Shredders (#9 and #10)

More Shredders! This officially gives me a "full squad" of 10 Shredders now. I'm sorely tempted to play a list sometime with all 10 of them assigned to a Beast Mistress just for the amusement factor.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #53

Weeks like this are remarkably productive, even if there isn't a huge amount of actual painting to show for it. Ironically there is painting to show as I've been getting Legion lesser beasts finished and posted, but there wasn't huge painting left on them. Even though I'm trying to keep my first 15pts of Cygnar a relative secret (in case my buddies are actually checking my blog), I'll drop a few hints in this post. Pictured here is sort of a censored version of what's on my painting desk currently. So here's a list of this week's accomplishments:

Primed 6 of the 7 models for my first Cygnar wave.

Primed 2 additional Cygnar models that aren't part of the first wave.

Airbrush base coated 3 of those Cygnar models their metallic base coats.

Primed and base coated 8 bases for those Cygnar models.

Finished up 4 lesser Legion beasts (still getting photos posted).

Assembled Fyanna the Lash and the Nephilim Bloodseer.

Cleaned my desk, brushes, and palettes.

A note about the airbrush base coating: I used the Andrea Gun Metal paint for this and I have to say that it goes through the airbrush like butter. Really liked it. Not as great for painting on ironically, but the airbrush loves the stuff. I'll do a proper product review at some point in the future when I've had a chance to experiment with more of the line properly.

This week will hopefully be busy as well. I'm working on a post of how I paint the Cygnar bases (as much for my own reference as for sharing), and will definitely get more stuff primed and get some proper painting time in on this first Cygnar wave.

Stinger (#5)

And a Stinger! Not really sure when I'm going to field 5 Stingers, but who knows.

From the Desk: Cygnar Paint Scheme Thought Process

Choosing a paint scheme for an entire army can be simple or sophisticated. I am by no means an expert on the topic, but I figured I would share my own thought process of how I did this for Cygnar.

The first consideration I had was the style of the models that would be making up this army. Being Cygnar and focusing on the 3 Nemos to start with, it's going to be lots of jacks and storm things. Breaking this down more analytically as I looked at the models in my inventory, there are 4 primary features that would make up 98% of all the models being painted: armor plating, machinery, simple fabrics, and coils. Everything else past those things gets into a small representation of parts. Armed with this focus, I moved on to my next main thought...

The tone of the army is something I wanted to set and carry through every model as much as I good. I wanted to create a sense of speed and agility and technological elegance. I want the jacks to look like they have been part of a racing circuit. I want the coils to be prominent and everything to look energetic. Finally I want everything to look field experienced. Not necessarily "damaged", but a little worn from active duty. Now it was time to start turning this into something more concrete...

Color scheme was probably what took me the longest to decide on. I created numerous swatches of color combinations. I really liked swatches that had red and black in them, so I started doing Google image searches and punching in things like "red", "black", "racing". Eventually I found this image (source link) and everything started to come together. Red and black plating. Gleaming silver machinery. Bright blue coils and storm chambers. Armed with a color scheme, now I move on to some very tactical bits around executing on the paint scheme...

When army painting, there's 3 big things I try to keep in mind:
The first is what quality level I want to aim for overall. I learned from my Protectorate force that over the long term my skills will improve and the look of the army will get "better" which can cause some disparity. For this army I wanted to aim for what I would classify as tabletop quality. Similar to what I do with the bulk of my Legion force today.
Second is how well I can reproduce the look throughout the entire army. A lesson I've learned from my Legion (for better or worse) is that I can easily go crazy with color experimentation and then forget how I did something. My Legion beasts especially have this problem, particularly for the carapace. I want to make sure my process can be reproduced fairly accurately.
Finally is speed. I want a painting process that I can crank out fairly quickly. I want to be optimizing layers so that details are happening last, and large areas are done first. I especially want metallics done first as my wash and highlight techniques for them are pretty messy.
So the net result is a process that starts with laying down and mostly completing all the metallic work first, then "stipple/paintsmashing" the red plating on and in such a way that it makes the paint look worn off. Then go back and do blacks (cloth and accent armor platings), and finally details like coils and skin. The very last step will always be the freehand details, but I get ahead of myself.

With all this in mind, it's time to consider basing. I wanted to reinforce the "racing circuit" look and I wanted something fairly quick and easy. To be blunt, I'm sick of building bases like I do for Legion and wanted a bit of an easy button here. After poking around online a bit, I settled on the new line of Tau Ceti resin bases by Secret Weapon Minatures. These gave me a nice technological deck plating look that I felt would work well. They are also quick to paint and there's a good variety of styles for the 40mm and 50mm sizes, not to mention a 120mm option as well.

Finally just some thoughts on details to pick out in the army.
I wanted to have freehand insignias on them to reinforce a look of well maintained machines and for easily identifying models from each other. This was something I did with Legion beasts that was really handy, but the runes I used for them weren't as easy to read. I've opted to go with numbers, similar to what I did with the Madhammer battlegroup since the numbers are easier to read and identify. Anything that has multiple damage boxes will have something to uniquely identify them. This freehand is also specifically for me to practice my freehand skills more but without going completely overboard on the effort needed.
Another detail was that I'm going to paint any flesh as a medium-dark African flesh tone. There's several reasons for this, including improving my skills and that the color of African flesh is deliciously rich, and personal reasons like my son being from Africa. Needless to say, this is something I'm going to have to work at to get it looking good and I'm looking forward to that. Putting pictures of my son under my color analysis tools has been a really educational experience.

Ok, so that's my thought process and plan. It took me about 3 months of mulling it over while working on other projects before I finally made firm decisions on all this. So how did I celebrate? I made a playlist!

Playlist: Nemo Rush
C'mon - Go Betty Go
Jesus Built My Hotrod (Redline/Whiteline Version) - Ministry
Spybreak! - Propellerheads
Steve McQueen - Sheryl Crow
Real Gone - Sheryl Crow
More Human Than Human (Meet Bami In The King's Harem Mix) - White Zombie
Storm - Yoshida Brothers
Tank! - Seatbelts
Dragula (Hotrod Herman Remix) - Rob Zombie
Headhunter (Front Line Assembly Mix) - Front 242
Ooh La La - Goldfrapp
Teen Titans Theme - Puffy AmiYumi
Steampunk Revolution - Abney Park

Harrier (#5)

It's another Harrier! Nothing fancy, just getting more lessers off my desk.

Captain Maxwell Finn

So here's the first of my finished Cygnar models as a part of this big new mad push of mine. Finn is a model I've been looking forward to painting for some time. This isn't an amazing paint job by any stretch, but it was a great prototype for what I want to do with my Cygnar army. I figured Finn would make a good test model. I'll explain more about the reasoning of how I arrived at this paint scheme in a future post, but for now I'm just going to focus on how I did this particular paint job.

Part of my goal was a paint method that could be easily replicated and streamlined the painting process. The style of "battle damage" that I wanted to go with was more of a scraping/scratching type than from being shot/blasted. Again, I'll explain that later but the context is important for why I did this the way I did.
I had really nice success with the battle damage model that I did for Madhammer and his jacks, so I decided to use that as a base for my technique. It's pretty straightforward actually: 1) Paint metallics, including shading, 2) "Apply" paint over the metallics with roughed edges to simulate damage, including highlights and shading, 3) Add some blackening to the metals where colors appear to be blasted away. This process is essentially what I did for Finn here for the metals and reds. I did a lot more highlight/shading on the reds though, and did metal highlights after the reds were done. Everything else (skin, leathers, etc) is handled using my normal processes of course.

In terms of mods here, the muzzle flash and ejected casings were added afterwards obviously and were from (I believe) the Armorcast line. Otherwise this is a pretty standard situation. I did this mostly to make Finn appear more dynamic, but also to test out where I like the look of adding these types of things on to my Cygnar army as a whole. I'm honestly curious what other people think about these sorts of mods, particularly for tabletop play and appearance purposes.

Once last note here is that I added some freehand to the shoulder pad as a part of a rank/unit designation. One of my goals in painting Cygnar is to force myself to practice more freehand, and this is a great vehicle to do that.

So that's it. Time to start cranking on my main Cygnar force!

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #52

So just a quick weekend roundup. I'm still working through these few lesser beasts that I had in progress from before going to Lock and Load. I'm making some quick bases as well. There's a bunch of Cygnar stuff in progress as well, but due to the 15 point reveal, I'm withholding the details now, but I'll just say that everything for my first 15pts is assembled and about half of it is primed.

Thanks to prompting from my buddy Bryan, I'm listening to the IK novel Into the Storm on my phone using the Audible app. So far it's pretty sweet. Not necessarily the next War and Peace, but it certainly gets me jazzed to paint and play. I foresee myself listening to many more of these while painting.

From the Desk: Storm Clouds Have Gathered

For several months I have been accumulating Cygnar models. This actually started quite some time ago when my buddy Mike gave me a Nemo3 blister that he won in a raffle at a tournament. It was sort of a taunt and sort of because I'd mentioned how awesome I thought Nemo3 was both in terms of stats and sculpt. I then accumulated a couple random models, traded for second hand stuff, and then was pushed over the edge when Lance and Henry bought me a Stormwall for my birthday quite unexpectedly. At that point I was definitely at a point of no return. So now I am officially declaring my launch into Cygnar. Much like when I launched into Croxorz, my goal is to get a force on the table and just enjoy playing them. I'll post my progress as things move along, however there's some framing to the first big chunk that will limit what exactly I blog.

My smaller play group in this area is doing a pseudo slow grow league, and we're kicking it off with a 15 point reveal somewhere around the beginning of August. To that end, I'll be working on stuff but not posting progress until we do this first reveal with each other. I'll drop some hints on this blog on what my first 15 points will be.

Beast Mistress

This one is long overdue. Here's my finished Beast Mistress. This is the first one still. The second one is barely started. I really enjoyed painting this model despite a couple of annoyingly sculpted bits. I spent quite a bit of time on this model. Another competition entry that didn't receive any award at Lock and Load. As much as I enjoyed painting this model, I'm really looking forward to putting her on the table and seeing how she works out.

Autumn for the Night Satyr

Here's the finished Gnarlhorn project. I'm pretty exhausted from seeing it so much for the last several weeks so pardon me if I don't do a big post about it. The Gnarlhorn itself was a pretty huge experiment in using color which I feel sort of worked out. The base on the otherhand was a huge success to me given that I'd never done such a base before. I'll just note that even though it didn't place at either the KublaCon or Lock and Load competitions, I'm very happy with it as a project since I forced myself to try things outside of my normal methodologies.

Post Lock and Load Photos

My poor blog has been starved for the last few weeks, but now that Lock and Load is over, I intend to return to posting here. Here's a shameless photodump from my weekend at Lock and Load. Pictures have captions for those interested in more details.

























Overall I had a great time at Lock and Load. No fancy report of everything I did though. I'm super jazzed to get painting on my next big project. More on that in a couple days.

RtC: 3 Weeks To L&L

3 weeks to go! I'm officially in panic mode. Technically I will be on the road a week from today, so it's less than 3 weeks. At this point I've calculated that I have 10 remaining useful evenings of painting time left before Lock & Load. That's given work trips and visits with family and friends. Odds are it will be less than that.

So why has my blogging fallen completely off a cliff lately? Well honestly it's just laziness and focus on my competition entries. I did finish up the Beast Mistress and Finn, and my Gnarlhorn is nearing completion (although I'll leave photos out for the time being). I'm hoping to enter the Gnarlhorn in the Kublacon painting competition as well as sort of a litmus test.

So what else have I been doing? Experimenting with inks and pigments, ordering more brands of paints, searching for brush options given the Series 7 shortage, and using the wet palette way more. I've also been working on a painting plan for after Lock and Load.

The next few weeks will likely be quiet on this blog as I make a mad crunch to get things done. I do however promise to do some reviews of the many things I've been experimenting with once things calm back down.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #51

Apparently I haven't done one of these for 7 weeks now. Whoops!

Lots has been happening on my desk. I got a bunch of Shredders, Harriers and Stingers assembled and primed. There are more almost ready, but I haven't counted them as critical for L&L so they got bumped in priority. These ones here are the ones that I got trimmed to the best I could and may turn them into competition level squad stuff with a Beast Mistress. It all depends on how quickly I can get things done. If nothing else, I'm glad to have some more lesser beasts on my desk for painting in between other projects.

Speaking of the Beast Mistress, here's her current state. Lots of work got done. There's still work to do, specifically I need to seal and then highlight the metals. Before I do that though I'm bringing it around in person to my friends and getting feedback. I'll try to post that feedback on Wednesday to share. And of course, anyone can left me their thoughts here as well.

Finally, I distracted myself with painting Maxwell Finn just for kicks. He's probably about 70% done at this point. This is sort of a precursor to a future project but I won't spoil those details here.

RtC: Beast Mistress progress

Just a quick post of where I'm at with the first Beast Mistress. I'm really enjoying this model despite some of the fussy details that need more patience.

RtC: 7 Weeks till L&L

I'm totally tricking myself here by thinking it's 7 weeks. To be exact, there are 7 weeks until I'll be on the road driving to L&L. In between then and now I have many days that I won't be getting any painting work done. And ideally I'd like to be wrapped up 2 weeks early so I can go to KublaCon.

So here's the progress on the Gnarlhorn. Pretty pathetic really. I just finished the sculpting of the tree trunk and then put some black basecoating for the metallic parts.

The first Beast Mistress on the other hand got far more work done. I spent about 2 hours painting while my compatriots were facing off in battle. I love this sculpt, but having a first one to "practice" on before doing a competition one is definitely going to help immensely. There are some unique aspects to the sculpt that are a bit tricky to deal with paint-wise.

I've been toying a lot more with posting images to this blog directly from my phone in the hopes that while I'm at L&L I can post up a bunch of pictures of the many cool things to be seen. Well, back to work work, and hopefully more evening progress on both of these projects.

Stingers (take 2)

Super quick post of the Stingers I finished the other night. No special comments. Just slowly working my way towards my goal for Lock and Load.

RtC: Gnarlhorn Basing

So lots of stuff happening on my paint desk, but this is one of the most significant things. I got the rest of the base prepped. More work happened after this picture, but I wanted to share this one since it shows the main Gnarlhorn model actually sitting on it. It took a lot of work to get it where I wanted and such that I could also include the tree behind him. Fortunately the layer of pink insulation foam made the process of positioning the model easier.

I also got a couple Stingers finished, got started on the first Beast Mistress, and a bunch of work in assembling Shredders.

8 Weeks To Go

With only 8 weeks before Lock&Load, I'm facing down a pretty big painting goal. I've stripped out all of the Malifaux projects in favor of just wrapping up my competition entries and my unpainted Legion backlog. Last night while my friends got a game in (where Skorne crushed Convergence), I spent the time trimming a bunch of parts. This picture shows the fruits of my labor.

As you may or may not be able to make out, this is 2 Beast Mistresses, 2 Stingers, 4 Harriers and 10 Shredders. I've taken the time to separate out the Beast Mistresses very carefully here. Specifically I was looking for which of the pieces between the two were the best castings and easiest to clean up. I really like these models and wanted to use one for a competition entry and this is a convenient way to save myself some time rather than going an extra mile on a casting that needs way more work. Ironically, both of these castings were quite good. It was relatively hard to decide which one is better but I've mixed and matched the best parts to a single model.

In order to keep myself on track, I've updated my "Models on Deck" tracker on the side of this blog to track what I have left to finish before Lock&Load. In 8 weeks it'll probably be a tally board of shame.

Class Review: Scenic Basing with Seth Amsden

This last weekend I had the pleasure of attending a basing workshop given by Seth Amsden. The aim was to impart Seth's techniques and thought process on how he builds scenic bases, particularly plinths, for the projects he works on. My review here won't do justice to the class, so instead I'm going to dump some of the photos from the class and then just dump all of my random notes here for reference. Let me just comment first that Seth was a great teacher and a remarkable artist. He put a strong emphasis on using reference photos, especially taking pictures of the places where he collects basing materials from.

Photo Dump Section!

Example base from Seth. This one was a great example of a classic scenic base.

Another example. This one started as a chunk of wood. And yes, he painted the wood to make it look like wood.

My base after 3 hours of work. Obviously not primed. I was creating a little scene where someone created a small makeshift foxhole. We'll see if I end up using this for a real project or not. It doesn't look like much here for 3 hours of work, but this is actually a huge leap forward from anything I've done before. I tried to incorporate all the elements and techniques that Seth showed us previously to make sure I had absorbed the understanding.

Seth painting his example base. This was a unique sort of experience to watch. He first primed it black, then did a directional white primer coat to set lighting direction. Then to paint it he dunked the whole thing in water and proceeded to put paint straight from the droppers in a bunch of places. Then he used a fairly large brush (probably a 4 or 5) and washed and blended the paint around. The whole thing stayed wet. The philosophy here is that it creates a color harmony over the larger area and the wet on wet allows the primer coat to show through a bit which automagically creates highlights as well. He used blue-greys on the stones and browns on the earth parts. The net result was sort of a classic Mike McVey 2-step process that goes from base coat to magical highlights and shading in a single step. For me this was a massive "Ah ha!" moment though for painting larger bases like this.

Note Dump Section!
So here's a dump of all the notes I scribbled down. If you're curious for more details, just post a comment and I'll explain in more detail.

• Yellow Milliput is the best to use for basing due to it's "grit" level.
• Combine yellow Milliput and Green Stuff (60/40 ratio) as a good working putty for basing. Mix each separately then combine and mix. The green stuff gives it more working time, and the Milliput makes it harder. Adding just a touch of water helps in the whole mixing process too.
• The above mixture is great for making banners too. Roll out a thin sheet of it and press a cotton t-shirt into it slightly to give it some texture.
• After mixing the Milliput and Green Stuff, mix in some of the long static grass (the 2" length stuff) into the mix. Then tear off chunks and the grass will stick out of the putty like tiny roots. It also creates a nice natural texture to the putty on the torn edge. I can't express how much of a great tip this was. All of the residual grass sticking out of my project plinth was from that method.
• To create a nice "receptacle" point for the model that will be added, create a little spot of putty and press the model into it.
• When using grass tufts, use small scissors to trim them to different heights.
• "O" scale model railroad stuff is the best scale typically.
• When using oils, do a quick gloss seal first. Seth uses Future Floor Wax (or an equivalent) for this. The wax has a self-leveling agent that fills in the tiny pores creating a smoother surface for the oils to spread over. After finishing with oils, seal with matte sealer before proceeding since they take a long time to dry.
• Future Floor is also good for washes since the leveling agent will help drive the wash into the recesses. It also dries really fast so it's great for quick sealing passes or washes in that respect.
• Future is also handy for thinning inks for the above mentioned reasons.
• "Inks before washes". I didn't get a chance to ask more about this comment.
• Partway through the workshop, Seth gave everyone (that was relatively new to airbrushing) a ping pong ball. He said the practice exercise is to put it on a stick and try shading it like a sphere. It's apparently harder than it sounds.
• Mix dry pigments with oils to create textured effects, like moss.
• When working with oils, use two brushes: the first is to apply points of paint in the various places, the second clean and dry brush is for working the oil around. Oil paints tend to be fairly transparent and will let the lower layers show through better than acrylics.
• Use mineral spirits to clean brushes after using oils.
• Seth swears by Andrea paints.
• Use tree/bush roots to create branches.
• For the demo base Seth did and then again for mine, the steps went roughly like this: glue down big rocks. Add putty/grass mixture. Add branches/roots. Stuff in slate pieces, medium rocks, etc. Glue in small rocks/sand mixture.
• Seth sometimes uses a "glue where it falls" approach. So glue down a big piece of something that can be crumbled, then lay down a layer of glue around it, then use pliers to crush it and let the crushed pieces fall into the glue. Simulates gravity and erosion all at once!

Shopping List Section!
This is just a quick shopping list of things I need to get and add to my hobby arsenal:

• Slate tile from DIY store - Take it into the back yard with a towel and a hammer and smash it to make little slate chips. Seth's example bases both used these.
• More glue - Especially superglue. I used a ton of it.
• Pink Insulation Foam - I should have had this long ago, but finally I have a better reason for it.
• Brass Etched Jungle Leaves - I bought a small pack at the store when I was there, but I see myself using far more of these in the future.
• Superglue Accelerator - I've never seen a critical need for this, but Seth's process moved fast in assembling a larger base and there's a definite value in that.
• Disposable Gloves - Mainly for working with Milliput. I've always hated working with Milliput before but Seth's class has turned me around. But using gloves is clearly mandatory.
• Oil Paints - I'll probably spend more time practicing with the ones I already have, but I can see myself using these more in the future.
• Andrea paints - I need to just find these and order some. I keep hearing how great they are.

RtC: Priming, And How Less Is More

I've heard repeatedly how it's important to not over prime models, but never stopped to test it out myself. Well going into this next "season" of competition I figured this would be a good time to test out the advice. I grabbed a couple ancient 40k models from my box of test models and tried it out. As you can see from this first photo I just gave them a very quick spray. The left model got the lightest spray treatment and the metal is clearly visible underneath. I also want to note that I didn't wash these models before priming them and didn't take time to do a really careful spray of primer. I did however use the Vallejo Surface Primer for priming. So how did things turn out...

The results are good! As you can see from these two examples, the paint goes on pretty well. I did a single coat of 1:1 thinned paint:water mix. For reference, the green is P3 Cryx Bane Base and the orange is P3 Khador Red Highlight.

Lesson learned: Definitely use thinner primer coats in the future!

RtC: Prep and Assembly

So my current competition level project is a Gnarlhorn Satyr. Why did I choose this model? I've painted one before as a favor to a friend and just really enjoyed it. This is a chance for me to paint one for myself for the display case. Since I'm not painting it to field it in an army, I won't feel the same urge to finish it as I do with most of my projects. I plan on really taking my time with this model to get it just right.

Here's my current progress:

This represents trimming, filing, more trimming and more filing, and more of that stuff until I was satisfied. I didn't go completely overboard on trimming since several of the places were very tedious and risked damaging other parts of the model. In the cases where I didn't go the extra mile it was also because I knew I could hide the problems with painting techniques. After all that trimming I scrubbed all the pieces with warm water and then did the assembly up to this point above. I'm leaving the head separate to start with due to the challenge of reaching parts of the horns and shoulders. I'll assemble it more once those parts are done. I also added a ring of green stuff in the neck area to extend his neck just a touch. This will give me more final posing options. After all this assembly was done I went back and scrubbed him again with warm soapy water to get any last bits of release agent or oils from my skin off of the surfaces. The scrubbing step is something I rarely do normally but for competition pieces I find to be a key step worth my time.

On to Priming!

Tuco

So Tuco here was a pretty straightforward model to paint since he's mostly coat. The real challenge came in the form of picking out the details properly so that they created contrast and interest without standing out too much. I won't belabor this post too much with details but I do want to detail something specific I tried here on the coat. Specifically I brought the color range all the way from a bright orange (P3 Ember Orange) through reddish browns and down into deep greens and blues, specifically ending with a mix of P3 Cryx Bane Base and P3 Coal Black. I wanted to have deep shadows that accentuated his dark side. Everything else color-wise was chosen to create contrast and interest to the rest of the model and also try to tie into the overall Nephilim color scheme.

Lock and Load 2014

And so it begins! I'm officially registered for L&L 2014. My badge purchased, hotel reserved, and events scheduled. So what are my plans?

First, I want to enter the painting competition and do at least as well as last year. To that end I'll be posting here more frequently to keep myself motivated. I'll be doing those posts under the RtC (Road to Competition) tag again.

Next, I want to attend painting classes. I've signed up for 4 different classes that are not replays of last year classes.

Third, I want to play in the Unbound exhibition. Playing Unbound last year was a blast and we got so many nice comments from people that came by. I'd love to participate in this year's planned event if I can.

Finally, I want to play a crapton of games. I'm planning to just hang out in Iron Arena a whole bunch and play whoever is looking for a game. In particular I'd love to hit the scenario tables which I didn't do any of last year.