Well Borka is finally done!

I had a rare few hours today to actually get some painting done. I know it was strange being able to sit down, clear my mind, clean my brushes and actually paint!.

I'd love to give you my normal breakdown on what paints I used/mixed to get the colors I did. I honestly didn't take the time to write them down. I will say that I broke out the Scale 75 paints to do the leathers. This is the first time I've used them, and I am happy to report that the do live up to the hype.


So with out further ado....... I give you Borka!

Borka Bust 2.0

Well I finally had a little bit of time to work on this one. I love the simplicity of the sculpt. It's not that it lacks detail, it just does the job without an inane amount of filigree and other silly stuff like ropes made out of skulls and other non-sense we tend to see on models.

Anywho.... For this model I've used the SOTAR 20/20 and the more I use it the more I fall in love with the thing, but that's a story for another blog post. I started the skin tone with P3 -Troll Blood Base. Then moved on to the leather and fur collar. I set down a base of Scale 75 - Red Leather. This is the first time I have had a chance to use the Scale 75 paints and they are just smooth and cover well through the airbrush. For the fur on the coat I used Scale 75 - Blond.  For the shoulder armor I covered it in Vallejo Model Air - Steel. I had hoped that was gonna be a bit darker but it shines so bright, so I'll have to knock that down a bit.

Well ya made it through all words, so have some pictures.

Borka Kegslayer.

Well Privateer Press did it again. Another fantastic bust came out at Gen Con. This time a Troll Blood. Well I've never actually painted a troll so I figured why not? It's a bust, it's a troll, it seems like a really fun sculpt..... and Bob's yer uncle!


For those unfamiliar with the Bust here is the box art.

The resin is the normal PP stuff, its hell to remove mold lines from with anything other than file rods (those awesome things from Tamiya).  There was a good bit of flash and vent resin left over on this one. 

Sadly There was also a bit of mold slip, which I apparently did not manage to get a picture of... and a few small bubbles on the back of the head behind the quills (which will fill in just fine with primer).

I did set a pin in the shoulder for the armor, more out of habit than anything else. Ok to be honest I started drilling before thinking....

Well now it's all primed up and ready to get going. Just gotta wait for the primer to cure.

Nemo 4.0

This one is slowly coming along. Tonight I was able to put a bit of time in on the face, hair, and metals.

The skin tones are coming along, I think I may have over did the highlights a bit, so I will have to go back and blend them in so that it becomes a smooth transition. Also looks like I need to add higher highlights on the hair based on the pictures it looks to be blending in. Aside from that I'm really happy with how the metals are turning out. The P3 pig iron on the screws looks really good with the rust. I still need to highlight up and blend into black in spots. The rust and metal mix looks better than I had imagined it would at this stage.

So yea lots more to do before school starts back up in a few weeks.

Nemo part 3.

Well things are moving along with this bust. I'm still happily surprised with how smooth and almost easy it is to paint this thing. The lines are just nice and crisp, the edges are defined well. I kinda wish everything was as nice to paint as this one.

With that all out of the way, lets get down to some painting.

I started by grabbing the silly putty to mask off the face. I used a sculpting tool to push the putty away from the face and into the crevasses so that I had a clear shot to the face with the airbrush. It's almost funny how much it looks like a shroud.

After that I used Reaper Masters Series Olive Drab as the base color for the skin tone. Then moved on to a glaze of Reaper Masters Series Tanned Flesh. After that dried I hit it with the Tanned Flesh Highlight (again watered down to a glaze). 

Up next will be to darken the shaded parts of the face and bring up the highlights a bit more, but that's all for the next installment. 

Nemo update 1.

Well this guy is coming along nicely. I decided that the end goal is going to look as though Nemo has seen some better days. With that in mind I started out with a rust under coat. I'll be using the hair spray technique on this one. I feel that it gives a real feel with depth to the rust and pitting in the armor.

Here you can see that I started with a base brown and worked up different spots to almost an orange. It's important to vary the colors of your browns as it is both visually stimulating and mimics what rust actually looks like.

Next up was a heavy layer of gloss varnish. This is important. It needs to be heavy to protect the rust layer for whats to come down the road.

After the varnish had time to cure (about 8 hours) It was time to coat the model in hair spray. As I've said time and again, you must use the cheap stuff. Aqua Net all the way. Don't go and steal your significant others (or even your own) fancy smells good stuff. We need the cheap stuff that almost instantly activates when wet.

I let the hairspray dry overnight. While it does not require anywhere near that long to dry I was tires and hit the sack.

Next up it was time to base coat. The standard paint job for this sculpt and pretty much all Cygnar is blue..... I am not going blue. It's just boring to me. I wanted an almost yellowish green look for this one and started with a nice base coat. One thing to keep in mind is that the hairspray will activate with water. So when working over it you must keep moving your airbrush and build up the layers slowly. This takes time but it is worth it. With the base coat laid down It was time to apply the highlights. I basically took my base coat and added white till I was happy that there would be enough contrast and even help bring out a bit of shadow.

And not it's time to let everything dry. Next up will be paint chipping and weathering around the rust. 

General Adept Sebastian Nemo!

I think it's time to bring out this bad boy. This was the Gen Con bust that Privateer Press released last year. He's been sitting on the shelf a while. I've never done a bust from PP before, but having worked with plenty of their regular models I was a bit nervous to crack the box open. PP likes to use resin and PVC plastic. Anyone who has had the displeasure of working with PVC knows just how frustrating and time consuming it is to get mold lines and imperfections out of the material. You can't really use a hobby knife as the stuff forms long strands and gets really weak and likes to peal like an apple. Using a metal file is a no go as the stuff likes to shred. I have found that the Tamia (sic?) file sticks work well on PVC but take a while to get it filed down right.

So after all of that I opened the box.

I was quite surprised at just how clean the model was right out of the gate. 

You can see that there is very little to clean up on the front side. Just a bit of flash right under the lower belly. 

On the back between the shoulders was a vent that needed to be cut off and sanded down. Other than that there was a very slight mold line on the top of the coil sticking out above his head. 

The shoulder things are another matter. These had really bad mold lines on the under side. I can forgive this as its going to sit flush against the model (and do not really need to be added in any case). 

All in all this looks like it is going to be a really fun project to work on over the next few weeks.

As a side note. I'll be testing out the new SOTAR 2020 on this one. So bonus right? 

Busting out!

Ok silly title aside.... I got a bit of work done on the orc bust today.

The first thing to do was set up where I wanted the highlights to be, for a model this size I really just used where the light fell on the model, which made it rather easy. I used Vallejo Game Color - Pure White for this one. I figured with the greens and yellows that were to be applied I did not want to go with a rosy skin town for the highlights.

Once that was dry it was time for the first ink layer. For this I used FW Artists inks - Green. Using the airbrush set at a low psi (about 8) I started just moving it around till I got the saturation I was looking for. The hard part is to get coverage without going too dark and covering up the highlights while making sure you get full coverage on the model. 

This is what it looked like after the first green was applied. You can see that there is a bit of highlight and some dark but it's not terribly differentiated. Again I used the Pure white to touch up the highlights 

Then it was time to apply the second layer of green. I wanted something a bit lighter than just a standard green so I mixed FW- Yellow with the FW-Green and thinned it to just about a water consistency. Which leaves us here. 

After that it was time to put on the first coat of Gloss Varnish and let it cure over night. 

Oh and I did a bit of work on the hair. Which if we are honest kinda looks like a red worm right now......

Punching out of my weight class - The start of an 18cm bust!

Giorgos Tsougkouzidis is an amazing sculptor out of Greece. I happened across his models and had to have one. For those interested you can find him here:

http://www.imgrum.net/user/giorgos_tsougkouzidis/2253023608/1311791958549379051_2253023608

It took about 3 weeks for the package to arrive to the US. It was well packed and nothing was broken when it got here. The kit comes in three pieces which was quite the surprise for something this big. The mold lines and clean up were minimal as you will see in the pictures below. Just to put it into perspective there were less mold lines on this than your typical Privateer Press model, and about the same as a regular Space Marine! The casting is crisp and the detail is just astounding.

I spent about an hour getting the mold lines off and pinning the shoulder to the body. I had debated painting it separately but decided I'd rather work on the piece as a whole.

Up next is priming and getting some inks on this bad boy. This looks to be like a project that is going to take a lot of time, thank the Lord for airbrushes!

Here you can see that it's just three pieces

Even the inside of the mouth is detailed!

Just a bit of mold line on this one. 

Here is a good shot for scale. The model on the left is a standard 28mm model.

And here is is with the shoulder attached. You can see that it's balanced really well.