Heroes, Cthulhu and my son's painting

So I managed to get my entry in to Curt on time, but the more I look at it the more disappointed I am. You of course can read all about it here. Voting is by comment only now, so it is possible I will get fewer than the one or two votes I usually get. Thanks, by the way, to whom ever has voted for me. I am under no illusions that I am any where near the caliber of the other participants, but it is nice that someone appreciates my take on the subjects. Any how, here is what I wrote to Curt.

"A dude and his mutt. In the wasteland some times your only friend is mans best friend. The Stranger and Max the dog are again from Aberrant's Warlands range here. These were both white metal and the only trouble I had was with cutting them off their slotta base tabs. The dog's rear right leg almost broke off and was not level with the rest. So I went through my bag of rocks and found one that would work on the base.

Again an embarrassingly simple paint job, once I decided on my palette. For the dog I wanted to try and capture the look of the dog from the movies. I had always thought it was a dingo, what did I know, but apparently the breed is a blue heeler. Primed black, camel belly, gray dry brush. Some washes and a little more dry brushing and we're done. I did a little with the eyes and mouth, but nothing to write home about.

For the Stranger the hardest part was to not do him in the iconic all black. The jacket and boots I would leave black but I decided to go with Navy blue pants and brown leather holsters. I also tried the rust technique on the various pads and plates spread around on his body. My main aim is to try and get some visual interest and not just paint it black and drybrush that and call it a day. I'm not real happy with my work on his flesh. I tried to mix up my own wash, but it's too subtle.

Well anyway that's an awful lot of text for very little work. I hope you enjoy the nostalgia of these figures as I do."

You'll note that, like a bonehead, I forgot to mention that the figure were 1/72 (20mm) scale. I also made the faux pas of sending my photos in at 300dpi, although they were the legal 1000px across the top. I'll be paying more attention to this in the future. Also for some reason my entry is listed as by ScottS. I'll let him know shortly.

What I really don't like about the stranger figure is the fact that I couldn't do a good wash to get the shading I wanted. I'm sick of GW Flesh wash,  and I mixed up some new ink washes a la Les Bursley, but didn't like the flesh color I achieved. Too light so it was more of a highlight in the recesses. I then made what I thought was my grunge wash, a mixture of the Raw Umber, Burnt Umber and Black washes I had made previously. It ended up too subtle so we are left with what you see.

I'm still beavering away at the figures for the Talomir game. Another report is up on Talomir Tales here in which Ed himself plays out a battle between Treyine and Tropilium. I feel like I'm making good progress on these and should have them table top ready soon.

Before I forget I also want to welcome new follower Mattias Darrow of Amateur Hour a blog where he displays his talents. Not so amateur in my humble opinion. He seems to have only 12 followers right now, which is criminal given his talent. Check him out, you won't be disappointed.

Imagine my delight when I saw this drawn by my very own little cultist.

He is also becoming a little painter. He asked me if he could paint some skeletons so I gave him some figures, paints and ink wash and taught him how to dry brush. The result is this.

Cheers!