Serena Bowman

I tried to duplicate the box are on this one, mostly because I liked the color scheme. One specific note though is that I used a little gold metallic paint for the highlights on the yellows to create a little more sparkle and pop. I've never done this sort of thing before and I have to admit that I kinda like the effect. I might use this again on something else.

Brutal Emissary

Painted for a friend. Such a delightful model.

Lucius

This is my Neverborn version of Lucius, because let's face it, he's supposed to be more Neverborn than guild. So I inverted the typical color scheme by having predominantly purple instead of red. I really enjoyed painting this model despite the rather static looking pose. He's so regal and prancy looking.

Zoraida

Somewhat speed painted. I had a lot of fun with the details of this model and just experimenting. She's a swampy/messy sort of lady so going crazy with wet blending was a logical choice. I tried to make her hair look greasy and her skin look dirty and pallid. I added a little rust to the needles as well just to emphasize the wetness.

Rougarou

Loved painting these. Quick and easy, but nice details.

It was also a more successful experiment in hiding join lines between plastic pieces, which worked pretty well. Both models had seams right down the centers of their bodies, and I feel like I succeeded in hiding the majority of the seams without excessive painting work. A bit more practice and I should be able to deal with most seams without major putty work anymore, which will take a lot of the sting out of assembly for me. This is especially important for my painting style since I depend on washes and glazes a lot, and seams just become so painfully obvious when using washes.

One annoyance though was the howling model had a sculpted rock it's supposed to be standing on which I didn't like with my basing scheme, so I had to add in an extra piece to the base. In the end it worked out fine though.

2017 Wrap Up and 2018 Resolutions

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

2017 was terrible year. This recap is going to be pretty short and depressing. I recommend skipping it.

Last year's goals:
1) Paint the Batman model for my comics fixer - Fail! So very sad.
2) Play 52 games - Fail! I lost count, but I think I only played about 25 games or so in.
3) Read 2 books about painting - Fail! I read almost finished one book.


Probably the big highlight for me was playing in 2 Malifaux tournaments back to back (1 at Kubla and 1 at a LGS). Both events were a blast and I met lots of great people.
Beyond that, my year was brutal for hobby and playing. My wife was super sick. Like, hospital for 2 months sick. She's still not completely recovered either. Beyond just family and friends, I am really thankful for this hobby as a stress release outlet. Painting especially is very helpful.

Models painted last year:
Neverborn: 54
Other Malifaux: 15
Legion: 3
Cryx: 1
Looking at it from a size perspective:
Small based: 55
Medium based: 8
Large based: 10

73 models is actually pretty respectable given the insanity of this last year. Significantly less than the 100 last year, but way more than I would have expected.

Goals for next year:
1) Read 2 books about painting - Because continual learning is important.
2) Paint at least 1 model purely for artistic desire - Because I really am enjoying painting for the sake of painting.
3) Finish painting my Neverborn collection - This should be easy, but I'm setting it as a goal anyway.

So my goals for next year are much simpler. In fact, I'm loathe to even set goals, but I'm going to do it anyway.

And that's it. Here's to the close of a rough 2017 and hopes for a great 2018. Cheers to all!

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.