And its done...!

Painting 10mm models was quite a new experience for me and despite a few issues along the way, I am really quite pleased with the way this little scene turned out. I had a few learning experiences along the way - such as white is really tricky and painting long smooth gradients is very difficult without an airbrush! If you want to see the build of this vignette or any other Dropzone Commander posts, then follow this link.

More pics... getting there slowly but surely! I have a deadline for the end of the week, but fret not, the dropship is pretty much done, just needs some weathering, and the legs of walker number two are at a similar stage, so its not going to be a problem.

I intend to add some more foliage of different types to the cliff face - maybe some to represent small trees. I just need to work out how to effectively apply chipping to 10mm figures... very small bits of sponge on the end of a cocktail stick I guess!

Right the weekend has passed, far too quickly as usual, and here I am back again!

As promised, here are some more photos of the diorama as it is now. I ended up spending a lot of time faffing with the colours of the cliff face as it seemed to seem far too blue against the brassiness of the door. It goes to show how black paint really isn't true black - the cliff had been painted in a mix of black and white paint!

This is a really quick mobile phone photo... The colour is shot to pieces on the cliff face, but it gives you quite a nice view of the contrast between the Enyo siege walker and the natural surroundings. The colour of the previous photo was much more accurate... this one has a strange green cast over it - the back wall should be yellow.

I will try and get some decent photos this weekend with the troopers attached and hopefully the groundwork almost complete!

Just a quick update on my Dropzone Commander project.

Last weekend I started to slap some paint onto the base. I have blocked in the main shadows/highlights on the cliff face and started to work on the huge ornate and now brass door. There is going to be some serious weathering and verdigris on the door and scorch-marks on the surrounding cliff.

With the Crystal Brush over, and now that I am back in the UK, I thought it was about time I posted up the completed photos of my diorama! The diorama category was ridiculously well attended at the competition, and I unfortunately didnt manage to place in the top three with this.... however, there was another category which looked at all the models entered into the whole competition focussed purely on narrative, and I was fortunate enough to win a Bronze in that category!

Sharro is nearly complete now (yay!), but these photos have shown me a few areas which need a little more work (namely the left side of the face as we look at it and a few other things like her shoes). I have kept the orange and white scheme (it makes a change for me not to reinvent the model half way through with this project...!).

I have also just realised her hand in the air is supposed to be a glove - I thought it was just a poor cast. Might have to do something about that... and the forearm on the other hand is covered by an arm band too... And her eye-brows look huuuuuge in the pics - I thing some of that is the shadow from her brow, but it is something which needs to be fixed!

A quick update!

Decals have now been added to the base... just a few to add a little interest, but not too many to be overwhelming. I have also started to add some rust spots, oil stains etc and been adding very thin washes of colour to subtly change some of the tones. Next will be to finalise where everything should be positioned and drill some holes for the pins *gulp*

Nothing like a Commodores quote to start off a blog post, but I wanted to share the most recent changes to the McVey diorama I am working on. Been painting some incidental details for the piece and slowly pulling the rest of the base together.

The colours are really coming together now - its ended up a grey, black and yellow scheme which compliments the models rather nicely!

Take a look...

Sometimes you get to a point in a build where someone points something out and you have a bit of a 'moment' and you realise you may have gone down the wrong avenue. This was one of those moments...! It was brought to my attention that the colourful background was really competing for pride of place against the miniatures themselves, which was certainly not what I wanted.

I asked around a bit for more opinions and I came to the decision that something needed to be done. So over the weekend, I had a marathon session to flip the 'reset switch' and lay down some new base colours for the scene.

So I have really started to get some colours down on the scene itself now.

Ignore the mess, I made the schoolboy error of painting the pipework (as they were metallic) BEFORE painting the wall behind. The pipes will be totally redone :P The following photos should give you an idea of my colour scheme. I am hoping it will contrast nicely with the pinky yellow of the strain as well as the orange accents on Sharro.

The yellow stripe on the corner will be yellow and black hazard stripes, and these will feature in a number of other areas too. The red stripe will follow through all the way round the scene. I am currently thinking about using a mid grey for the door.


In other news, we have actually hit 40 followers! Thanks for your interest guys :)

Layers and layers of green over a black undercoat.... why do i do it to myself? I reckon it would have been much easier with an airbrush, but ho-hum!

It's going through the 'messy' stage at the moment... Its going to have a two-toned wall with green at the bottom (nowhere near this saturated by the time I am finished) and a light coloured two-thirds at the top.

At the moment this is a neutral grey but I am more and more tempted to change it to a light khaki brown. I will weather the green in one area  to help me decide.

Ok, I think I'm at a point where I can start to paint the base!

It feels like a real milestone, and I am looking forward to tackling it. I think I will do it next, even though Sharro and the revenants aren't 100% complete as I can then make sure all of the components come together cohesively.

Good evening campers!

Started painting Sharro today... lovely little mini, and very different from the other two models I have painted for this scene. To contrast with the gribbliness of the Strain I have tried to keep this girl really clean and sharp, and also gone for orange as the accent colour rather than the blue of the boys.

So, the weekend brought more progress on my diorama. The scene itself is pretty much done (more about that in a moment), and the two Revenants are coming along nicely. I have spent a fair bit of time on the flesh tones of the first one I painted to make it match the other one more closely, and the trousers of the second one to  match those of the first!

Blimey.... February already??

Flesh is done! Made a bit of a faux pas with the trouser colour, but that can be changed... I am thinking of making it blue and yellow like the first revenant I painted. The grey here seems too desaturated for the rest of the model throwing it out of balance. It almost makes it look like I just haven't painted the trousers at all...

Please endulge me, I need to vent a touch of frustration at the trouble I am having with the third model for my diorama... In stark contrast to the two chunky cyber-zombies, my third protagonist in my vignette is a delicate girly packing a couple of sub-machine guns. Should be a nice contrast to the gnarly bad-guys and be a different POV for the scene.

So all is good with the world, right? Not quite... read on for my tale of woe

After the previous attempt, I decided to try something a little different... in fact the reverse of what I did last time. Colour first and then shade!

Toosh reminded me of a really lovely Nurgle Demon painted by Bohun where he really went to town on the colour (he was determined to move away from the stereotypical green Great Unclean One). Using that as inspiration I have gone for oranges and purples for the wounds over a yellow ochre base. So far I am still on the 'colour' stage, but it is already looking much more interesting (to me at least). What do you think?

Well, sometimes in the pursuit of that next technique/style you have seen on t'interweb you sometimes leave casualties in the field... That was me this weekend...

I had got myself into a position where I wanted to really go to town on painting models for my small vignette this weekend, so I spent one of my few remaining annual leave days on a day off on friday. The intent was to get to a point by the end of the day where the Strain Revenant that I had prepped was painted. This, however did not really go according to plan...

As I wanted quite a lot of lividity to all the wounds on the revenant, I decided that it would be best to paint in almost a greyscale and then add all the colour afterwards. This may have been a mistake as the glazes I used didnt really sit well over the top of the shading and I didnt get the effect I was looking for. It ended up rather 'muddy' and not as neat as I had hoped.

I will start at the end for anyone who just wants to see where I finished.... after the break I will go into more detail about what I did. This is the revenant NOW: