From the Desk: And 3 Days Later...

It's ironic that when I get good motivation to work on a unit of models that life erupts into chaos and kills my painting time. In the last 3 days I just got enough time to do the basecoating of the red sashes. Well, actually I also got started on Kallus, but that's it. And there's more life about to erupt over the weekend, so progress is going far slower than I was hoping for. And now it's late, and I'm sleepy and... uh... ... ZzZZzZZzzzzzz.....

From the Desk: More Progress on Hex Hunters

Quick post, more for my own motivation than for information. I totally failed to get a post up yesterday, but it's just as well. All I did last night was do the basecoating for the green fabrics. Tonight I wrapped up most of that work, at least until the final cleanup work. Next up will be to work on the reds.

I have to admit, having the one model as a prototype with just basecoating done is actually quite helpful for the rest of the unit. It gives me a good reference point to work from. I'll have to consider doing this again next time I paint a unit.

From the Desk: Staying on Task

One of the great benefits of blogging about painting is the motivation it can provide. Trying to post some progress each day can really keep your feet (or brush) to the fire. In order to get these Hex Hunters done, I'm going to use my blog as motivation. My goal is to post some progress each day, regardless of how small. So for those of you checking in each day, I'm sorry in advance for what will hopefully be many boring posts as I slowly get these guys done. Today I managed to get the skin mostly done on all 11 of them, which is a pretty decent accomplishment all things considered. My next step will probably be to do all of the green cloth since it's pretty isolated. On a different note I need to confess that my painting pace got sidetracked by more than just chaos in my house from a kitchen remodel. I've also been dabbling with app programming for iOS. I'm not really sure what I'm going to try building (map generator perhaps), but it's sort of interesting to play with.

From the Desk: Lots going on

Once again my desk is a flurry of activity, although it doesn't really feel like much is getting done these days. You can see a general lay of the land here. I've got some close ups of specific things on here below, but a couple things of note that don't have close ups are the reading material on the right and Tarin di la Rivossi who has been sitting primed for multiple months now. The reading material is of special note though. The latest NQ issue (which is pretty interesting) was something I picked up yesterday with Kallus. On top of that is a book about color theory that I've been particularly enjoying.

Here we have Kallus. I picked him up just last night. He's not a particularly complex model, so I'm jumping him ahead in my paint queue. I've already started trimming and assembling him while I work on this post. His stats are pretty interesting to me since he provides a fair amount of troop support. It's something I've been hoping for in Legion for quite some time. Only time will tell if he's decent.

Now this Vlad is quite a bit off the beaten path for my blog. This just so happens to be the special Katrina Relief edition of Vlad from years ago. I'm painting him as a birthday gift for my friend Henry who (I believe) doesn't read my blog. This project is mostly done but I'm waiting for the base to be crafted by my buddy Lance. For this project I tried to match colors as closely as I could to the color scheme Henry is using for his Khador army. I'll be very happy to wrap this project up and give it to Henry for a rather late birthday gift.

Rhyas is pretty much done. She's even sealed. I just need to take proper photos of her. Unfortunately the construction in my house is still going on so I can't set up my photo setup properly. Hopefully in a few more days. I really am getting sick of this situation too. On the plus side, I'm getting that much closer to fully painted for Legion!

Here we have a shoddy picture of stuff that's in various states of assembly. The Rackham dwarf, Bethayne, and Belphagore are all in progress here. I'm having trouble getting much traction with these projects for some reason. Probably because of all the other things going on, but there's certainly the fact that the last project on my desk is...

The Hex Hunters. These are going to take me a while to get all painted. Since painting the prototype, I really haven't made any progress unfortunately.

Well, that's it for now. Once again I'm up late blogging and should be going to sleep. Perhaps this weekend will yield some progress on at least one of these projects!

From the Desk: Why I Hate Basecoating First

When I paint, I generally tend to complete a section before moving onto the next. Usually I paint skin first, then on to armor, then cloth, and so on until I'm done. However for the Hex Hunters I wanted to do a prototype of the color scheme just to make sure I had it locked in as to what would be what color. Hence, here's the prototype. I didn't paint the metals but it gives me the general picture. I think this will work out pretty well, but it's hard to look at this phase and see how it's going to come together. There's so much shading and highlighting that needs to get done, and when I hold up one of the Blackfrost Shard models (as a reference for the color scheme) it makes for a shocking comparison. In any case, there's 10 more of these guys to paint as well, so I better get crackin!

From the Desk: Mobile Purgatory

This post is sort of a test of the Blogger app for my iPhone, in addition to an actual update from my painting desk. Amazingly my painting purgatory is starting to lift and I'm getting some projects moving.

I've started working on a competition piece: this Rackham dwarf.

I'm also nearly done with Rhyas.

Ok, that's it for tonight. I'm now going to push publish and see how this mobile blogging works.

Painting Purgatory: Picking on my own models

Time to continue with the color theory analysis of my old models. Rather than doing the complete breakdown analysis on all of these, I'm just going to give the lesson learned from each one. Again, not critiquing painting techniques, just color choices.

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Right out of the gate I've got a total eyesore. This model is an example of something where I picked out random colors because they looked nice individually. It was very early in my painting, and might be among the first 10 models I painted. Lesson learned: Don't pick colors individually, but pick out the colors and set them together on my desk together, and stare at them for a couple days before making a final decision.

This is a sample from a whole army of marines I painted in an "Angry Hornet" theme. Now honestly, the scheme is so dead simple it's hard to go wrong. It's predominantly a monochromatic scheme, with just a little bit of other color thrown in. All things considered I can't slam these too much, however... Lesson learned: Black should never be straight black, but rather have some hue to it. Straight black generally doesn't exist in the real world. Here's a group shot of several of these guys. I painted quite a few, and a variety of space marines as well. In a big group, they look pretty striking. Although more colorful, this Terminator is still pretty good. The same problem with the black exists with the white. Lesson learned: Just like black, keep pure while usage very minimal.

So again, a monochromatic scheme that works ok. Here's the interesting expansion though: The hair (purple) makes a color bridge between the blade/mask (blue) and the armor (red). Now it's not a perfect bridge, but it does somewhat work. Lesson learned: Color "bridges" can help tie a model's scheme together, but the bridging color needs to be a careful choice. This Jain Zar model on the otherhand was an interesting example of how I started doing some edge highlighting. The color problem of course is that pink isn't a good highlight color for red usually. There are other problems given the spattering of random colors, but I think that should be obvious by now.

This model represents the first significant attempt I made at freehand work. Needless to say, I didn't do much more of this for a very long time. Honestly, this model is just a complete train wreck of color. Now normally a Harlequin is a pretty colorful character, which can make them tricky to paint. One trick I heard was to set up a triadic color palette (3 colors fairly equidistant on the color wheel) and use that as the core of the color scheme, with variations on that theme as needed. Honestly though, I find Harlequins to be an enormous challenge. Lesson Learned: Schemes with a lot of different colors are really hard to pull off. Sticking with fewer colors is easier to plan.

This Imperial Assassin is a good example of when I started trying to do more of the GW-style highlighting, with bright highlights on all the edges. One thing that worked well here actually was using yellow to lighten and highlight the green armor rather than adding white. It provides a warmer feel to contrast the cooler green tone. Lesson Learned: Don't use white to lighten a color for highlighting, since it usually makes the color look chalky.

Ok, it's 9pm and I'm running out of steam on this post, so let's speed things up. Pink, purple and black was a good core set of colors. They work well together. However the grey highlights for the black armor was the first mistake. The green gun was a second (although lesser) mistake. Grey highlights tend to dull down and distract the eyes from the otherwise harmonious scheme. Using a purple or even blue highlight for the black armor plates would have created a much better look overall. And the green gun? Well, never opt to paint metal items with non-metal colors just to be cute. Color conveys a lot about what type of material is present (as discussed previously). Lesson Learned: Highlighting and shading of black can bring in even more color to a scheme and help tie the overall look together.

Again with the green? And now I threw in brown too?!?! Ok, this one is even quicker. Lesson Learned: I made some very questionable choices in college. Must have been all the drinking that affected my decision making.

And here I close out the post with something really special. Again, a total train wreck of color. Primary colors all around. It's a mess. But, there's a reason I included this one. This was the first model that I used a drybrushing technique on. I was at my LGS and someone demonstrated it for me. That day I learned the value of painting with others. Practice takes you some of the way, but learning techniques firsthand from other people can really make a huge difference. Lesson Learned: Always try to paint with other people!

Well, that rounds out a thoroughly long and boring post. Thanks to anyone who actually stuck it out this long. I promise to only do one more of these posts at most. I should note that although I'm still going to be doing more Painting Purgatory posts, I have actually been able to put brush to model in the last week and am making some progress. However my house situation is still pretty confined so I'm not likely to get anything based on finished for a couple more weeks. So there's more color theory, desk action, and purgatory to come.

Painting Purgatory: a Flashback and a Resource

Right about now you're probably looking at this photo and wondering what's going on. Although clearly no match for my current painting skills, this model was indeed painted by me. It's from about 18 years ago when I was in college (yes, I've been painting that long). However, I'm not posting it as a part of a nostalgic flashback. Instead, I'm going to drag out a bunch of my old models for review as a part of an exercise on color theory. I should note that my intent in these reviews is mainly for color use and not for painting techniques or skills, although I will probably add a little historical commentary just for fun. So let's get started with this Greater Daemon of Slaanesh!

Focus: Whenever I look at a model with a critical first eye, I tend to be super conscious about where my eyes go. In the case of this daemon, they are immediately drawn to the boots. Why? They are really bright. The horns somewhat pull the eyes back up, but it's still not enough to balance things out. I also notice that it takes a long time before my eyes even pick out the face of the model, despite its size.

Story: Next, after noticing where my eyes go, I pay attention to the general tone and emotion of the model. In this case, it seems dark and quiet. Why? Well, for one thing, it's really dark blue. Not just that, but there isn't enough variation in color to draw out the dramatic elements of the model. Color choices can play such a critical role in helping "tell the story" of the figure. Nothing about my color choices here really help tell a story. The darkness of the skin causes his face and outstretched hand to become indistinct, and that's really where the story of this model starts.

Readability: Now, I look at the color choices to see if they make sense for the material they are representing and whether they help my eyes to pick out the details. For this daemon, I'm 0 for 3. Dark blue skin, although amusing and potentially appropriate for a "chaos daemon", doesn't make a lot of sense. The brown for the boots on the other hand does work, since most leather is some shade of brown. But then there's all those green bits. Are they leather? Armor? Who knows! The green color choice makes it not only harder for the eye to pick out, but harder for the brain to "read" what it is. The dark blue skin, dark green and dark aqua claw all just seems to blend together. This makes the readability quite poor.

Harmony: Lastly I look at the overall harmony of colors. Now sometimes i'll want clashing colors on purpose, but that's an outlying case. Normally I want colors that all play well together. It helps all of the above things I've talked about. In this case my report card arrives with an F. Blue skin and yellow-brown boots? Ouch! And what's with that pinkish-purple badge on his chest? Must be first price in the ugly contest. Ok, all kidding aside, if you break out all these colors and toss them on a color wheel, the whole thing looks pretty chaotic. Don't be fooled either! Dark colors help obscure a conflicting palette, but it's still there.

So that's a general overview of how I approach color for my painting now. I'm no expert though, as even my recent painting shows. But these 4 aspects form the building blocks of my color theory now. I'm going to post more of my older models, but I'll skip this level of analysis. I started with this model not just for its age, but for it's complete failure in all 4 areas.

One last thing before I sign off for the night. I was reading various forums and came across this really great 4-part series on photographing miniatures. I've posted on this before, but for those of you looking for more good examples of setting up a way to photograph your work, this article has lots of good information and uses pretty minimal materials to accomplish it (other than the camera).

Painting Purgatory: Color, Emotion, and Technology?

Let's take a few steps to the left today. A friend of mine sent me a link the other day to an amusing little web gadget called The Color Of. Now since you've already sprinted off to the link, tried it out a few times, and then finally come back to my blog (I hope) I'll explain why I wanted to share this. There's lots of information about color theory out there. It explores color in terms of psychology and physics, using sound principles to help artists understand how to use it effectively. This tool however does something almost opposite of that.

The Color Of basically harvests our collective social consciousness from the internet, takes a random sample, and fabricates a "color" swatch for you from whatever word you want. I use the word "color" liberally here since the output is really an image that has many colors in it, but you can think of it as a swatch of colors all mashed up. The process is pretty straightforward and the simplicity of this little widget is remarkable. I wouldn't classify this as a scientific tool by any stretch. Think of it as inspiration rather than a logical process.

So what good is this to miniature painters? Well, think of it as sort of an inspiration engine. Trying to figure out what sort of colors to use when painting your angry troll? Type it in! Guessing at what would give a sense of dignity to a pirate? Enter those keywords! The tool really is pretty limitless in that respect. Now you may get odd results obviously since it is highly random and can pull in images that arguably have nothing to do with what you typed in. However that vast randomness can work to your advantage. Try typing in "cygnar", "lefthanded", "extra large" or even "green" and you'll get something interesting out. You can even click on individual pictures that it found if you want. You can also save the produced image for reference.

Well, that's your daily dose of random color theory for today. But before I go, one last tip. If you produce a swatch and want to examine the colors in it in more detail, you can always throw it into the Kuler tool which I posted about last year. Enjoy!

Painting Purgatory: More Thoughts on Color

A couple of weeks ago (while I was gone on vacation) there was a painting class taught by Mathieu Fontaine at a relatively nearby LGS. I wasn't able to attend obviously, but some of the people on a local painters yahoo group posted their thoughts and learnings from the class which made for fascinating reading. Now I should point out that the people on this yahoo group are pretty serious painters, many of which have won awards and/or been studio painters. So when these guys kick around tips, I pay very close attention. It also helps that I get to talk with some of them at least once a year at events like KublaCon. Matthieu of course is a fairly well known multi-GD award winner and teaches masterclass workshops quite frequently. I wish I could have attended the class, but the highlights from the yahoo group will have to suffice. So what are some of those highlights?

Shading color choices: When picking a color to shade with, choose one that is one step in either direction from the complementary color of what you are shading. And don't use black. - I've talked about this before, but this refinement is an interesting revelation for me. When you combine complementary colors together, they tend to cancel out each other's intensity. So for example, if you are attempting to shade blue, rather than add red to the blue to create a shading color, use orange or purple. This will help preserve the color intensity better. And of course, using black or the straight complementary color will just dull down the overall appearance of the color. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish of course, this might be an appropriate option.

7-8 color palette: Sticking with a more limited pallete can actually make for a better end result. - The concept here is pretty straightforward actually. By limited the number of colors used, you create more harmony in the overall composition. The trick here comes in the form of picking the right colors such that the end result is still dynamic and interesting to the eye. Some people have even done a more limited pallete with remarkable results, such as Eric Johns' famous Ramos which was painted using just 3 colors.

Use warm/cool to emphasize depth: Warm colors appear to "pop out", while cool colors appear to receed. - This is an old traditional 2-D technique, but applies equally well to 3-D painting for miniatures. There are both physical and psychological reasons for this, but warmer colors (yellow for example) tend to feel closer while cooler colors (blue for example) tend to feel farther away. Consider this painting. The yellow-ish figure appears closer despite the fact that physically she's oriented farther away. The same applies to minatures, and I've used this technique with my highlighting sometimes, especially faces. Using a warmer tone for highlights will help the surface appear closer, while using cooler tones for shading will make those shades seem to receed even farther back.

There's so much to learn about color that it's impossible to learn most of it without making a career out of it. Still, for us humble painters looking for tips, there is a lot of simple color theory that can be applied without too much effort. No doubt I'll have more posts on the topic in the future as I continue to unearth more of these little gems.

Interested in books on color and composition? Here's some suggested reading:
Color and Light: A Guide for Realist Painters by James Gurney
Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers
Interaction of Color by Joseph Albers

Painting Purgatory: Speed Painting Is The New 40

So I discovered today that the new blogger editing interface doesn't protect me from my own html editing mistakes and screws up the layout if I don't close tags properly. Lovely. Anyway, now with that mini-rant out of the way, here's my latest update.

A while ago I was planning to start a series of posts about speed painting, but that project sort of burned out quickly. However since that time I've noticed a lot of revitalized interest in the painting community in terms of painting armies quickly but still having good results. Dipping has been around for a while, but to be honest I can't stand the idea of it. For one thing it still requires the longest effort of painting which is getting solid base coats. Another reason is that if you ever want to strip the model, you're out of luck. And finally, I just have a personal revulsion to the methodology (no offense meant to dippers out there).

However, glazing and washing are techniques that get you similar results but can save you time over the dipping method depending on how you go about it. When I was painting many of my Cryx models, I used glazes and washes over straight white primer and found that I got a lot of good results. There is a catch though. These techniques can sometimes leave you with less consistent look to the surfaces, but that may or may not be a benefit given the model and your own style preference. Personally I like the variation in the surface colors because it gives a more natural look. There are times, like when you are trying to simulate enameled metal, that this breaks the visual cues of the material being implied.

In a recent No Quarter article, studio painter Matt DiPietro demonstrated the "underpainting" technique and it seems to be getting more and more attention. My first link to share is Adary's Scrapbook where he's been making attempts at this technique with good success. If you look closely at the last photo you can see how the black undercoat darkens the tone of the color in key places (like knees and fabric folds) where light wouldn't be hitting it as much. My second link is to a tutorial on Hand Cannon Online by Ghoul (who is an amazing painter). He gives a very good description of the process and paints a whole unit. He also gives some very educated history of the technique from well before miniature painting.

Seeing a revitalization of "old master" techniques being used in miniature painting is pretty interesting. As I continue to listen in to various painting communities, I encounter more and more of these sorts of things happening. The past is ripe with knowledge and experience, we just have to tap into it!

Painting Purgatory: Reflections

I know there isn't a conspiracy against me, but sometimes it feels like it. I got back from a month long vacation out of the country just a few days ago. During that time there were contractors working on remodeling the kitchen and dining room of our townhouse. In order to accommodate that effort, everything got moved out of those areas into the spare bedroom, garage, and whatever other space we could make. The project was supposed to be much further along, but due to extensive dry rot and foundation problems the project is way behind schedule. So our 3Bed/2.5Bath townhouse is more like 1.5Bed/1.5Bath, which is a pain especially with an 18 month old. Anyway, this has put a serious freeze on any painting activities for the time being while the work gets finished. So even if I can't get any proper painting in, I can catch up on a month's worth of reading from the painting community and spend time posting some of the other ideas I've had for blog posts. Honestly, I had forgotten what a stress relief painting is for me. It'll be nice to have our house back to working order, but equally nice will be the ability to clear out my painting space properly so that I can get some good cathartic relaxation in. In the mean time, I'll be posting a bunch of random thoughts about painting inspired by the catchup reading I'm doing.

So the first item that struck me as interesting was a very recent post on the Wyrd painting forums here. It's a discussion about how to tie a group of models together theme-wise. There's some beautifully painted models in that thread, but the discussion itself is pretty interesting. There's as many ways to tie together a group of models visually as there are to paint a model. There's obvious methods like a uniform color scheme across an entire army which is one of the most common. Other folks have used unified basing to bring together disparate models. I myself used this for all my Cryx "pirate" type models. And then, as is beautifully exampled in this post, a couple key colors can be used for elements of every model in the group to tie them together visually while not making them overly similar. Now these are just some simple examples, but there are plenty of others. Another example is my friend Lance's Lava Trolls, which are tied together by a visual theme of fire. Now what method you use depends on a number of factors, not the least of which is the similarity (or dis-similarity) of the models being painted. This thread on the Wyrd forums was more relevant than other games since the Wyrd crews tend to be much more varied in style. In any case, the discussion here got me thinking about creating a unifying look to a group of models, particularly in light of starting a Skaven army soon, so I thought I'd share this with folks out there.

So what do you do to create a uniform look to a group of models? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

From the Desk: Uh oh! What's this? Rats!

Yes, I've found myself asking what the heck I've done. I picked up the Warhammer starter box (Island of Blood) with the intention of starting a Skaven army. How did I arrive at this point? Well honestly I'm still loving Warmachine and Hordes, but sometimes I find myself not quite up to the brainpower challenge for it. My work is sometimes quite mentally taxing. When that happens on the weekly gaming night, I find myself to be a pretty meager opponent. Warhammer being more of a "beer and pretzels" game will be a nice option for those times when I just don't have the capacity for the intricacies of Warmachine. As much as I enjoyed Malifaux before, it's even more mentally taxing than Warmachine, so it has fallen by the wayside.

So what's my plan for Skaven? Well quite honestly, it's going to be a while before I get much done since I'm going on a family vacation in a couple days. However I've started to mull over a theme for this new army. That theme: AquaRats! This was sort of a goofy decision, so let me elaborate. First off, I was very inspired by the theme work my friend did on his "Magma Trolls" recently. You can read lots about it on his blog here. The theme really ties them all together and they look striking on the table. So in that same spirit, I wanted to try to have a solid theme like this as well. So I was looking at my pile of Skaven bits and debating what I could do. Well, first of all, I picked Skaven for a couple reasons. First, I dig the models. I really like them a lot actually, and I think I can paint them relatively fast as well. Second, I was born in the year of the rat! Coincidence? I think not! Second, I'm an Aquarius, so going with a water theme was a quick inspiration. I like the idea of a swarm of rats all wearing various shades of blue so that when they rank up, it looks like a flowing stream.

So with a theme idea chosen, I need to start deciding how to make that theme really solid and obvious in the army. I'll be posting a bunch more as I work through the details. It's going to be several weeks before I start any real painting anyway, so I've got lots of times to think about how I'm going to do things like convert a Doomwheel into a Waterwheel.

Nephilim Protector

And here he is! The third of my Nephilim. This actually rounds out my collection of beasts for Legion with at least one of each kind. The irony being that I've been playing Menoth the last couple weeks (gotta try out the battle engine). So while my Legion force is enjoying a bit of a vacation, it's getting closer to fully painted.

The Protector here was quite different from the others. The obvious amount of metal covering him made it a little different of a project to tackle. One side effect as well was figuring out where to put the sigil on him. I ended up using the back of one arm which worked out pretty well, despite my initial fear of it looking odd.

What went well:
* Painting all three at once - This helped a lot. There was enough variation in them that I could take a break from the uniform work and do something specific to keep things fresh.
* Metal patterns - Doing bright highlights on the patterning of the armor plates really made them pop nicely. I really like the overall look. Plus using a blue ink wash gives it a nice tint as well that ties much more of the model together.

What could have been better:
* Flesh - I think the flesh could have been better. Some of the recesses could have been darker to create better contrast, and some places could be a bit smoother.
* Metals - Overall I'm pretty happy with the metals, but some areas could have been cleaned up a bit.

Nephilim Bolt Thrower

Two down! Again, brief review on this one. I think the Bolt Thrower was my favorite of the three sculpts. Not my favorite to paint though, due to the inaccessibility of some of the areas of the model. But sculpt-wise, it's pretty amazing. The muscles, armor, crossbow, and pretty much everything has a lot of nice detail to it. This one also afforded some variation in color with the wood grain. For that I used a base of Rucksack Tan, then painted thin lines using VMC Pale Sand, then washed that with slightly thinned VMC Wood Grain. Quick but effective.

Ironically, after I sealed it, I noticed an oversight. It's annoying when that happens. However it's the back side of the crossbow where it's hard to even notice, so I'm not going to worry about it. The metal is basically painted as wood instead, so it's not very obvious anyway.

Ok, so one more to go. My goal is to have him done by tomorrow night, but I still have a lot of metal highlighting left to do, not to mention basing him. Back to work!

Nephilim Soldier

Geez, almost two weeks since my last post. I'm really falling off of the pace I was hoping for. Nonetheless, I've finished up the Nephilim Soldier. The other two won't be far behind. Note that I'm now switching over to using my iPhone for pictures instead of the previous lightbox and kodak set up. This is much quicker for getting photos to the blog. Plus right now the lightbox is torn down and the space is being used to store stuff while we remodel our kitchen. I'm just going to do a quick review of this model and spend more time when I finish the last of the Nephilim.

Out of the three, I think I liked painting this one best. Everything on the model is easy to get to, and the wings afforded some extra color to the overall model. He doesn't have nearly as much metallic work to him (which is why I finished him first), so I wanted to put a little extra punch to the sword. Overall I'm fairly happy with it. Having never even proxied a Soldier before, I'm looking forward to giving him a try soon.

Ok, back to the painting station. Two more Nephilim to go!

From the Desk: New "Camera" Comparison, and more

So I recently upgraded my phone from the "CyberShot" to an iPhone 4. I was curious to compare the photo quality of the iPhone 4 to my Kodak EasyShare. Below is a side-by-side comparison, but with a couple key differences...
To be fair, the photos weren't taken in the same place. The Kodak photo (left) was taken in the lightbox. The iPhone photo (right) was taken on my painting desk without the benefit of the lightbox to properly bounce light around, nor with the assistance of a tripod. The net result is still pretty competitive though. I have to say, for the ease of management, the iPhone is taking pretty much just as good a photos. There's a brightness shift, but nothing terrible. I may start doing most of my photos this way just because it's so much easier.


In addition, I've been working on my Nephilim. Here's a shot of the 3 together. Skin, wings and major chitin are all done. Now it's on to the armor, which will probably take me a good week to finish.

Blackfrost Shard

Stupid Starcraft 2 is ruining my painting pace! These guys ran into other slowdowns as well, including needing to recharge the dremel, a wedding, and spending time prepping and assembling the Nephilim (which are now in progress). Enough excuses though! If I'm going to get to my 1-1-1-1 goal I need to stay focused. In the mean time, quick notes on these guys before I go to sleep.

What went well:
* Squads of 3 are easy - Painting 3 dudes at once is much easier than 10 or even 6. I was able to spend lots of time on them.
* Adding some red - The red sash on Sevryn threw in just enough extra color but doesn't imbalance the model. I'm thinking this will look great on the Hex Hunters.
* Correcting as I went - Since it was just 3 dudes, I could go back and make lots of corrections as I went.

What could have been better:
* Deeper shadows - This is something I probably need more of in general, but I think it would have really helped these models to pop more.
* Little details - There were plenty, and I could have spent a bunch more time tidying them up.
* Something to tell them apart - I probably should have come up with something that could make it easier to differentiate the 3 models quickly, since they are supposed to be individual characters. As it stands, I just painted a V on the bottom of Vysarr.

Ok, enough for now. Back to painting.

From the Desk: Week of ZzZZZzzZzzZzzZzzzz.....

This week was sort of a wash. I was in San Diego for business for the better part of the week and didn't get as much done as I had hoped. However the weekend was a bit more packed with activity. The Blackfrost Shard is nearing completion, with just details left to do mostly. I should have them wrapped up by middle of the week. As you can see, the leader here is looking pretty good.

I've got a plan to be down to 2-1-1-1 unpainted by the time I go on vacation to Canada near the end of July. These guys need to be done by this next weekend, and then the 3 Nephilim done before I leave. Knocking these guys off the list will have me one step closer. In addition to having those done, I'm aiming to pack up the Hex Hunters and Rhyas and paint them while I'm on vacation (since my wife has graciously given me a green light to bring a painting kit.

To that end, I got the Nephilim assembled and (just this evening) primed. We're having a bit of a temporary heat wave, so I availed myself of the cooler evening to do some late night priming. I also got Rhyas and the Hex Hunters primed so that I can go ahead and start packing them into a painting kit.

From the Desk: Nephilim Putty Party

Confession time: I finally broke down and bought Starcraft 2. This coupled with more work travel will likely impair my painting/modeling productivity. In fairness to myself though, I did hold out quite a while. And it is pretty rockin. Anyway, that's not what this blog is here for, so...

One of the tips I got from Derek Schubert's sculpting class came in really handy this last weekend: stick the putty to your off-hand thumbnail. It sort of makes a little putty palette, and I found it works really well. I just kneaded up some, stuck it to my thumbnail, and then I could slice off a bit with my sculpting tool easily. The thumbnail makes a good surface because the putty sticks enough to not fall off, but not so much to be hard to remove. It's so simple and yet such a helpful tip. And why was I putting this into practice? Well...


My Nephilim are almost all assembled! The Bolt Thrower is going to have his quiver attached after painting simply due to the amount of problems it will cause for accessing parts of the model once it's on. The Solider just needs his sword/arm attached which will require a little putty work. The Protector is in a similar state, but his arms and polearm are going to be a bit more work to get all together. I'm trying to decide on a pinning strategy still.

I also tried out some Krylon Satin Finish last week. I can honestly say that appearance-wise, it looks pretty much the same as my double coating of gloss/dull. I haven't really tested it for durability, but I'm very likely to make this switch for things going forward once I run out of Testors supplies, especially since the cost is so much better.

From the Desk: Parallel Projects

The poor Blackfrost Shard have been sitting on my desk, primed, for months. Two days ago however, I finally started putting paint to them. These models are quite detailed, and thus make them both interesting and a bit daunting at the same time. I don't think I've had so much motivation to paint something for a long time. First, they are quite nice models. Second, they are badass on the table. And third, completing them brings me back down to a single unpainted squad. These guys will probably take me a while though. I'm still kicking around whether to introduce some red into the color scheme or not.

On an "SPQR" note, I also finished trimming my 3 Nephilim. I like to be getting my next model all trimmed, assembled and primed before I finish my current painting project. It's more than just the smooth transition from one painting project to another. There's time lost waiting for putty and primer to dry and if I'm burning that time in parallel with painting, I'm getting good use from my time. Getting these Nephilim done will bring me down to a single unpainted beast, plus it will give me a whole batch of new options on the battlefield which I'm really looking forward to.

Anastasia di Bray

It feels great to be back into a relatively normal painting swing. Knocking out Anastasia here was quick and delightful. It's not the most interesting sculpt for sure, but I can honestly say it was pretty fun to paint. Perhaps because of my recent efforts on the War Hog. In any case, it was a big morale boost for my inner muse.

What went well:
* Small - Yep, painting a small single model was great. I felt like I could spend quality time on it and still make quick progress.
* Retries - I think I painted they eyes 3 times before I called them good enough. Each time they got better, despite her eyes being tiny. It's hard to see in the photo unfortunately (more on that below).
* Pants - Of all the parts of this model, I think the pants came out the best of all.

What could have been better:
* Photos - ARGH! These pics are terrible! I'm not entirely sure why. It's probably a lighting problem, but I'll need to experiment more. It seems that every time I have to tear down my photo set up (due to visitors) that I have trouble getting it tweaked back to normal.
* Face and eyes - After Derek's class and seeing his models up close, I'm inspired to step up my game on the face area of models. However I'm realistic about just making progress through practice and not trying to jump straight to amazing.

From the Desk: New Paint Goal

Anastasia is really coming along well. Not much left to do at this point other than some tweaks and some additional work on the face. Ironic given that the face was where I started.

In order to keep myself from buying more models than my painting pace can keep up with, I'm always trying to keep myself aware of what's unpainted. In the past I just had a general count but units tend to make those look weird at times. So I've come up with a new scheme: 1-1-1-1. Just like the Highlander format, I'm going to aim at reaching only 1 unpainted warcaster/warlock, warjack/warbeast, unit, and solo.

Note that this will be across my active factions of Legion, Protectorate and the Ashlynn theme force. I have several models that will fall out of this tracking, specifically McBain, Cryx stuff, and Minion stuff. Why? Well, honestly, I never really play Cryx, I'm not interested in playing Minions, and McBain, well, I'll probably paint him eventually but I'm not itching to get him on the table.

So where am I at now?

Warcasters/Warlocks:	Rhyas, Bethayne
Warjacks/Warbeasts:	Nephilim Protector, Nephilim Soldier, Nephilim Bolt Thrower, Belphagore
Units:	Blackfrost Shard, Hex Hunters (with UA)
Solos:	Anistasia Di Bray, Gun Mage Captain Adept

So not that far. 2-4-2-2 is pretty reasonable. I'm hoping to close in on 1-1-1-1 by mid July at the latest. The shocking thing to me is that so far this year I've only painted 18 models, and it's nearly halfway through the year. I have a sinking feeling that this is going to be a slow year for painting unless I can "pair up".

From the Desk: Recap, Notes and Progress

In an effort to stay blogging, I'm going to aim to do more of my "From the Desk" posts with random tidbits of information. We'll see how long this new resolution lasts.

Poor Anastasia here as been sitting on my desk, primed, awaiting paint, for a couple months. After coming off of the big competition effort, I wanted to do something relatively fast, but still feel like I could pour quality effort into it, so this was a nice coincidence. This model is quite small and fairly simple. After seeing Derek spend an hour and a half on a face, I'm a bit more inspired to be practicing painting faces and eyes in more detail. I've definitely learned in the past that painting more (and spending just above average effort each time) goes a long ways towards improving my skills in particular areas. To that end, I've decided to focus on more models with clear faces and eyes, and also to find small opportunities to practice freehand work as well.

In other news, the classes at KublaCon left me with a list of things to follow up on. Here's the summary:
* Try out Reaper liner paints - Derek recommended these. I picked up the triad and tried out the brown liner. It's definitely interesting stuff. Pre-thinned for quick use. I see myself using these more and more.
* Paint freehand using the "constellation" method - Basically sketch a design, pick out points, transfer the points to the model, then fill in the design. More on that in future posts.
* Airbrush - Yeah, I totally bought an airbrush already after seeing Justin use it and answer a bunch of questions. Lots lots more on that in the future.
* Fine mist spray nozzles for primer - Justin recommended GW Skull White because the new primer cans have "fine mist" nozzles. I've got one reserved at my LGS to try out and see if I notice a difference.
* Krylon Satin Finish sealer - Another Justin recommendation. Gotta see if it's very different from my current 2-coats method. This would be nice not only because it would be a single coat to seal, but also because the local store that I got Testors supplies from closed recently.
* Weathering techniques - More on this later, but I want to try out Justin's techniques: hairspray/salt, dry pigments, and dot oil filter.

Ok, last note for today. While painting last night I watched a delightful film titled Perfume. Great movie! Loved it! Absolutely nothing to do with painting, but totally interesting concept and well executed. I love it when I find movies that are interesting but don't require me to pay complete visual attention to them (thus allowing me to paint while watching).