Cyclopes

Terrible join lines that I didn't properly clean up, but I got these done under the wire. They are actually great models, but mine felt cursed. Multiple times they ended up falling off my paint can mounts.

Brutal Effigy

This is unfortunately not a final shot of the Brutal Effigy I painted for my friend Lisa. I forgot to get a picture of the final version. I had redone the hat brim and touched up some colors further. So if nothing else, here's a placeholder picture for a model I eventually finished.

Scribe

More Warcolors experimenting. Learned a lot here.

Silurids

Finished last night. Nothing fancy. Was experimenting with my new Warcolors paints.

Jacob Lynch

Forgot to post this when I finished it a few days ago.

Hungering Darkness

I sort of painted this for Iron Painter round 3, but honestly this last couple weeks was a mess for me personally and found myself trying to get something done quickly. I also just was vexed by this model a bit and ran into a couple challenges while painting it. Honestly I could do a long write up, but I'm unfortunately exhausted and just getting pics posted tonight and moving on.

Illuminated

Speed painted, but with a caveat. I did 1 per night, and completed each in roughly 80 minutes of painting (primed to done). The third one took a little longer just due to surface area. They were an interesting practice though. For each one I started by picking 3 colors as my base tonal palette, and then I proceeded to channel Matt DiPietro to #PaintBravely. I just started laying down paint over the whole model working back and forth and adding in colors as I went. I didn't focus on one area too long. In the end I found that I really enjoyed the process of painting more than normal. I wasn't thinking as much as feeling my way through which color I should use.

Iron Painter 2017: Round 2: Last Stand of the Waterbending Brothers

Here's my round 2 entry for Iron Painter. The theme was "Water, Water, Everywhere..." and I put together this idea for it. These are waterbending brothers, standing back to back, fighting off an unseen enemy. I'm pretty tired, otherwise I would do a lot more write up of this. The entry was due tonight and I just got it in under the wire. If people would like to see WIP pics or know more about how I did anything here, just leave a comment.

Hooded Rider

Bigger project than I originally thought it would be. Not my best effort, but I like how the overall "red horseman of war" thing worked out.

Iron Painter 2017: Round 1: OSL - Crooked Man

So this was my entry for round 1 of the Wyrd Iron Painter competition this year. You can read all about round 1 here. What follows in this post is just a bunch of random thoughts about my entry and the competition in general. No offense is meant to anyone, and none of this is meant as whining. Just reflection.

My entry was a pretty straightforward project. I picked the Crooked Man since it had a very easy pose to work with. I also chose to put it on one of the new Wyrd sculpted bases, which worked out nicely. I did the project SketchStyle for very obvious reasons. I'm pretty happy with my end result, although there are definitely parts that could have been done better. Going with a white light was probably not the best choice in hindsight, but it was a good learning experience. The model itself though was very fun to paint, and I did enjoy it as a project. SketchStyle is still not a great choice for me for competition quality yet, but this project helped me improve in that regard.

Online-only painting contests are tricky things. There were obviously a bunch of really good entries in this competition. I placed #53 out of 175 that actually submitted entries. The stats are all on the Wyrd forums. That puts me in the bronze tier. The tough thing about these sorts of online-only competitions is that voting becomes very obfuscated and getting feedback even moreso.

One thing I realized too late was that my photo quality could have been better. Instead of multiple angles, I should have just focused on a single photo. There's places where the photo washes out the colors a bit which is really unfortunate. I saw plenty of models where the painting quality was probably not as good, but the photos made them look much more flattering. For my next entry, I will make sure to spend

I noticed that almost all of the gold and silver tier entries were dioramas to some degree. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it does sort of reinforce to me that I wasn't aiming for complete competition level by sticking to a properly based model. I will definitely say, the #1 place entry was fantastic.

At this point, and given the week that I've had, I'm having a really hard time mustering the enthusiasm to continue the competition. The rankings of various entries was a little surprising to me. Still though, my goal was never to try to win, or even place in the gold/silver finals. I really just want to make it through to the end of the competition without a DNF. Hopefully I can pull that off. Of course, if I have another crazy life week this coming week like I had last week, then I'm screwed.

Resource: Base Sizes for 40k

Just saving this link for myself really, for when I start painting my Grey Knights.

Basing Guidelines for Warhammer 40,000 via Dakka Dakka.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #145 (the last)

The last roundup...

So I haven't done a "weekend roundup" post for ages, and for good reason. My wife has been really sick for a few months now. Things are getting better now, and I am still painting. However one of the things I realized as my time got more pressed was that updating this blog is just not a super high priority for me. Doing weekly posts was once very helpful, but it had become a chore. So I'm setting that aside and will continue to just post finished works or other random things. Pictured here is a slightly staged view of my painting desk. The projects are the ones in progress.

Tomorrow, Wyrd's Iron Painter competition begins which I have bravely signed up for. I don't expect to win, but I am aiming to just finish all the rounds. This will obviously take a lot of my painting attention, so hence even more reason not to put too much time into the blog.

One last note: I am posting random painting progress on Instagram when it comes up, so if you just want pictures and sound bite updates from me, that's the best place to follow for the foreseeable future.

Total games played this year: 19

Grootslang

This was just a weird model. Weird pose. Not a lot of "features" to it. No appropriate reference material to figure out what to do with it. So I just ended up experimenting with color on it. I tried to evoke a more otherworldly appearance to it.

Oh, and there were horrific mold gaps that I failed to handle properly during assembly that I ended up just trying to hide with paint. Glad to put this one in the done column.

Bad Juju

Another one done. This model was going ok, but there was a key point that I was working on it that reminded me where one of my own personal strengths with painting is: Color.
You see, I was painting the wood parts of this model and using a variety of browns and yellows and it was coming along just fine. "Just fine." It was at that point that I realized it wasn't providing me the depth that I wanted, so I took an extra step and applied a dark red wash to it. Magically the wood parts came alive to me. It reminded me that experimenting and playing with color is not only something I enjoy, but it's something I'm becoming better at. I'm not great by any stretch, but I'm making progress and feeling happy, and that's all I can really ask for.

Collodi

Collodi crew finished! After painting so many puppets and putting their magic strings on them, it was really satisfying to finish up Collodi himself and put his own controlling strings on to have the puppet master done.

Vasalisa

Vasalisa! Despite some serious errors and gaps in assembly, I managed to correct and hide the problems and clean it all up.

Bunraku

These were a real challenge to assemble, but they are pretty creepy little dudes.

Marionettes

Marionnets done!

Barbaros (alt sculpt)

Finally finished the alt sculpt of Barbaros. Too tired to do a proper write up, so I'm just doing a photo dump. I'll note that this was a SketchStyle experiment that I definitely learned from.

Town Entrance Sign

Inspiration from the latest Wyrd Chronicles issue. Nice addition to my terrain. Super fun project too.

Anna

Painted this for a friend. It was one that I had been eyeing for a while and wanted to paint. I started SketchStyle but then used it as a way to experiment with how to do metallics in SketchStyle while weaving in my own watercolor methods. I'm pretty happy with the results. One funny note on this model, after completing the underpriming, I discovered that the feet were completely in shadow, so I didn't even bother to paint them at all. #LegitShortcuts

Voodoo Doll

Super quick to paint. This is the first step towards the Zoraida box, which will take me a while to finish I'm sure.

Malifaux Posters

Not a proper update. My life is complete chaos right now due to medical issues. Just saving this link here for future reference.

Really cool Malifaux-style posters for printing and using in terrain making

Beckoners

I really wanted to spend more time on these and make them extra pretty, but due to life insanity I just lost focus and interest and wanted to get them done. Still though, I'm pretty happy with how the green dress one turned out. The other one is ok, but elements of it were just too much detail for me to be bothered with. Normally I would chastise myself for that attitude, but I've got enough stress right now.

Depleted

Despite being slow moving, I speed painted these. They should be amusing to field. I tried to make each one unique looking while still keeping themed elements on all of them (glowing chest, sickly skin, glowing eyes).

Titania

This finishes up the last model from the Titania crew box and was absolutely a delight to paint. I'll admit that I've gotten lax about my assembly work and had to do some clever painting to hide a couple gaps. I used the art from the book as inspiration, specifically because I liked the aesthetic of her wings. From there it became an experiment in color usage for me. I tried to incorporate a purple tint into most everything on the model, and also did a lot of value modulation to balance out the look of the model. In the end this is probably the most satisfied I've been with a model in a long time.

Aeslin

Another somewhat intense model to assemble and paint. I tried to evoke the look of fall on this one, as well as create a value modulation to the colors to bring the attention to her face. The final effect seems to have worked out ok.

KublaCon2017 Recap

No pictures. No detailed write up. Just stream of consciousness. I played 2 small Malifaux tournaments this last weekend. One at KublaCon and one at Game Kastle Fremont.

Kubla tournament:

Round 1: Got the bye unfortunately, but Chrissy offered to play me a pickup game. She played Arcanists (Ramos). Howard Langston is a beast but I managed to get 2 Gambles from the Stitched on it and nearly take him out but not before he whacked both my Waldgeist and Mr Graves. Rest of the battle was a jam in the middle but Ramos' spiders were nailing scheme points on the flanks. After 3 rounds I lost 6-4. My key takeaway in this game is that Chrisy DuBois is super badass. She is an incredible community builder.

Round 2: Played against Rezzers (Seamus). My opponent's execution fell apart after the first round. I went strong on one side with Dreamer and he basically tried to hold that Stash with a Doxie. Once I cleared that I was just shoving things at him to pin him back and keep pressure on the Strategy. Again my Framed Changeling pulled out points and I won 6-3. My key takeaway here is that losing models and getting lured isn't the end of the world if your opponent is busy not keeping the strategy in mind. He admitted to coming off of a previous weird game that left him with a bad mindset which very likely threw off his whole game.

Round 3: Top table! Gremlins (Somer). This may have been the most amusing game I played all weekend. Somer pushed right up into the center and was doing "bigger hat" on Dreamer which only worked once fortunately. In this game my key takeaway was that I had completely mis-read a feature of summoning Daydreams which results in the Primordial Magic being sacrificed once a Daydream is summoned. This was a really low scoring game and right near the end I got too preoccupied with trying to kill Somer that I spaced on my second scheme (Undercover Entourage) otherwise I would have won by just rocketing Dreamer to the far corner. The final score was 3-1.

Recap: I went 2-1 in this tournament, coming in second place, and earning myself a sweet mystery box that contained Miss Anne Thrope!

Game Kastle Fremont tournament:

Round 1: Played against Neverborn (Lucius) and who would become the tournament winner. This match was weird because we both had a bunch of the same models (Thorn, Waldgeists, Changelings, Mr Graves). My opponent just straight up out-played me though and his list had some really nice synergies in it (Terracota Warriors to give protection to key front-line models was a key takeaway. The final score was 6-3.

Round 2: Played against Gremlins (Zoraida) in what was a completely bizzare list to me. Zoraida with Animal Shape and Tarot Reading, Fingers, Burt Jebsen, Iggy, Rooster Rider, Nurse, Bayou Gremlin. Shockingly though the list worked great. I got schooled pretty hard. Key takeaway is NEVER play a Stitched Together against Zoraida. He also Obeyed one of my models to take a final hit on Burt to finish him off (who was also his Frame for Murder). Final score was 6-2.

Round 3: Played against Gremlins (Ophelia) and another highly amusing list. I don't remember it exactly, but it was roughly Ophelia, Old Major, Francios and a whole swatch of piglets (like at least 8). I owned this guy pretty hard. I ended up nailing Ophelia and Old Major, and the final score was 6-4.

Recap: I came in 6th place out of 8.

Final takeaway: Two hour time limits (including deployment) and playing all new stuff meant every game I played was only 3 rounds, which honestly was just a little disappointing to me. From what I overheard, out of both tournaments I think only maybe 2 games went to a 4th round.

Total games played this year: 8

Burt Jebsen

Another SketchStyle project. Burt was in the cheap section of the LGS since it had Mk1.5 cards in it, so for $2 it seemed like a sweet deal. I really enjoyed painting this model. Burt here just has that feel of being reckless and fun.

Gorar

I sorta stole a lot of ideas from various Google searches in order to come up with this color scheme. In the end it's sort of a mash up of various real snakes and the artwork from the book. Amusing model to paint.

The Tooth

Tried to balance greens and browns to align more with summer than spring. Not entirely sure if I succeeded or not.

Mr Graves

And here's Mr Graves, to go with Mr Tannen. I really enjoyed painting this model of the pair. The sculpted details of his shirt being strained by his girth are well done. The model itself is fairly simple of sculpture but the details are done well.

Mr Tannen

This model will make more sense when I post Mr Graves tomorrow probably.

Witchling Handlers

The last of the Guild models I'm painting for a friend's starting crew. These sculpts are magnificent and were really a joy to paint. Other than the eyes (which are just terrible) I really enjoyed painting these models. I experimented with a new process for flesh which I think is going to work great in the longer term once I get more experience with it. I'll share more notes on that in the future once I have a chance to refine it. For now though I'm gonna cut this short since I've got a whole weekend of painting ahead of me.