From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #141

So much insanity everywhere. My muse is distraught.

This week has not been as productive as I'd like. I unfortunately got food poisoning on Friday and that left me a mess for a couple days. Work has been hectic due to my new larger role. And in general I've found myself just quite busy overall. Still though I did manage to get some stuff done. This weekend was largely about getting things assembled and finished up. The Neraph got done, and I finally got caught up on posting stuff to the blog. I also got these small terrain pieces done which were essentially tests for the new Vallego Weathering paints I picked up. I'll try to post a review of them later once I can write that up. In addition I got a bunch of models assembled and/or primed, including: Mysterious Emissary (primed), 3 Changelings (assembled/primed), The Claw (assembled/primed), The Thorn (assembled/primed), Swamp Mother (assembled), and 3 sets of Gupps (assembled). The Swamp Mother is the translucent version and I have a devious scheme in mind for that. I'll post pictures of that project for sure.

I still haven't gotten any games in yet this year and January is pretty much gone. It's been a real challenge, but schedule-wise and mentally to get myself out for a game once my son is in bed.

Total games played this year: 0

And now some completely frivolous musings that can be freely ignored...
My inner artist/hobbyist needs to just get something off his chest at this point. I'm not inviting a discussion here. I have plenty of those going on within social media and real world already. These thoughts are just my artist-self needing a quiet voice.
The pain and fear I see around me lately has become nearly unbearable. So much division, and so many lines of angry and hate. The artist within me weeps for this. It is precisely the diversity of humanity that makes art such a vital medium of communication, and it is precisely the diversity of humanity that art needs in order to truly fire the soul. Without difference, there is only black.

Neraph (take 2)

The Neraph from the starter box. Nothing amazing here. Who knows when I'll actually field 2 Neraphs, but heck, it's painted.

50 Articles To Read

In case you missed it, this has a really great list of painting articles from 2016: 50 Articles and Tutorials To 'Do Not Miss' From 2016.

Will O The Wisps

These little pretties were both fun and horrific to work on. Getting them assembled quickly revealed that they would be highly fragile on their bases, so I ended up putting pins in them. Then after I was done with assembly and priming, I discovered that the massive vertical seams hadn't closed all the way. I managed to mostly hide that with some painting tricks though and the end result worked out ok.
When I was painting them I wanted to stick fairly close to the artwork, but I wanted to make them more spooky. I had seen an example posted on one of the Facebook groups where the person had made the faces more stark white, so I shamelessly stole that bit of inspiration. I made their faces skeletal and hollow, but kept the rest of the body with the sort of glowing look and modulated the color towards dark purple at the bottom. The wings are where I went much more different, and I still have mixed feelings there. However I feel like I did a pretty good job of nailing the "spooky" look.

Bandersnatch

There is simply no good angle to photograph this model from. It's just wild. The original version of this model has a miner with a pistol and lamp who is meant to be casting the shadow that the Bandersnatch is coming out of. I opted to exclude the miner just simply because I felt it drew attention from the Bandersnatch itself. I'm honestly quite glad that I did too. I also tried to work with the original art in terms of the colors for it, which turned out to be an interesting challenge.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #140

Finally getting a desk post in...

I've been slacking pretty bad on the blog here in this new year. I'm finally gaining steam on painting, but it's still feeling like a bit of an uphill struggle. I've got a couple other things done that I just haven't photographed and posted yet. The Neraph here is in progress and would have been my last unpainted Legion model if there wasn't a bit of an accident at my FLGS the other day, where I picked up the Grotesque Assassin and Nyss Warlord. I'm honestly not quite sure why I got them since I'm not planning to play WM/H anytime in the next couple months.

I picked up four Vallejo weathering paints the other day to experiment with. I'll post a couple examples later this week but my first impression is pretty positive.

Total games played this year: 0

Shredders (take 13 and 14)

These were the Shredders from the Legion box, which I finally got around to painting. Nothing amazing other than it only took me maybe 3 hours of effort total to do both of them.

2016 Wrap Up and 2017 Resolutions

[Disclaimer: This post contains fluffy, introspective nonsense... Just like last year's did.]

2016 was a very good year for hobby time. Despite all the other suck that happened in 2016, I had a generally great year personally.

Last year's goals:
1) Paint arcs on all my Legion models - Success! Piece of cake.
2) Close out DZC - Success! Got this done early and it felt great.
3) Get my Cygnar collection up to 95% painted - Success! I'm actually at 100% painted.
4) Play 52 games this year - Success! Counting both WMH and Malifaux I played 56 games.
5) Attend 1 convention - Success! Lock & Load again of course.
6) Paint a Batman model for my comics fixer - Fail! I got it assembled, but not even primed.
7) Play tighter games - Success! Hard to actually measure, but I feel good about this.
8) Pack away old models - Success! All the space I made in my case got filled by Cygnar though.
9) Archive selected models - Success! Actually there weren't that many, but it's done.
10) Read another book about painting - Success! Finished A Brilliant History of Color in Art. Great read.

A huge highlight was really the 56 games I played. As a working father it can be really hard to get games in. Honestly one of the best parts of playing was starting a Malifaux campaign. I have been absolutely loving the Malifaux campaign and I'm looking forward to plenty more of it.

Models painted last year:
Cygnar: 45
Malifaux: 24
Legion: 12
Minions: 8
DZC: 7
Mercs: 3
Convergence: 1
Looking at it from a size perspective (excluding DZC):
Small based: 57
Medium based: 14
Large based: 21
Huge based: 1

So not quite as prolific this year, painting an even 100 models, compared to 130 last year. The big difference being that this year I tackled more solos and especially Malifaux whereas last year there was a massive amount of Cygnar painting that filled the ranks. I did however build more terrain this year (6 additional pieces, one of which didn't get it's own post).

Goals for next year:
1) Paint the Batman model for my comics fixer - Again, gonna try to get this done.
2) Play 52 games - Again, great goal to have every year.
3) Read 2 books about painting - Books good.

My goals this year are thinner than last year mostly because I've got some family situation stuff going on that will preclude me from traveling much. Plus my work situation has changed (due to a promotion) so I'm purposefully not setting a bunch of goals for myself here. What I do want to do is really enjoy painting again.

And that's it. Here's to a fantastic 2016 and hopes for a great 2017. Cheers to all!

Carver

As mentioned previously, this is my Sketch Style experiment. I'll be taking a Sketch Style class from the great Matt DiPietro in the near future, but prior to that I wanted to take a practice run at the process by myself to figure out where I may or may not have big questions. Boy did that experiment turn out valuable. The end result is actually better than I anticipated, but it did open up specific questions for me:
1) What does Matt use when actually "painting" the sketch colors in? The underpriming process is very straight forward, but the coloring process is elusive to me.
2) How does he handle metallics?
3) How does he handle OSL?
4) Am I leaving my overall brightness too high? Should the piece as a whole be darker? I aimed for a high amount of contrast, but it might actually be too much.
In any case, I'm really looking forward to the class!

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #139.5 and Desk Rescue Update

Fake roundup post. Just cause!

First update is that I finished building a new paint rack, clearly pictured here. It holds all my paint! And conveniently takes up less footprint of my desk. It is not quite as good quality as the previous one, but it's pretty close and definitely meets my needs. The project is pretty easy and below I have included a sketch of materials for my own reference in the future. However I am going to note some key learnings for the (potential) next time that I try to build a paint rack:
1) Next time, get access to a table saw to do all the cutting to make all the cuts perfectly aligned.
2) Build each level one at a time, using rods to do the joining to make it more modular.
3) Stain it before doing the final assembly. Perhaps also find a better wood glue choice that takes stain and/or works on already stained wood.
4) Measure stuff a little bit more accurately. There's some jamming happening because the width is a little off, and the pigment pots on the top don't fit as well as they could.
Other than that though, it was fantastic. I'm super happy to have an expanded paint rack and clear space on my desk.

And on the desk front, things are still moving along slowly. Carver here is nearly done, and has been an interesting experiment of Sketch Style. I'll post more about that when I finish him of course. Beyond Carver I really don't have a good plan of what's going to get done next. I've got 2 primed Shredders, and 2 primed Beckoners, but neither of those really interest me, so today my goal is to review my sizable backlog of models and figure out what will stir my muse to action.

I'm also going to start working out my 2016 wrap up post. That will no doubt take me a while to do.

Paint rack reference notes:
Wood was all project pine wood from Lowes. 1/4" thickness, with mostly 2.5" width pieces. The edge parts are 1/2" square pieces.

Lilith Avatar

Likely my last finished model for 2016. This old metal sculpt of Lilith's avatar form is really nice to paint, although it was a bit of a challenge to assemble. None of the pieces fit cleanly together and I had to do some cutting and greenstuffing to make everything look reasonable. I'm really happy with the final results for the base, where I was able to blend together my normal Nephilim basing style with the actual Lilith sculpted base.

Holiday Happiness

My gaming bros (Lance and Henry) and I had our annual gift exchange which is a fun and relaxing end to the year. Gifts from those guys included:
* Miss Fire (limited edition) - Such a crazy awesome detailed model. It's a really challenging project that I'm excited about.
* Barbaros (alt sculpt) - Although I already have the regular plastic Barbaros, this sculpt is simply amazing. Gotta paint it.
* Amphibious Assault (Swamp Mother + 3 Gupp Swarms) - I'm on a quest to get all the scenario boxes assembled. This one also includes the translucent green version of the Swamp Mother so I have a nefarious plan for how to paint that.
* Master of Puppets (Collodi, Vasilisa, 4 Marionettes, 3 Wicked Dolls) - Just... yeah... so awesome. Can't wait to play Collodi.

And so now I have a bunch more Malifaux painting projects to keep me busy. Hooray!

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #139

Probably my last roundup post of the year.

My muse is still somewhat on holiday, but I'm still finding a little inspiration. More progress on Lilith Avatar, and started working on a this memorial-style terrain piece.

Played another two games of Malifaux this last week, wrapping up week 4 of our campaign for me at least.
Total games played this year: 56

Angel Eyes

The face is unfortunately quite muddled, and the photo isn't great, but she's done. Honestly the parts of this model I'm the most happy with are the pants/scarf (which only took 3 layers to accomplish), and the boots (which only took 2 layers to accomplish). The coat was also a specific practice in focusing highlights not only using zenithal techniques, but also specifically modulating the highlights to draw attention around the torso and head. Not entirely successful I know, but I feel like I'm getting there.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #138

Doing this post extra early just because of expected timing issues.

My muse seems to be on holiday, but I did get some stuff done. New Nightmare base for Carver is finished, and I did the extreme whites/blacks for Carver as well as prep for sketchstyle. Angel Eyes is done except for getting on to a base. I also got the Lilith Avatar model assembled and primed, which also included attaching it to one of my blank Neverborn bases and getting it gap filled. Other stuff got done too, like priming my 2 plastic Shredders and assembling a bunch of other things (2 Transmortis, the 4 Guild models from the starter box, and the Batman model).

There was also a backslide for my painting percentage as some of my Wyrd Black Friday order arrived this last week, which included the Titania box, Will-O-Wisps, Bandersnatch, and 3 limited edition models (alt Nicodem, alt Guild Guard and alt Bishop).

Played another game of Malifaux, wrapping up week 3 of our campaign.
Total games played this year: 54

Widow Weaver

Grace, beauty, and twistedness. Love this model and it's story. It dresses like a proper nanny and quietly invokes nightmares in them in order to steal those nightmares away. Terror hidden under frilly victorian manners.
I tried to keep my color range as limited as possible here, creating a much more subtle triad of yellowish-off-white, light magenta, and deep blue.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #137

Two days late, and lazy fast...

Life has been super busy for me lately. Holidays, family visits, promotion at work, family health issues, traveling, etc. Just a rough time in general for the hobby. Here's what I've been working on...

Made more blanks for Malifaux bases. Lots of them. I'm planning to paint lots more Neverborn. Widow Weaver is mostly done as well (probably post tomorrow). Angel Eyes is started, and Carver is primed. I'm actually planning to paint Carver in Sketch Style as described by Matt DiPietro. More about that in the future though.

Played 2 games of Malifaux last week as a part of our campaign (week 3).
Total games played this year: 53

Quick review of progress against my 2016 goals: Basically everything is done except for painting the Batman model. I'm not sure I'm going to manage to pull that off actually.

10 Years of Blogging

This last week my blog turned 10 years old. It's a little staggering to realize I've been posting here that long now. If I'm honest with myself this blog started as a "me too" response to all the other blogging going on there. Over the years it has sometimes felt like a chore, and there's obviously been times when Blogger changed and caused me problems. However despite my original reasons and challenges over time, this blog has become a huge source of self-motivation for myself. I feel that a few reflections are in order...

My favorite lessons learned:
* Building a portable assembly kit was one of the smartest things I did. It allowed me to keep projects moving even when life forces me into weird corners. Having it as a modular kit that I can expand and reorganize has just made it even more valuable over the years.
* 10 years ago I only used GW paints. Now I have paints from 10 different makers and an appreciation for why each one is useful in different situations. My eye for color has also improved which is why having all these different paints is so valuable. The real lesson though is that experimenting with new paints and techniques is always a good idea.
* Keeping a painting journal has been incredible useful. I'm not great at doing it all the time, but being able to go back and reference past projects and formulas has been very helpful many times now.
* Color theory is totally a thing. It allows for a little analytical process in the midst of the creative process and has really helped bring my projects to life better. More on that below.
* Basing is also a thing. The more I do it, the more I appreciate doing it. Whether it's to create a uniform army theme or to tell a story, basing is something I truly enjoy rather than "just do".

And now a couple comparison photos and some thoughts about my painting journey:

This first photo shows Ashlynn (painted Nov 2006), and Taelor (painted June 2016). The comparison is pretty interesting. The first thing I noticed when I put them side-by-side was that my sense of brightness range is much better managed later on. Taelor's overall brightness is pretty even with much of the brighter parts centered on her torso and face to draw attention to the center, but still not overly bright. Ashlynn on the other hand has a really bright face and the metallics are pushed far too bright.
The second thing I noticed was the basing. Even though Taelor wasn't any sort of fancy project, the base helps tell a small piece of a story, whereas Ashlynn's base is, well, her standing on a rock. The difference in basing efforts over the course of time has definitely changed for the better.
The last thing I noticed is just the amount of push in the shading and highlighting. More about that in my other comparison picture though...

This second photo shows Alexia (painted Nov 2006) and Mysterious Effigy (painted Oct 2016). This comparison is extra fascinating to me because it really spotlights how I use color differently now. I remember finishing Alexia and being stoked about the color work on her. Looking back at it now though, It was still just a hack. The cloak has good color variation in it, but everything else is too flat. The Mysterious Effigy on the other hand used a triadic color scheme. My shading and highlighting techniques involve shifting tonal values towards cool and warm colors, and in general I push the contrast much farther than I would have ever considered back then. I also attempted to balance color usage around areas of the model in order to keep the overall appearance of the model more balanced.
My favorite projects/accomplishments/events/things:
* Painting a huge Cygnar army as a uniform project still feels like an amazing accomplishment.
* Building my own paint rack was sort of a separate project but often when I look at it I'm really pleased with myself.
* Learning to use an airbrush was a ton of fun, even though I'm still learning how to use it.
* Playing Unbound with Jason Soles as his last MK2 game of Warmachine was perhaps one of my favorite games ever played.
* Painting the Archangel was a huge project that I really threw myself into and used the airbrush a lot for, and learned a lot about painting very large projects.

Some interesting stats over the last 10 years:
* Total posts: 1119
* Total models painted: 712
* Most popular post by hits: Paint Toxicity

Bloodwretches

Bloodwretches done. My normal process of getting posts on this blog has finally been completely gronked, so this is my first post testing out a new method. Hopefully this works out ok.

Mysterious Effigy

Now this model was a delight to work on, but not without challenges. This post is going to be a bit of a rambler here, so don't be shy about just looking at the photos and then moving on if you aren't interested in the process.

So this plastic model has no logical place for it's tiny tiny appendages to attach to a base. Not without making it even more fragile. So I dealt with this by putting a pin in under the dress to attach to the base. Getting it centered properly on the base was a bit of a challenge and required a bunch of careful measuring but worked out well in the end. I would highly recommend this method to anyone else attempting this model. This also gave me an easy way to prime it and mount it while painting as well which was invaluable. The pin of course was painted black at the end. One mistake I made was to glue the pin into the base prior to sealing the model. This is a problem since I wanted the base to remain gloss-coated, but wanted to put a final matte seal on the model itself.

I had been intending to paint this model for a while, and to a higher standard than my current stuff. However a bonus opportunity came up to paint it for a facebook group Halloween challenge so it really helped jump-start my muse. I opted for a nice pumpkin-orange dress color and then worked from there. I focused on a triadic color scheme (orange/cyan/purple) to try for a bit of color harmony.
One challenge I faced was the masks. I originally wanted to tint each one of them slightly to reflect the mood that the masks themselves showed. I left this to the very end to decide though and I am sure glad I waited. I feel like adding the tinting could have easily thrown off the whole color balance and made the model just look too busy.