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.