the window through the curtains). I had the same problem with the Gandalf model I just posted a moment ago. Anyway, it's still not too shabby.

Gandalf

This was a gift project for a friend of mine. She'd asked for Gandalf long ago, and I finally got around to doing it. Yay for early Christmas! Nothing super fancy here, as the model doesn't have a high level of detail. Overall though, the simplicity of the model allowed me to focus on blending and color practice. I did some more of the hue variations on the cloak in order to experiment with giving it more depth. And then of course, with the base, I sorta went to town and put together something much more extravagant than necessary.
Anyway, here he is, in all is LoTR glory... Gandalf the Grey!

Midwinter (take 2)

There's a time for speed painting. There's a time for detailed paint jobs. And then, there's a time for experimentation. This was one of those times. Now as a disclaimer, it's important to note that I never expected this to turn out great. I expected to fail miserably.

The Vision: I'd always been inspired by this paintjob. The OSL work is remarkable, and the limited palette makes for a really compelling piece. For some time now, I've wanted to try my hand at something like this.

The Setup: Again, I knew full well that it would not turn out even remotely close to what EricJ did. He's so far out of my league that there's several leagues between us. But, I firmly believe that the difference between an average painter and a good painter is that the former settles for what he can do, and the latter forces himself to push his limits and learn new things. This was me trying to push my limits and move out of my comfort zone. I've dabbled in OSL before, but this was a gigantic departure from what I'd done before.

The Canvas: I chose Midwinter to use for this experiment. He seemed an obvious choice, and since I'd already done one before, it seemed like a good opportunity to experiment.

The Results: Well, I give myself a B for effort, and a D for execution. I could have easily put more effort into this, but it was uncharted territory. I decided early on that I'd just dive right in and study it after I finished. The reason is that until the whole piece is done, it's hard to really analyze the overall OSL effect.
I used a total of 8 different paints for this model, counting black and white. I used no washes, and no inks.
I'm not too happy with the overall brightness balance. The OSL broke down for me in application when I needed to start thinking about distance and incidence angles and such. Clearly an area where I could use more practice, but it was quite the learning experience.
The lighting on the ground has too sharp of an edge to it also. It could have benefited from a little fuzzing to make it more realistic.
The runes on the back turned out pretty well I think. I opted for smaller runes to include more of them, but the implementation would have been the same if I'd done larger ones.
The center of the model, around the amulet on his chest and such, tended to get a little muddled. This could have been more crisp, but it was a facet of the model that I didn't anticipate when I chose it. The OSL is really hard to handle in those little details.

The Photos: Ok, here I had a huge failure. The photos aren't terrible, but they could obviously be much better. I have no experience photographing dark models like this, and particularly in a situation where it really should have a black background instead of gray. So, I tried a couple different versions for comparison purposes. Both sets are bad, but it'll give you a general idea of how the model looks.

Overall: It was nice to do this as an experiment, and I certainly learned a lot by doing it. I'm glad I didn't dwell on it too much either. It will look strange on the battlefield, but I could care less about that.

To my readers: If there are any of you out there, I'd appreciate feedback on this experiment. Let me know what you notice that doesn't look good and leave a comment. I'm very interested to get others' perspectives.

Company Halt!

Well, the last week was pretty hectic, and now that the weekend rolled around, I ended up doing a ton of painting. I probably used over a gallon of paint in fact. Instead of miniatures though, I was helping my wife paint our stairwell and upstairs hallway. As she put it, "Since you like painting so much, how about you help me paint!", and so I did. Work has been severely kicking my ass and leaving me a vegetable in the evenings, and I was a little burnt out after painting Grim that this was a nice break. Hopefully I can find my muse again tomorrow.

Grim Angus

This model rocks. Plain and simple. I loved painting it. It's a great pose with a good level of detail. Everything was easy to get to on the model as well, which made it pleasant to spend an excessive amount of time on it. In fact, this guy got a much higher level of quality treatment than anything else for the last couple months. It was nice to slow down and spend extra time on this. It was also nice to paint a troll again, given that I hadn't painted one for quite a long time now.
I spent a fair amount of time working the metals on this model, as I've been prone to do lately. I really have found that the extra work really pays off. It gives the metals more "forced" contrast and helps create a better sense of surface. It also helps in the end product after I've sealed it so that the dullcoat effect doesn't flatten the entire thing.
I'm still not feeling very good about my zenithal highlighting skills, but it's coming along. It's just hard to think that way still. The face could have used a bit more work too, as the highlights seem to be much less dramatic than everything else. I won't even comment on the shirt/pants except to say that for some reason the color rubs me the wrong way, but I can't pin down why.
Something I did very different this time, best exampled in this third picture, is use a lot more color hue variation in several areas. The jacket is a good example. I used primarily brown-based colors, but varied between green tones and red tones as I went. I focused more on choosing hues carefully than blending. In the end, the blending turned out to be less important as the variations in hue created a sort of unique blending effect of its own. This was a real branch out for me, and required much more attention to color choice for me. I'm very happy with the result though, and looking forward to experimenting more with this.

November Happiness

It occurred to me this afternoon while painting that my "challenge" for October was totally blown out of the sky. I had intended to just finish Kraye, the Vassal and the Redeemer. In addition to those 3, I also painted 10 Bane Thralls and Deneghra! Somehow I got my groove back and hadn't noticed. Granted, many of those were "speed painted", but I did get a lot of models painted, and to my own tabletop standards.

So, November brings with it the promise of time to paint (as work will be hopefully calming down soon), and the threat of holiday activities. In light of that, I'm going to set a new challenge for myself. My goal is to paint Grim, Midwinter, Dougal, and one other as yet unspecified model. I'm going to aim for quality over quantity in this batch. Hopefully I'll get more painted than just 4 models, but this is my goal.

On a side note, I did some swapping with Lance to get his Legion box set models along with Thagrosh. I've been fancying some of the Legion models for a while so this felt like a first step towards that doom. Legion will likely end up being similar to Cryx for me in that I'll select models I like and aim for a balance of quality and speed.

From the Painting Desk: Detail Management

I'm nearing completion on Grim and figured I'd post a picture. The nice thing about doing laundry is there's plenty of excuse to spend the time painting between changing loads. So I've spent the majority of the day painting and made a ton of progress on Grim. After finishing the Vassal, I'm even more in the mood to spend excessive time on a single model working for higher quality. Grim is turning into a great project. Some parts are not so good, but other parts (like the coat) turned out really good I think, although this quick pic from my desk doesn't show it well enough. I used a lot more variation in color tones and achieved an interesting effect.

On a side note, I figured I'd share a tip that I've found handy. When I'm working on a model that has many little details (like Grim), I find that it helps to keep a list of details left to do. Usually I don't start this list until about two thirds of the way toward completion. Often I'll make the list pretty detailed and then scratch them off as I do them. Sometimes as I continue to paint I'll spot other bits that I hadn't written down (hence starting the list at about 2/3 done). Below is an example list for Grim:

• Goggles Strap
  
• Belt Pouch
  
• Extra Nets
  
• Net Gun
  
• Rifle Blade
  
• Rifle Scope
  
• Rifle Trigger
  
• Rifle Runestone
  
• Shoe Armor
  
• Shoulder Armor
  
• Glove Runes
  
• Glove Armor
  
• Bottle
  
• Coat Runestone
  
• Backpack Runestone
  
• Buckle