Lead and Paint

Ok, so I was trying to hold off till I had more of these guys painted, but I have yet to get round to the rest, so I'll hold off on the big post, and get these pics out there. This is the HMG for the French Legionnaires for Dystopian Legions. I'm pretty happy with them. Let me know what you think.



Hopefully there'll be more of these guys soon, with the rest of the Unit and the Lieutenant to finish.

I had a particularly productive weekend in painting terms, finishing two minis!

This is the third manhunter mini I have painted, and second one completed (I'll get round to finishing the other soon, promise). This one is to represent "Ulf the Finger-Eater", my hero model for the current PP leauge at my FLGS. His name being taken from a children's book the girls love.

The first one I painted, in a more traditional brown scheme, can be found here. That one is also a good point of reference for the original axes.

The conversion on this guy is rather light. He has gained some bear traps, to represent his Bear Hunter ability, a medal, to represent Medal of Honour, and some new axes, to represent Hooked Blades.


New Axes

Bear trap

Medal

And then the painted version...





The axes are extras from the Devil Dog unit. The bear trap is from Yuri the Axe, and the medal is a decoration from the shaft of a GW Dwarven axe I bought as a possible conversion for the axes, but in the end didn't use.

The base is a scratch built, with wood chips and real lichen, which is a pain to paint, as it's so flexible. I may have to put a layer of varnish over its roots to fix it better in place.The arrows are just to show he's a hard-ass!

Another point for my league score, and once my hero buys the right advancements to go with his conversions, that'll be another 3 points. Onwards and upwards.

Another one of those minis that's been sitting around for a loooooong time with out more than an undercoat to keep them warm, Gorman is a very old mini for Warmachine. I think he's even one of the first wave of minis.

In a recent game versus Khador, I was re-initiated in the ways of Gorman, and the use of "Black Oil", one of his signature abilities. I fielded him in my forst league game, and he managed to pull ff the same ability for me, allowing me to get a caster kill (in concert with Eiryss, another first wave and still useful model, I think she'll be getting a coat of paint soon too).

Going back to my Khador, has also meant going back to a lot of the Mercs I bought to go with them, mainly becasuse they won't run with my Highborne army. So I have been rediscovering a whole other set of minis I haven't used in a long time, and more importantly, having fun with them.



So, that's 1 more point towards my score in the league.

After a Christmas break where I was pretty busy painting, What motivation I had to get on with my self inflicted Khador Caster Challenge went by the wayside after completing MacBeth. However, I forced through it, and with a couple of false starts, this evening I put the finishing touches to the first of my 'casters for the year of 2015.

With that, I present to you, Koldun Commander Aleksandra Zerkova.




 
The picture quality is down due to the batteries running out on my camera, so these are taken with my phone, hence the strange stripy effect in the background.

Her wand and sword have also had a coat of luminescent paint, as I did with the Old Witch. Again, there is no way this will ever be seen in regular play, but I know it's there.

I'm happy with some parts of the mini, but I feel I rushed things a little at the end, so her boots and hat are a little scrappy, but I am very happy with her face and cloak. My technique is on the up, if not all the way there yet. The glowing effect on her sword need a lot of work though, I think I need more contrast in the shadows to bring out the lighter parts. Maybe with a touch of white here and there to really make it pop. I tried to use the same ink effects as on the wand, but it is a completely different surface, so requires some modification to the mix.

I'll maybe make those little adjustments whilst working on another caster next month. I think Irusk has made his way to the front of the queue, as he's quite a simple miniature really. Poor Sorscha keeps getting bumped down the list, despite being my first.

Casters Painted: 2
The Old Witch and ScrapJack
Zerkova  

Casters to Paint: 9
pButcher (to be based)
eButcher
pIrusk
eIrusk
pSorscha
eSorscha
Strakov
pVlad (variant)
eVlad

This brings me one step closer to allowing myself to by The Butcher Unleashed.

This month's Colore ton Monde challenge done and dusted. What better representation of a chief or leader than the Rex Pictorium King of Alba and Mormaer of Moray, MacBeth. This version of him is for the Scots faction for Saga, as produced by North Star.

This guy is certainly imposing enough, he's huge. He is much more in line with my Dystopian Legion 32mm minis than any heroic 28mm figs I have. As can be seen by the fact he doesn't look out of place on a 40mm base. I don't know if this is the way the rest of this range are, or just the leaders.


I'm very happy with the face. I think the Masterclass has meant that I have levelled up in that regard. The shield was copied from one here. I'm not 100% pleased with the freehand, but it'll look okay at arms length. Lets face it, free hand is not my forte, never mind trying to replicate Celtic knot-work.

There's a great post on MacBeth to be found on the Saga Tapestry Blog. I'm not sure that I'll be buying into Saga in the immediate future, as I'm getting very much into Lion Rampant, but more on that in an upcoming post.

Onwards to my own challenge with the time remaining in January.

Day two of the Montreal Masterclass was yesterday, and I'll both done in, and wanting more. I'm super motivated to keep on going with the techniques I learned there, and to finish the models I started.
Another full day of learning, concentrating and soaking in all I can about painting techniques wiped me out, but there was so much information passed on by the wonderful Meg Maples that I'm still mentally digesting it this evening.

Using the same two brush blending, with a bit of glazing added in, we looked at skin tones hair and fur (with a side serving of feathers, but that tutorial can be found here) and OSL (Object source lighting), which, with the two brush blending and the right choice of paint, was made to look extremely easy. the other thing we worked on were eyes. The bane of my painting life these last 20 years or more, finally I have a technique that works, and works very well. I must admit I had seen tutorials for this way of doing eyes before, but it makes a huge difference to see it being done on front of you. She also spoke of doing freehand and water effects using UHU glue. Like I said, there was a lot of information to take in!

Here is the final condition of the minis I did some painting on over the weekend. As you can see, none are actually finished.

Elf King

This is a Reaper mini that I picked up for a WFB Wood Elf army. He had a little bit of everything we were practising at the weekend, so he has had a fair bit of work done on him. I'm not so happy with the metallics, but I do like his cloak. His hair was not painted by me, but by Meg, as an example of what to do (the hair on all the minis she brought was already done), so I can claim no credit for that. It was not painted to completion by her, she would continue it if it were her mini, but I didn't have the mojo to finish it. I did get into the right way of doing hair on the pink hair of the KoS below. I will be using his hawk to try painting feathers soon.
Alexia

 

I'm very happy with the metallics on Alexia's sword. The deepest shade on there is coal Black with Umbral Umber, which looks almost black in the recesses. I have yet to have a go at using glazes on metals as was also suggested in the class.

Her eyes were a different matter. I restarted them 3 times. In the end I gave up (for now?) and painted her eyes in an inverse of the taught technique. Giving her a somewhat soulless look, which is fitting for her, if not exactly of Masterclass level.

VASA Knight(s) of the void.

I had two of these exceptional miniatures on the go at the weekend. This one I managed to do the eye and the hair to my satisfaction. I started on the body, but that may have to wait. I will be using her to do OSL on the cybernetic eye as well. Meg used the second of these minis to show how to do the OSL (she was running out of minis to show things on by the end of the session, so borrowed ours), and that is shown below.

As a shout out to those who I spoke to at the event that have a blog,  may I point you towards The Amazing Captain Spud, (his words, not mine) and to Yaum la Machine. Both great guys and exceptional painters whom I learned from too (as well as the many others I spoke to who either have no blog, or I am unaware of their blogs)

I had a great time over the weekend, and I learned a lot! I also broke out the sable brushes on the second day (for the eyes) and oh my, how they make a difference.  I'm a little bit in love with these little darlings now!

Finally: note to self, buy more Sanguine Base and Coal Black. They work on everything!

This weekend in Montreal saw the last Masterclass to be held by Meg Maples in North America before she moves over to Australia. As a Christmas gift to me from my family, I went along. This was my first painting class of any kind, and I didn't know what to expect in terms of how many minis I would need, how many minis I would get through.

We were given a list of things we would need to bring, and a list of techniques we would try to get through. The first day started off with two brush blending. Before the class, I was aware of the existence of this technique, but that was about all. After a day of doing pretty much nothing bu that (the techniques was explained first for the very good reason that it was the basis of the other parts of the class) I think I'm staring to get the hang of it.




This mini was one where I was using the two brush blending technique to work on the metalllics. Hence all the work on the sword. I am happy with the way it turned out,  but the pictures do not do it justice, I promise better pictures after the second par of the course tomorrow.

So, I am back home with sore shoulders from hunching over under my lamp all day, and a sore head from concentrating so hard. I have never spent such a long time in one sitting painting before, and it was hard work, but the time flew past very quickly indeed. I have learned a lot, including that I need to learn more about colour theory. In addition to the technique of two brush blending, which I will not go into here, as that's what youtube is for, I learned that to get proper shading, you need to go darker than you think. For example, with the elf king's cloak in the first image, I initially went with a darker green, as per normal colour triads, but it just didn't show up at all. I soon plumped for Coal Black (P3), a dark purple/green black, which turned out to be perfect. I used this as a means of darkening pretty much all the shadows from then on. Mixing the Coal Black with an Umbral Umber (P3) gave the darkest shading on the metals too, looking like a proper black at the deepest parts of the shadows, whilst still maintaining an natural looks. I think I'll be using much more of this colour.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, as there is a whole lot more to learn, and I'm really excited to get these minis finished.