The big one!

Spring break has arrived, and that means I have time to paint! Time to try and get 6 months of painting done in the next 5 days.

So let's start things off right with the third and largest piece of terrain. I went with a stucco look on this one which I think will be a great contrast to the grey stone on the other pieces.

One thing that was a departure from my normal painting on this one was that I got to try out Scale 75 inks. I gotta say, I love em. They blend smoothly into the paints and the visocity is spot on my needs. I was able to blend P3 Menoth White, and a brown Scale 75 ink to make the stucco look just about right. 

So here are the pics. Hopefully, I'll have a bunch more at the end of the week. 

(Model in the picture is for scale on this one). 

MOAR Terrain!

Lord help me I like painting buildings now. Not sure why, maybe it's the jump from miniatures and it's such a different type of painting that it's been apealing in a form of new expression? Perhaps it's the desire to not have to leave my house to play games on nice boards covered in nice terrain pieces with fully painted armies?

Either way.... Here is the latest block of resin I've painted up from Table Top World. I belive this is the humble Cottage II. It was a lot of fun, I tried to do a bit of OSL coming from the window onto the sack of some sort of fruit things. I think it came out well. I'm not gonna list the paints used, as they are the same as the last buliding I did (so if you are that interest just keep scrolling down the screen and you will find it).

Up next is the BIG ONE. So stay tuned.....

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.

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 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. 

The new Behemoth!

Well Privateer Press actually managed to really impress me with an updated version of a classic model. The old Behemoth was clunky and top heavy with tiny legs (think body builder who skips leg day). When the new model came out I was a bit skeptical of replacing my already bought and painted version, however fate intervened and my old model decided that even with pins it was time for the metal twigs it called legs to let go.

So here we are with the new and improved Big B. I love the way it protrudes bulk. They really nailed it on the head with the proportions and really looks menacing. When I think of a giant stompy robot in a steampunk setting this is most definitely what my mind goes to.

Without further ado I give you my version of the Behemoth (also scroll through the pics for a look at the old one).

And as mentioned above here is my old one. Please note this is before I had a light box or a real camera or really knew what I was doing when painting.

A wild post appears!

Let me start off with a BIG apology. It's been about 5 months since my last post, and for that I am truly sorry. I can give you all kinds of excuses but hey I'm back and I have all summer to post pictures and paint models. So let the shenanigans begin.

To start, here is the Khador Conquest. I did this in my normal Inks first style. It was a bit more of a challenge as the larger the model the more light has to "hit" it. It took a few tries to get the shading and highlights to where I was happy with them. Other than that a large model like this is pretty much the same. Make sure your paint is thin and work in coats.

Then for run I did up an older metal Khador Destroyer for fun. I did this one in about 2 hours. Nothing special just wanted a quick project to work on in a color other than red. 

Up next was the Khador Grolar. I tried something different and went with a high contrast between the Red and bright Green. I like it. If you look carefully at the shield on the right arm you will notice some purple and blue inks in an attempt to make the gold look a bit more tarnished. 

Some much needed Red.

Hey there folks. I got a bit of time tonight to work on the bust. I was able to start on the red metallic of the shoulder armor. I started by masking off the skin with Silly Putty. That might sound weird but it's a fantastic way to mask, it does not leave any residue and is really easy to get into cracks and crevasse. More importantly it is easy to remove with no issues.

I started with Vallejo Model Air - Steel which is a bit bright for what I normally use but for this I want it to stick out a bit more before bringing it down with glazes later. Once that was dry I used P3 - Red ink and did a nice fine layer leaving most of the metallic shine.

Then it was time for the gloss coat to seal in the freshness.

I had a bit more time so I spent the next 2 hours building this guy. It's the latest large model for Khador from Privateer Press and is also totally in hard plastic on sprue. Which was nice but a heck of a lot of pieces for one large model.

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......