Krielstone Bearer

Finished up the Krielstone Bearer. The scribes are queued up for later though. I spent a little less effort on the painting quality this time and more effort on the overall composition and story effect instead. There were a couple specific things I focused on. First, I wanted to pick out a handful of the runes to have glowing. My "glowing" effect isn't great, but I'm more satisfied with it than I was on the Fell Caller. I also did a little OSL work on the runes around his hands and above his head, putting some reflected green on those spots. Second, I wanted to make the stone look like it had been uprooted from the ground recently, so I used some Vallejo smoke to make a "dirt line" on the bottom of the stone. Overall I wanted this to draw the attention to the stone more than the troll. Again, not my best painting quality effort, but I'm happy with the overall results.

Leaf it to Nature

I've had a couple people ask me where I got the leaves that I used on the various bases I've done (like Doomshaper for example). So, it got me curious myself about these little magical decorations.

The "leaves" are actually a part of the seed pods of Birch trees. Here's a picture of a Birch tree:
The seed pods grow in great numbers on a single tree and look like this:
When you flake apart the seed pods, they separate into seeds and then the little "leaf" bits, that are great for basing, like this:

And there you have it!

Alten Ashley

Finished up Alten Ashley this weekend. He was pretty fun to paint actually, despite a rather plain pose. I took this opportunity to try out a bunch of things. First, pics...

Basing: I wanted to try my hand at a slate base. I wasn't able to get any milliput in time, so I picked up some stuff called Super Sculpey. It requires baking, which limits its uses. However, it worked relatively well as a substitute. I used Ali McVey's slate bases tutorial on the brushthralls' site (which seems to be unavailable at the moment, so no link). Overall though, I like how this base turned out for a first attempt.

Wood grain: I tried my hand at painting wood grain on the rifle stock. Basically I started with rucksack tan, then painted grain lines with bloodstone, then did a couple thin glazes using a mix of rucksack tan, bootstrap leather and matte medium in roughly a 1:2:4 ratio. The key was making sure the glaze was thin enough to not hide the detail below, but thick enough to shift the color.

Two Brush: I used the two-brush technique much more extensively here. His coat, pants, and other misc places. The coat really turned out great I think. Still a couple rough transition spots, but after I finished it, I just kept staring at it thinking to myself how I've started to turn another corner with painting now.

Armor: I used a mix of armor wash and matte medium when washing the metals. It really dulled them down noticably, which I actually liked. I think less matte medium will be better in the future, but I do like the initial results I had. It also helped so that highlights added after the armor wash really stand out more.

Red Leather: This is something I wanted to try out just for kicks. I love the reddish leather look on some of the stuff that I've seen come out of the PP studio lately, and wanted to start figuring out how to build up that color. For this model, I used a mix of khador red base and bootstrap leather, and then glazed it with rust brown ink and matte medium. It's ok, but definately needs more refinement, especially in highlighting. The basic color is pretty close to what I'm looking for, but it needs more depth.

Photo: Ok, this is actually a problem area. The color on the above photos is really bad. I need to spend some time to enhance my photo rig some more. I'm thinking the background is a big issue at this point. That'll be my first adjustment.

Enough for now... All hell's broken loose at work, and I need to try to stay sane. Hopefully my painting time doesn't suffer too much.

Flameguard Cleansers

Finished up the flameguard cleansers. Actually ended spending more time on these guys than I originally intended. I skipped some detail level but they are tabletop quality enough. They were great for practicing the two brush technique though. Nothing here got more than 1 highlight and one shade coat.

Late Tournament Report

I played in a 750pt Warmachine tournament last weekend, and am just now getting around to posting. *sigh* The tournament was actually alot of fun with one minor issue. I tied, lost and won (in that order) my games, which unfortunately left me 2 tournament points short of the Menoth coin. Oh well.

I only really played one list for all three games, despite having a backup Amon list: Severius, Guardian, Revenger, Daughters, Deliverers(6), Zealots(10) with Monolith, Knights Exemplar, Rhupert, Eiryss, Vilmon, Paladin, 2 Seneschals, and Grogspar.

The first game was against my old arch rival Lance who was playing Cryx with eDeneghra. This battle was truly epic, with very dramatic moments. In the end, the battle resulted in a tie for VPs.

The second game was against a Cygnar player using Seige. This game unfortunately only lasted 2 rounds before time was called. This made me sad for a couple reasons. I had gone first, and at the beginning of my third turn, I was still in control of the 3 control points AND I was primed to deliver a severe beatdown. As it was, I lost the game due to time being called and not having enough opportunity to leverage my troops. I'm still a little pissed about this, but my opponent was clearly having issues dealing with the Menoth knot, so hopefully I gave him a nasty headache at least.

The third game was against a superb Cryx player named Brian, who has previously stomped the ever living crap out of me. Somehow, I managed to get a caster kill against eSkarre and pulled out the win. However, I should note, that Brian had me dead to rights a couple times and either opted for a different strategy, or had a bad dice roll. Severius was down to 3 damage left by the end of the game. All in all though, it was an incredibly fun battle and I had to give kudos to Brian for such a fun and challenging battle.

Overall, the tournament was a blast. I still dislike the time/turn limit, but honestly I think the only good solution is chess clocks and penalties for taking too long. Anyway, life/work is taking up all my time, and I need to bolt now.

Dervish

Finished the Dervish. Nothing special here, and really a mediocre paint job. However, this was my last protectorate warjack left to paint. Odds are I probably won't get any more of them. For this one, I decided to add some battle damage and really dirty it up a fair amount.

Two Brush Update

Well, I got a bit of practice in today in the midst of working on the Devout. I opted to use my six Temple Flameguard Cleansers for practicing on (rather than the Devout) since they had several surfaces that seemed easier to practice on. I of course (un)cleverly chose black as the color for the robes to work with which made the exercise a bit more challenging I suspect. I started with a base coat of Coal Black, shaded with Thamar Black, and the highlighted with a mix of Coal Black and Frostbite (about 2:1 roughly). That's it... just 3 colors used in order to achieve the look below.

Now, here are some notes on the experience:

• Matt DiPietro is right: Highlighting is way easier than shading.
• The mechanics of switching brushes was made easier after I watched carefully how Ron Kruzie did it in the video. I held the blending brush in my mouth while using the applicator brush, then slightly rotated the applicator brush to hold the blending brush at the same time. After a few swaps, this became very smooth to do.
• Switching quickly after applying paint is key, so it worked best to do small pieces at a time. For example, the high folds of the cloth, I would apply some paint and work one direction, then apply some more paint and work the other direction. When I tried to work both directions in one application, the second side was already starting to dry too quickly.
• The right mix of paint and "water" was important. I'd say the optimal was approximately 5:4 paint to "water". In my case, water is a mixture of water, flow extender, and matt medium (I haven't a clue what the actual ratio was, but probably something like 20:1:4).
• The effect for shading really is a pulling mechanism, with lots of paint in the crevice and pulling paint out of the crevice.
• The effect for highlighing really is a sort of erasing mechanism, sort of pulling paint back up on top of the highlight to erase where there's too much. It will take me a while to get used to this since I'm used to smoothing by slowly pulling paint outward from the highlight.

I think there were probably plenty more things I noticed/learned, but it's getting late, and I'm too sleepy to recall them now. Tomorrow I'm hoping to practice again on some of the smaller armor plates with red tones and see how that compares.

The "Two Brush" Blending Technique

In honor of this 3 day Labor Day weekend, I've dedicated myself to learning the "Two Brush" blending technique that has been talked about much lately. If you aren't familiar with it, here's a video clip of Ron Kruzie at GenCon Indy 2006 using the two brush technique to highlight.

The concept is relatively straightforward, but I'll defer to a description by Matt DiPietro on one of the Privateer Forum threads (the post is buried somewhere in the thread):

"One method is called pushing and the other is called pulling and they are often used in conjunction. You can also just run your blending bush (you're using two brushes I assume) along the edge of your fresh paint and just smooth the transition. Pushing paint is kind of like using your second brush like an eraser. Highlights are much harder to do than shades using blending so if you're just starting out you should start with shading. lay down a midtone as your base coat and make sure that there is absolutely no patchy bits. Then choose a color for your shadows. glob a bunch of paint into the a crevice of your model then use a second brush that has been wetted with blending medium (aka saliva*) use it to pull some of that paint out of the crevice. If you pull too much or too far just push the paint back in to the crevice/fold repeat until satisfied. Afew tips... if you get water marks/bath rings when you blend adjust the consistency of your paint; too much water and you'll get a ring not enough and the same thing happens. Use your best brush as your blender and your more worn brush as your paint aplicator. It often helps to use a bigger brush for blending, I use a #2 almost exclusively, even for fine details. Once you've mastered blending your shading then move on and try highlighting at least thats my advice."

So, with the video, description, plenty of W&N S7's, and a fresh load of motivation, I am embarking on learning this technique this weekend. I'll post notes as I go along, and if I get extremely motivated, I'll even try to take a little bit of video with my new camera and see if I can post it.

Doc Killingsworth

I actually finished Doc a couple days ago, but here he is. This was a fun model, but it had alot of little bits to him. By the end I had well over half my paints spread out on my desk. Painting Doc marks the completion of all my mercs. I'm now down to just Protectorate and Trolls to paint

The blood splatters were a new experience for me. I don't think they turned out great, but they are ok. I tried using a little bit of brown in the middle of the blood spots to make it look more dried and dark.

I also made a more concentrated effort to focus on color balance on this model. Not a super great job I have to say, but it was good practice to think about it. I tried to keep a color balance that would keep the eyes shifting over the whole model rather than draw the attention to a single spot.

I've also got a battle report to type up, but I might not get to it. For some reason I'm really behind on blogging. Maybe today will be further catch-up day.

Holding Models While Painting

It occurred to me the other day when my buddy dropped by for a game that there's alot of people that have asked how to hold models while painting them. Here's my technique for those interested. I always paint seperate from the base now, even waiting until after I seal the model to attach it to the base sometimes. I basically have 2 techniques for holding models while painting. Below is an accompanying picture that illustrates my two techniques.

Pin and cork: If the model is relatively small, I'll put an extra long pin through the foot, prime the model, then stab the pin through a cork. The cork gives me plenty of holding surface and also tends to fit the pin tightly, keeping the model from spinning while holding it.

Base and empty can: For larger models, I'll glue a base to the top of an empy Testor's spray can. The cans are roughly 50mm which is perfect for large bases. Then I use pliers to slightly bend the tab on the bottom of the model to cause it to fit tightly into the base's slot. The can makes for a very handy grip and is large enough to brace both hands together with. In the picture below I cleverly didn't put a model in the slot, but I'm sure you get the idea.

GenCon Indy Painting Competition

Here's a link for the entries of the GenCon competition. This is more for my own benefit, but others might not have seen it. I aspire to enter this competition one of these years. I'll start with Kubla first though.

Swamp Gobbers

Whipped these little guys out real fast. Did all the painting in 1 day, which again is very fast for me. The bases I had made previously in preparation for these little guys (Swamp Gobbers deserve swamp bases of course). No really uncharted territory here except for the brighter orange leather that I did. For this I used P3 Heartfire and then a generous layer of the lovely GW Rust Brown ink. I'm nearly out of the stuff now, so I'm going to have to look into getting some more. This technique is fast, and has some striking results, but does make the models a bit brighter than I originally planned. Overall though, for getting finished in 1 day, I'm happy.

High Reclaimer

Finally put a base on the High Reclaimer last night and sealed him this morning. This was admittedly a pretty fast paint job. I took a rather different approach to the black than I've used before. This time I used the P3 Coal Black with what I feel is a pretty striking result. It took a few washes and highlights, but I'm quite pleased with the results for having been a first try. I also used metal medium and black paint together to do the metals on various places where I wanted to create a black steel sort of effect. It's certainly not my best blending job, but I think this model only took me 5 hours to complete, which is a record for me.

At this point, I'm down to just the Testament of Menoth for Protectorate warcasters left to paint!

Missing Comics, or Memories

Went through another box of comics tonight. I was sure that I had the Wolverine limited series, but I can't seem to find it. I also recall having some other limited series that are just not there either. Either they got misplaced, or I sold them long ago and don't remember doing so. In any case, here's the next box:

Robotech The New Generation: 8, 10-13
Robotech The Macross Saga: 12, 14-17
Robotech Masters: 9-13
Longshot limited series: 1-6
Nightcrawler limited series: 1-4
Doctor Who: 57-60
Destroyer Duck: 1-7
Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor: 1, 3-5
Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor Special
Elf Quest Metamorphosis: 1
Elf Quest New Blood: 2-35
Elf Quest New Blood Summer Special: 1
Elf Quest New Blood '93 Summer Special: 1
Elf Quest Two-Spear: 1-5
Elf Quest Summer Special 2001: 1, 2
Elf Quest Hidden Years: 1-29
Elf Quest Worldpool: 1
Elf Quest Kings Cross: 1, 2
Elf Quest Kahui: 1-6
Mythography: 3
The Rebels: 1
Jink: 1, 2
Hercules: 1-5
2010 limited series: 1, 2
Excalibur: 1-13, 15-17
Web of Spiderman: 3-14, 16, 17, 19, 21-25, 27
Web of Spiderman Annual: 1
Akira: 1, 21, 23-38
Torg: 2-4
Questprobe featuring the Hulk: 1
Questprobe featuring Spiderman: 2
Questprobe featuring Human Torch and Thing: 3
Kitty Pride and Wolvering limited series: 1-6
Lobocop: 1
Genocyber: 1, 2, 4
HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu: 1-3
The Nam: 1-26
Transformers: 5-28
Transformers Headmasters: 1
Transformers limited series: 2, 4
Transformers Universe: 3, 4
Shogun Warriors: 2, 5, 6
Dune limited series: 1-3
Last Starfighter limited series: 1-3

Gurgle

Back from DC, and life is just ridiculously crazy for me still. Probably won't get back to painting seriously for another week or so. The High Reclaimer is done except for a base, but I have a stack of other tasks I want to clear off first. One of them is to catalog my comics and start unloading the ones I don't want to keep.

For my own tracking purposes, here's the list of comics I cataloged last night from the first of 4 boxes:

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spiderman: 1, 35, 94, 95, 99-112, 114, 116, 117, 119-128
Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spiderman Annual: 5, 6
Spiderman and His Amazing Friends: 1
Spiderman and Daredevil: 1
Marvel Two-In-One: 90
The Amazing Spiderman: 59, 75, 93, 109, 128, 133, 136, 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 151-154, 156, 159-163, 165-183, 185-190, 192, 193, 195-200, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208-210, 212, 218, 220, 223-226, 228, 234-237, 240, 244, 246, 257, 258, 260-276, 278-287, 289, 290
Giant Size Spiderman and Master of Kung Fu: 2
Marvel Tales Starring Spiderman: 69-71, 127, 137, 170, 172-180, 182, 183, 185-190, 192, 193, 195-200
Marvel Team Up: 75, 82, 120, 147, 150
Marvel Team Up Annual: 6
New Mutants: 1, 16, 17, 20-26, 28-38, 40-42, 44, 46-48, 52-58, 60-72
New Mutants Annual: 1-4
New Mutants Special Edition: 1
Uncanny X Men: 153, 170-220, 222-250
Uncanny X Men Annual: 8-12
Giant Size X Men: 1
Heroes for Hope: 1
Classic X Men: 1, 2, 4-6, 8, 9
X Factor: 1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 12, 24-26
X Factor Annual: 1
Incredible Hulk and Wolverine: 1

Taking a Break

Work is sending me to DC for all of next week, and between that and the general insanity of my life right now, painting has been temporarily been put on hold. I've got alot of irons in the fire so to speak and need to get my personal life in order again. I'll probably try to dabble with paint a bit, but nothing serious is going to happen anytime soon.

Pureblood Warpwolf

Well, it's finally done. Overall I think it's pretty decent. The skin could have used some reworking in additional spots, but there's a point at which I have to just decide it's done. Perhaps one day I'll just stick out a model until I'm completely happy with it, but that will be sometime well in the future. I've got other little guys calling out for some paint. Some final notes about this paint job:

The little rune stones were actually quite easy. I just gave them a coat of Ironhull Grey, then a wash of black ink, then some highlights of white with just a touch of Ironhull Grey in it. I specifically didn't use Frostbite to make sure they didn't blend in perfectly with the skin.

The eyes were sort of a pain, and in general I hate painting eyes. For these I just used Cygnar Blue Highlight as a base, then added white to it in successive highlights (about 3) until I did a final dot of just pure white.

The base was easy. Just added a bunch of static grass, and then some of the tall grass in a bunch. I'm still not really good with the tall grass, but this batch seems ok. I also added some of the tiny leaves to help give a little more variation to the base.

In summary, this was a great model to paint. Some particular challenges and learning experiences was working the large skin surfaces, particularly in a shading of white I don't normally use.

More GIMP Notes

I wanted to create another composite image of the Alpha Warpwolf for posting on CMON, so I had to learn again how to do this. I'd done it before with Vilmon, but of course forgot how I did it. Turns out it's pretty easy. Here's the steps I went through:

1. Make sure all the images to go together are the same width
2. Open all the images
3. Create a new image, using the width from the images, and a height of the total of all the images
4. In the first image, do "Edit -> Copy"
5. In the new image, do "Edit -> Paste Into"
6. Move the pasted piece into position in the new image
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for the remaining images
8. Save! (Potentially resizing)

Resizing is easy... just do "Image -> Scale Image" and then follow the easy to use dialog.

The individual pics of the Alpha will be in the next post in a couple minutes, but I'm taking these notes now before I forget again what I did.

The Wolf Starts To Shape Up

Made some serious progress tonight:

Armour: Did the metal bits, including a few select pieces of highlighting on it. This stuff was really basic. Just Blighted Gold followed with highlights of Brass Balls. I love the look of the Blighted Gold. In addition I did some specific highlighting of the green with straight Iosan Green.

Skin: This was the real work. Rather than starting all over, I decided to just rework some key spots. I basically just re-did the highlighting work I had done before, but on the pieces I felt really needed it. Notably were the chest, thighs, hands, and shoulders. I also highlighted some of the transitions between skin and spines/claws.

Spines/Claws: Did these entirely. Basically they are 5 coats, going in order: Battlefield Brown, Bootstrap Leather, Rucksack Tan, Menoth White Base, Menoth White Highlight. I'm thinking that I'll do one last highlight of straight white, but not tonight. Getting too tired to see straight.

Base: Just gave this a clean-up coat of Cryx Bane Base.

Muzzle: Did a little stippling with black ink to create a bit more natural transition between the nose and skin.

There's still alot of details to do, but now it's just down to details. Eyes, Rune Stones, Fur, Teeth, and a couple other things probably, but the list escapes me at the moment. Headache and all. Anyway, pics ahoy!

In Need Of Warp Speed

The Warpwolf is in the early stages of taking shape. The leathers are done, and I've started the armor plates. One thing that makes this model easier to cope with is that there aren't a large amount of varied details. There's plenty of detail, but not lots of little tiny fiddly details like the Fell Caller had. Anyway, here's what I did since last update:

Leathers: These are finished up. I gave them a glaze of the Rust Brown ink, and then a thin wash of dark brown ink to create more depth to the surfaces. Overall I'm fairly happy with the results.

Armor: The inlaid green of the plates is done. These were first given a couple good layers of Iosan Green, and then glazed with green ink, and then a wash of green ink with a dash of black as well t really deepen the recesses. They don't look too snappy at this point, but once the gold trim is done, they should really pop nicely.

Claws/spines: This have just gotten a first coat of battlefield brown. There's plenty of work to do on these. The goal at this stage was just to get the base brown on them so that I start thinking about them now.

I traded a couple emails with Sean about the skin tones. At this point, the plan is go rework them. I just need to mull it over a bit more before I make the next attempt. Most likely I'll continue to work on other aspects of the model first and then come back to the skin later. I'm sure I'll regret that, but I really want to see the model take shape before I commit to reworking the skin.