Sorceress on Hellion

This model has been a long time coming. It has been sitting on my desk in various states for probably 5 months now. All things considered, it is a pretty daunting model which is part of what kept me from making much progress. Eventually I had to just muscle through it and know that I could always paint a second one if I was unhappy with the results of this one.

What went well:
* The color for the wings worked out pretty decent. I used flesh tones and then washes of purple over that, which gave it a bit more color range than other wings I've done.
* The Sorceress' cloak has a really nice range of colors. It was one of the last parts I did, and by then I was very much in the mood to experiment, so I tried out using sanguine washes over ochre and green bases. I'm pretty happy with the results.

What could have been better:
* The pose drove me bonkers. I think it's part of what kept me from working on it. First I don't like how it's "sitting". Second, the wings don't have a very dynamic look. Combined together, they don't make sense.
* Overall there was something wrong with all of my washes. I'm not sure if it was something about my primer, my environment, or just bad judgment on my part.

In any case, I'm not unhappy with the results, and honestly I'm glad to have it finished. On to work on more beasts.

From the Desk: Palettes

In what may turn into a weekly sort of review post for me, I'd like to share my thoughts on porcelain palettes. For all of you that have very strong opinions about whatever you happen to believe is the best thing, I have nothing against it. Everyone has their own preferences for palettes, even among the top painters. Jeremie Bonamant swears by a home-made wet palette, Laszlo Jakusovszky uses porcelain spot plates, and Mike McVey reportedly used leftover pieces of plasticard. I've personally used all 3 (and some others), and keep coming back to porcelain palettes. So, let me share a little more about my experience.

First a touch of science, although not too much science. Porcelain is essentially, clay that is fired to fix its shape, and in the process forms some amount of glass. There are many varieties of porcelain, but for the purposes of paint palettes, they are fired at high temperatures and the formation of glass is part of what makes them impermeable to liquids. This makes them idea for using with acrylic paints. Acrylic paints (GW, P3, Vallejo, etc) are basically plastic polymers in a liquid suspension. When the suspension dries, it leaves the polymers deposited on the surface and they form into a hard(er) material. The suspension allows the polymer to easily form to the surface it is being deposited on. This polymer can however lose adhesion to its surface when too much moisture is applied (depending on the particular acrylic paint formula).

What does that have to do with palettes you may ask? Well, the advantage of using porcelain palettes is that the glassy surface makes for less surface texture for the paint to adhere to. I used to use a plastic palette and was always frustrated with trying to clean it. Well duh, the plastic has a zillion irregularities (seriously, I counted them one day) for the paint to adhere to, making it really hard to clean. Furthermore, if I didn't clean it thoroughly, further usage could result in small flakes of previously dried paint in the well to come lose and then show up in my brush or on my model. Porcelain palettes make that much easier to deal with...

To clean my palettes, I simply submerge them in water overnight and then the next day I can easily wipe out all the paint with very little effort. Now strictly speaking it doesn't take overnight to loosen up the paint, but I've got about half a dozen various palettes that I use, so having 2-3 soaking and out of action is no big deal so I'm lazy about it. The porcelain comes clean every time and dries easily. This defining feature is exactly why I use them almost exclusively now.

So what's the downside to porcelain palettes? They cost more than the plastic/metal ones for sure. About 3 times roughly. So if you're on a tight budget you may pass them up. They are also not as readily available, so you may have to order online.
When comparing them to wet palettes, well, it's apples and oranges. Porcelain palettes won't keep your paint wet and workable for hours (or days) like wet palettes can. I certainly won't argue that point here. And depending on how much time you've spent refining your wet palette, you may have the option of not having to thin your paints directly. When I experimented with wet palettes I will admit that I liked that feature about them. I could go from pot to palette and then in seconds my paint was properly thinned to the consistency I needed for painting. However, the trade-off here is maintenance. Wet palettes require more care than traditional palettes and you have to make sure they have plenty of clean water in them, and have a steady supply of parchment paper on hand. Honestly it's just a trade off that each painted must choose for themselves.

When it comes to shapes of porcelain palettes, I have quite a variety. I have two of the traditional 7-well flower shape, one large 12-well one, two 12-well spot plates, and a few plain tiles from a hardware store.

7-well Flowers - I tend to use this for making washes primarily. The well is large enough to mix up plenty of wash and experiment with the consistency as needed. I've owned these for the longest. The ones pictured above I have owned for probably 5 years now.

Large 12-well - I rarely use this one anymore. It's handy for jobs where I need to wet-blend a number of colors together, but that's very specialized. In general I find that it just takes up too much space on my desk being approximately 9" in diameter.

12-well Spot Plates - These are getting more and more use. Laszlo turned me on to these last year at KublaCon during one of his classes. Spot plates are typically used in scientific labs. This particular one measure approximately 4"x6". The wells are fairly small which is actually good since I end up wasting less paint.

Ceramic Tiles - Not pictured here, I also have plain ceramic tiles used for things like kitchen backsplashes. The tiles come in a variety of sizes. I use plain white 6" square tiles. I'll use these when I want something more like a traditional artist's palette and actively mix paints together on the palette itself. I don't do this very often since the disadvantage of the tile is there's nothing to prevent the paint from just rolling right off the tile and onto my desk. Generally it behaves fine, but like the large palette, this is a more specialized use.

If you're still reading this already lengthy post, I'd like to just make one last remark in closing. Palettes are a tool just like paints and brushes, and should never be overlooked. Experimenting with your palette will help you learn more about how you paint. Even though I rarely use a wet palette anymore (cause it annoys me more than it helps me usually), I'm glad that I forced myself to try it out for a couple months. It helped me learn more about my own style and techniques. Hopefully some of the information here was useful for you. Until next time, paint like you have a pair!

Thrullg

It's always nice to get back to fully painted for one of my factions, even if that faction is minions. I really would like to get down to just 1 or 2 unfinished factions, but that's going to take me a while, especially if I stay focused on Legion and keep expanding my model count. However, I can at least say that for minions I am done for a while. Adding Thrullg was sort of an impulse buy. I've fielded him a couple times now and not been particularly impressed yet, but he definitely has a learning curve to him.

Well, anyway, here he is. The picture is terrible unfortunately. There are some subtle details of color that got washed out when I tried to clean up the picture. I'd take another set of shots, but honestly I'm so busy with work and taking care of my son that picture quality is just going to have to slide.

My whole inspiration for this paint scheme was to go for something Giger-esque. It sort of worked, but I think more greys would have helped it. It is funny though how painting the spots, at the time, seemed pretty faked. But now that I look at them a few days later, I really dig them. Anyway, one more model down. Now on to finishing up the Sorceress.

Stringers

Continuing with the stuff that I finished but hadn't gotten a chance to photograph, here are my Stingers. These little guys were, well, little. The nice thing about the lesser beasts is they are pretty quick to paint. The downside is that painting all the small spots of chitin is difficult and there's no way to use the larger wash techniques that I use on the big beasties. One reason I chose to do the Stingers before the Ravagores is it gave me a smaller test for the "fireball" part of the sculpt.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the results. The big challenge was painting the fireball so that it seemed brightest in the middle and near the front, which I think worked out relatively well. I didn't really match the color of my Shredders but I'm ok with that. The battlebox beasts got a much darker blue color which I'm no longer using (for obvious reasons). If anything, it actually helps distinguish the Stingers from the Shredders. Anyway, that's my update for today. Tomorrow I'll post up Thrullg and then I'll be caught back up.

Forsaken (number 2)

Well, I finally got the pictures up for this now that I've got my photo studio up. Unfortunately I need to go back and re-tune it to get the photo quality back up to snuff, but at least I'm getting stuff posted again. If you didn't see the previous posts on this project, there's a whole series of them. I'm not going to say a whole lot more at this point, but I did want to make a quick note on the cost of this project and the parts inventory:

Nyss Hunter Leader Cylena body	$5.00
Forsaken head	$0.50
Forsaken right arm	$1.50
Forsaken spine	$1.50
Incubus 90% beast legs	$3.00
Absylonia, Terror of Everblight left wing	$2.00
Total:	$13.50

So yeah, $5.50 more than the stock model, and that doesn't include S&H. But in the end, I'm totally happy with the extra cost.

Legion Tactics: Thoughts on the Legion Book

Ok, so there's plenty of reviews of the new Legion book out there, and I have no desire to do another such review. There are plenty of folks smarter about tactics than me. So instead, I'm just going to share some random thoughts about the book having just finished reading it cover to cover.

Things I learned about the world of the Iron Kingdoms:
The fiction was great. Unlike pretty much every other book, I actually read this one entirely, including the military org chart. I have to say that I really enjoyed the story about Bethayne. It was perhaps my favorite fiction since the Apotheosis story. I also enjoyed the explanation of how the Legion manages to raise such a numerous army. The tie in with the Iron Kingdoms history of Morrdh was pretty interesting as well. Lots of little details in it that were just fun to know.

Things I learned about models I already own:
This part is a little embarrassing, but I have to admit that as a matter of reading everything, I discovered some details about models I own that I just hadn't noticed before. Anyway, lesson learned here is that it is worth taking the time to read your stuff a second time to look for abilities that you missed.

Carnivore heals the casting warlock, not the model with the upkeep spell on it - Well, actually I learned this when I was looking up clarifications about rules on the PP forums, but it was still good to find out.

Harriers have Sprint - In all fairness, I've only ever fielded a Harrier once before. Sprint is pretty boss for them to have since they are so fast.

Shredders have Snacking - I probably already knew this, it just never comes up though. Either a Shredder is alive, or dead. Rarely is a Shredder damaged but still alive.

Nephilim don't have Blood Creation - Ok, technically I don't own Nephilim yet, nor have I even proxied them. But this was neat. It follows the fluff about the Nephilim, which I must add was super cool as well.

Angelius has Overtake - Huh. Really? Somehow I never noticed this. I had to double-check my card. Yep, there it is. Really? Seems like something I would have used before.

General Thoughts on Legion:
It's nice that Bethayne bring some troop support to the army, but even then I feel like Legion units are under supported by their warlocks. I'm certain this is a bias I bring from having played Protectorate before. On the flipside, warbeasts of Legion get to rock the house. I love how Legion got more beasts than all the other factions (mostly due to lesser beasts). One final note is that this book brought more variety and tools to the game for Legion, particularly in the form of ranged and magic attacks. I'm very excited about the possibilities going forward.

Thoughts on Models:
One model though eclipses all others at this point: Will Bethayne and Belphagore come with an additional model for the two melded? I'm betting no, in which case I may have to get two of each and bodge together my own melded version. The artwork for Bethayne and Belphagore was very exciting and I'm likely to take the time to shell out the extra bucks to make that melded version.

Well, that's it. To all you painters out there who are confused by this post, take comfort in knowing that I'll be returning to normal painting posts in a couple more days. Sometimes though my gamer enthusiasm breaks from his chains and just has to speak his mind.

From the Desk: Working in the Raw

I recently picked up some of the MIG pigments, which for those not familiar with the product, MIG produces a line of raw pigments. I first heard about these from a tutorial from Miniature Mentor on weathering. These are a part of the old school military painters' arsenal that has gained some popularity with miniature painters. Having never used these before myself, I figured I'd do a quick post and share my test model.

First thing to note, these are not paints. They are raw pigments in dry form. The pigments are actually meant to be used in dry form. There's a nice tutorial online here that gives a bunch of different examples of using the MIG pigments. Given that this is my very first time of using them, I highly recommend checking out other sources for information.

The first thing I needed was a test subject. This model has served me for multiple years now as a test model. I'm probably due for a new one soon. I've found it handy to have test models laying around for just such purposes, preferably ones that have a variety of surfaces and details. This one was nice because it had smooth cloth, flesh, armored pieces, swords, and other little details. The following photos are pretty grainy due to the zoom effect, so you may need to guess a little bit about how it actually looks in person.

Step 1 was to basecoat my test area. I opted to basecoat with Mithril Silver, and then hit it with Badab Black. I opted to paint the kneepads just because there was a combination of textured and smooth surfaces. Hitting it with the black wash gave the area more definition just so I could better see what the net effect was. I made sure to let this dry thoroughly, for reasons that I will make clear in the last step. I really wanted this to be a controlled test of the pigment so that I could get a basic understanding of how it behaves. In the future I'll probably experiment more with combining it, brushing it, and layering it.

Next it was time to break out the pigment. I should note that although this stuff is "dry" and appears like a powder, it will still stick to surfaces and stain them. I definitely advise care when working with it. I specifically used an older brush that didn't keep its tip anymore. This gave me more of a "powder" style brush for applying it (gosh, what a novel idea huh?) and made it easy to dab on the pigment. And yes, dabbing is all I did. I didn't brush it on. I merely dabbed the brush head into the pigment pot lightly, and then dabbed that onto the surface carefully. You'll notice that quite a lot of pigment got on there, and it looks pretty chunky. Given the size of the surface, I didn't try to do anything fancy. Note that I only used the "Standard Rust" color for this.

Last step is fixing (no, not correcting). Fixing is critical for making sure the pigment stays where it belongs. Now I have to admit my own ignorance on this step: I didn't buy the MIG Fixer product when I bought the pigment pack. However, I've read multiple techniques for fixing, including turpentine and alcohol. So, I got a little rubbing alcohol and (you guessed it) dabbed it on. The key here is to let the capillary action of the pigment draw the alcohol out of the brush. You don't want to brush on the alcohol since doing so would basically turn the pigment into a paint and ruin the random grainy effect that it provides. After liberally applying the alcohol to fix the pigment, I let that dry thoroughly.

Well, the results are pretty interesting. Layering multiple pigment colors would also add to the effect. It's a little hard to tell from the photo, but it does create a nice random effect which would be really hard to replicate with normal paints. This is where the pigments really shine. They provide a nice random grainy effect, but are at the same time semi-transparent, and do it very quickly. All things considered, I'm pretty excited to add these to my painting arsenal, even if they are only going to be used occasionally.

From the Desk: Forsaken Conversion, part the last

Another quick update on the Forsaken bodging. Or rather, a final update. I finished it off just now, with the exception of sealing it. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out for being a relatively quick project. My original concerns about proportions are completely gone now that it's fully painted. I won't get a proper picture up until my house guests leave and I can set my photo studio back up, so I wanted to get a quick picture on the blog.

On a different note, I picked up the Legion book today and having a second Forsaken has turned out to be fortuitous: Absylonia's tier list needs 2 of them, and now I'm all set!

From the Desk: Forsaken Conversion, part 6

Another quick update on the Forsaken project. I got a bit more painting done tonight. The flesh is mostly done, and most parts are base coated now. At this point things should move along a little more quickly provided I can carve out painting time. I have to admit, now that I've got paint on the majority of the model the concern I had about the proportions is dramatically diminished.

From the Desk: Forsaken Conversion, part 5

I finally got my converted Forsaken primed and started on it tonight. Please note the special guest: Thrullg. Anyway, the painting so far is pretty minimal of course, but I wanted to go ahead and get a picture up, even if it's a terribly saturated picture.

I also wrapped up the pair of Stingers the other night, but we have family visiting and my photo setup is torn down while the guest room is in use for the next couple weeks, so they will just have to wait before I get pictures of them up.

From the Desk: Forsaken Conversion, part 4

My new drill bits arrived and I wrapped up the assembly. The drill bits I got were not so great. Note to others: Make sure when you order bits online that they are rated for metal, otherwise you'll be drilling for a long time. However, no point whining about it now. I pinned everything together and did some minor greenstuff work. There's definitely some additional GS work that I'd like to do, but I need everything to set properly before I do anything further.

I snapped 3 pictures to give an idea of what it looks like from different angles. There's definitely some oddness to the proportions. There are really only 2 options to deal it: either resculpt it somehow, or paint cleverly. Since my skills are stronger on the painting side, I'm going to purposefully not try to adjust the proportions and see if I can use color to affect the appearance of the proportions.

The next step is to prime and paint, which may take a while for me to get to. However I will definitely post an update as I make progress.

From the Desk: Chaos and Tragedy

Quick post to share the status of my desk. First, the tragic news: I broke my last smaller drill bit. I've been trying to find new bits for a while (and in fact have an order on its way currently), but I'm having a heck of a time finding a good source of micro drill bits that work well on metal. I was tempted to pick up the only set of bits at the local hobby store, but paying $15 for a set of bits that only had one in the whole set that I wanted seemed silly. So, work on the Forsaken bodging is on hold temporarily while I wait for the new bits to come in.

Now the chaotic news: This is a picture of what's currently on my desk. This is just the active stuff. Now normally I only work on 1-2 projects at a time (it's my process and what works for me). But somehow I got into a mode where I was working on a bunch of things all at once and some stuff started jumping ahead in the queue. The 2 Ravagores (partially assembled) jumped up in the queue so that I could have them for an upcoming Mangled Metal tournament at my LGS this coming Saturday. The Forsaken of course is an active bodging project. The Harriers and Stingers have been sitting in their current state for a couple weeks now (since I finished the Teraph). Corbeau has been in her state for even longer, and is in danger of getting demoted back into the storage container soon. The Sorceress was a recent assembly completion, even though I'm deluding myself into thinking I'll start painting her soon. And Thrullg is something I was hoping to just start throwing washes on, but again, mere delusion I suspect. Not pictured are a primed McBain, 3 Spell Martyrs, and a half assembled Absylonia which I have demoted off of my desk and back into the storage bin. I'm trying to stay purely focused on my Legion force just to stay focused, even though I'd love to start finishing out the lingering couple of models for all the other factions that I have.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. Apologies to those looking forward to the next installment of the Forsaken bodging. It'll probably be a few more days until I'm back to work on it.

From the Desk: Forsaken Conversion, part 3

Another small update before sleep claims me. Tonight I started putting pieces together. Well, just 2 pieces, but I wanted to use this step to provide a couple tips I've learned along the way. Now I should point out that I'm going to real extremes for pinning and joining here. The first tip is that it really helps to score the joining surfaces with a utility knife before putting them together. This creates a rougher surface which allows the greenstuff to really do its job. Here I've scored the surface of the legs as well as drilled a hole for a pin.

The next tip is to do a dry fit. With these pieces in particular it was helpful to do a dry fit and get an idea of how to line them up. I knew ahead of time that the scale of these pieces was off, but this helped me get an idea of how to deal with that. I decided that if I put the torso at an angle, I could offset the difference and create a slightly more dynamic look to the model. However I knew this wouldn't be a perfect fit no matter what I did. Hence I would need to do a little greenstuff work.

Now, you'll notice there's no green here. That's because I'm using the GF9 "grey-stuff" product for the first time. My first use of this seems to perform pretty much identical to greenstuff (and for the purposes of this post, I'll continue to refer to it as greenstuff). When doing this join, I initially used more greenstuff than necessary and then carved away the parts that I didn't need. I find this technique works best so that I'm not trying to add more as I go and having to smooth out the additions. The join here isn't great, and I may put a little further effort into sculpting in some details later, but I need this batch of greenstuff to dry before moving on.

Well that's enough for tonight, and I'm trying to get my Ravagores assembled so I'll hang up the tools for now and work on it some more over the weekend.

From the Desk: Forsaken Conversion, part 2

I had intended to get work done on my Ravagores, but my dremel's battery was dead so while it charges I figured I'd get some more work done on the Forsaken conversion.

After trimming all the pieces, the first big step was to start cutting off what I didn't need. I took out my trusty jeweler's saw and cut away at Cylena, severing out her midsection. I decided to keep the belt and cut everything off below that. I had debated whether to keep the little waist-cape, but that would have required much more cutting for little gain. I also tried to cut her head off as close to the shoulder level as possible.

Next was the easy task of cleaning up unnecessary metal around the Forsaken head's neck as well as splitting up the spine into the pieces I needed. Note that the "spine" of the Forsaken sculpt actually forms the top and back of the head as well, so it was necessary to keep that top part. The bottom part of the spine turns into the tail which was, of course, quite necessary. I'm honestly debating making the tail longer with a minor amount of GS work, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

At this point it's starting to be possible to visualize where the project is going. Laying out the pieces I noticed a couple points of concern. First is that the midsection is noticeably smaller than the legs are, which will give some odd proportions. Second is that the arms look like they are going to work out quite well, provided that I pin them properly.

Ok, that's today's update. Not a huge amount of work, but this step really helped me to get a handle on where this is headed. I should note that although there's no picture here, I went ahead and GS'd the head and spine top together to get a jump on that bit of work. Next time I plan on focusing on getting the torso and legs put together.

From the Desk: Forsaken Conversion, part 1

When I first decided to start building a Legion list, I was only focused on models that I really honestly wanted to paint. Then I started playing Legion more seriously and started to pick up models that I was less interested in painting due to their need on the battlefield. The Forsaken quickly came up as a necessity for Fury management. However the sculpt leaves much to be desired for me. I'm not a fan of the static pose making him look like a 1920's gentlemen vampire. Hence I began hatching a plan to bodge together my own version of a Forsaken. This is the first in a series of posts on this bodging project.

The first step was to figure out how to construct my alternate Forsaken. I didn't want to do much sculpting myself so I went to the PP parts store and started searching around. Today my resulting bits order arrived. Now I should note that according to the PP conversions policies, I'm borderline at best and may have picked bits that will not actually qualify as a legal conversion, but I tried to follow the spirit of those rules.

I decided to keep the claw arm from the original model, along with the head and the spine. The spine will likely get cut up into pieces though. For the wing arm, I opted to use Absylonia's wing arm. For the legs, the Incubi lower body was a great swap since it kept the feet in the same style as the original Forsaken. That left me with the challenge of a torso. I wanted to find a female torso, so that quickly limited my options. I wanted to find something in a similar style to the normal blighted Nyss so that it matched the army. Cylena fit the bill nicely, although it will require some serious cutting and chopping to make it work.

Well, that's enough for this first post. I'm juggling multiple projects, but hopefully I can stay on this one to keep the updates rolling.

Teraph

Another quick post since I'm trading time for blogging to have more time for painting. I wrapped this guy up just this morning. It's a great model except that the head angle is a little weird. In hindsight, I probably should have fixed that.

For the base, I decided to keep with my rock theme for beasts, but I wanted to give a hint of the dig in ability that he has, so I sculpted a little fake mud on the rocks where his feat are placed. I know, I know... you can't dig into rock. You know what? Artist's prerogative.

This guy also has a tone of little spines all over him. I ended up taking some shortcuts on them to get him wrapped up.

Last note, his 7 appendages made it that much harder to reach all of the spines, the chitin, and the skin. There were a number of little mistakes that I had to clean up afterwards. Don't get me wrong, I still liked painting this model. It was just challenging and others out there that have a Teraph in their queue to paint should be aware of the challenges to reach all the parts of the model if you fully assemble it and attach it to the base before painting.

A Horrible Horrible Destructotron

Ultra-quick battle report time! Pardon the terrible pictures. It was also a heavily proxied game, particularly on my side.

Me: eLylyth, 2 Ravagores, Seraph, Teraph, Shredder, Stinger, 2 Shepherds, Forsaken, 5 Raptors, Thrullg.
Henry: Gunnbjorn, Bomber, Slag, Impaler, 10 Pyg Bushwhacker, Champs, 3 Longriders, 4 Krielstone Bearers with UA, Fell Caller, Runebearer

We used the Warmachine Battlefield Generator to set up our board, and the trolls won the initiative which was painful for me. I used my feat on the first round to lay out scather templates on most of the Pygs and then rolled up Thrullg into melee and put Counterblast on the nearby Teraph to create a no-win situation for them. This configuration of pain was referred to as the "horrible horrible dustructotron". However the sneaky trolls managed to wriggle out of the situation. Later in the game, as I was backing up and shooting, I had a chance to try and drop Pin Cushion on Gunnbjorn through the Spell Martyr. Unfortunately the spell missed, otherwise it would have probably been game over.

Eventually I was just continuing to back up into the corner and was down to just eLylyth and the 2 Ravagores. A clever use of a Pyg for the Bomber to target, along with just enough ranged, let the Bomber drop a boosted blast damage on her and finish the job. If it wasn't for that, I could have eventually mopped up probably, but it would have been dangerous.

Honestly, I haven't laughed so hard during a game for quite some time. Even though I lost, I feel like I won because it was such a fun game. Plus, I got to test out the Ravagore which led me to purchase 2 of them today. They will undoubtedly jump up in my painting queue ahead of many other things. I have to give a hats off to Henry's dice: I can't recall seeing so many successful tough checks before! Some of those Pygs survived 3 or more tough checks! Anyway it was great to try out the Ravagore and get a little more practice with a number of models that I haven't had much experience with and feel moderately successful.

Scythean

Now this is what I call a beast! I can honestly say I had a great time painting the Scythean. With so much chiton, it afforded me lots of opportunity to put variations into the washing techniques that I use while not over-saturating the surfaces with paint. I threw in a variety of colors including dark greens, reds, blues and (of course) browns. I don't recall the exact order or colors unfortunately. However my general strategy was to give it a couple good washes of lighter browns (jack bone and bloodstone) and then throw in the dark primary color washes (red and green). Then I added some thinned blue and umber using 2BB to create more contrast at logical separations.

The rest of it was pretty straightforward. Underbelly blue and trollblood base are my 2 primary skin tones, and then I use flesh and sanguine tones to create more variation and shading. Once those two primary parts are done, the overall model just had little details left to do (spines, mouth, rune, claws, etc). I have to admit that the part that threw me off the most was doing the rune since I hadn't painted one in a very long time (August of 2009 in fact). It occurs to me now, looking back through my blog, that I totally failed to paint runes on the Seraph and Angelius. DOH! I may have to break my normal rule of not going back and touching up previous models and add runes in.

It's great to have this huge beastie done, especially since the Ravagore releases next week. I'm looking forward to painting another such monster.

On a side note, I picked up a Flip Video and have started experimenting with it a bit. If there's any interest out there in video samples of painting techniques (such as the 2-brush technique), I'd love to hear. It's just the sort of motivation I need to figure out this whole video posting thing. Until next time, paint like you have a pair!

From the Desk: Why I Love Painting Legion Beasts

Carving out time to paint with a six month old in the house has been a little challenging. However my desire to paint is strong, and I've managed to make it work pretty well so far. I spent a week getting a number of models assembled and primed, and now I'm finding that I'm making more progress than I expected. We'll see if it holds out. Here's a shot of the Scythean in progress. There's still a fair amount of detail work left, but the major areas are pretty much done. So far it has gone really fast, partly due to my Legion painting process. More on that down below.

Here's a shot of the other stuff that is started. I used some assembly line painting for the chiton on these guys while doing the Scythean to save me some time in the future, but set them aside so that I could focus on the big guy. The Teraph is where my eye is next since that model (along with the Raek) is what really lured me into starting Legion.

Now, as a quick aside, I want to reflect on why I personally really enjoy painting Legion. The models are striking to me personally, but that's not the main reason. It has to do with a combination of simplicity and opportunity.
The simplicity comes in the form of the sculpts. They have a simplicity in that they don't have a ton of little detailed items all over (unlike troll models I must say). Most of the beasts have 2-3 primary features (chiton, skin and armor) that covers 80% or more of the surface. What this means is that after doing the chiton and skin it feels like I've made a ton of progress. By coming up with a process that makes painting the chiton quick (washes over white primer), I can make large strides in a short amount of time.
The opportunity comes in the form of having a spacious "canvas" to work on. The larger muscled surfaces of the skin allow for me to experiment with shading and texturing surfaces. The chiton has plenty of detail to its surface which can be brought out using washes. Overall the sculpts create opportunities for me to practice new techniques and don't constraint what I "must" paint like other overly detailed sculpts do.
Well, that's enough of that prattle for tonight. Painting the Scythean definitely has me excited to paint the Ravagore once it releases!

Incubi, take 2

I'm not dead yet! Last night I managed to put the final work into this second set of Incubi and get them sealed. I've been working on them for a while now, but due to events in my life (described more below for those curious) I was unable to stay focused on them.



It is interesting to compare this set to the previous set. I think the bloodied flesh on the first ones came out better in color tone (although less smoothly blended), whereas the chiton on the heads definitely came out better on the new set. There are also some consistency differences between the two sets. I had forgotten how tedious these guys were to paint, with so many little details to work. If I wasn't painting a set of 5 at once, I could reasonable spend a lot of time on a single one.

On a side note, my recent lull in activity is due to other events in my life being pretty intense. My wife and I adopted a little boy which will likely prompt me to do a series of posts on making this hobby more kid safe. I'm actually pretty surprised that I was able to get any painting done given all the recent events in my life. Anyway, enough of that prattle. Today I need to run to my LGS to pick up more green stuff so that I can continue assembly of the Scythean.

Blighted Legionnaires

After being out of action for quite some time, I've finally managed to get back to the painting desk. The tournament 2 weeks ago got me juiced up to paint again. I was hesitant to get back into painting after a month long break by jumping into a 10-man squad. However, it worked out great and these guys were completely reasonable to do as a group of 10. In hindsight, I wish I had taken the time to do some conversion work in order to make them all different looking, or have gotten 2 boxes of 6, but I can always get more in the future. The picture quality here is unfortunately pretty sad since I didn't take the time to get my photo setup back to top quality.

I made heavy use of washes to speed these guys up. I painted the metals first which has become my standard method for any models with a fair amount of metal showing, and then moved on to the other more minimal areas.

Next up on the painting queue are my second set of Incubi. It was very entertaining to put 10 of them in my list at the tournament and I'm looking forward to doing that again in the upcoming Genesis event.

Testing New Toys

This post gets one of those obligatory "ignore this post" warnings. I'm experimenting with posting from my iPad. Also in the toy stack is having transferred the photo from my camera to the iPad using the new adapter, editing the photo using Photoshop.com mobile, and uploading it to a new Photoshop album.
This is a sample direct reference to an album photo.

This is a photo reference inserted into a lightbox link.

Bait and Switch

After being out of action for quite some time, I'm finally back to action. Yesterday I got to play in a local SR2010 tournament. It was originally supposed to be the Hordes Genesis event, but the LGS decided that due to the problems getting decks in, and the lack of books being out, they would delay the tournament until next month. So instead it got turned into a regular SR2010 event just a couple days beforehand.

Overall the tournament was very fun, but I'm going to skip details on most of it. I lost both games (due to sloppy playing) and got a by in the second round, so it wasn't very eventful. However, my first game deserves some highlighting...

An eButcher vs Thagrosh throwdown was just what I needed to get my enthusiasm back. This was an epic battle. eButcher busted his feat early on to rail into my army, but it didn't cut deep enough. I retaliated back, clearing out all his Doom Reavers and making a run on eButcher but coming up just short. In the picture above, you can see how the Carnivean came up about 1/2" short on his charge, and the Angelius made it there but couldn't finish the job on his own. In hindsight, I should have had the Angelius fly back and do a push power attack to give the Carnivean the necessary push to get there. eButcher retaliated and cut down both heavy beasts during his turn. After that, I made a run with Thagrosh but because I failed to measure my control area correctly during the charge, I left myself just out of Mutagenesis range of the War Dog, and left myself open. At the end we shook hands and both commented how it was one of the most fun games we'd played in a while.