From the depths of the painting queue, Cthulhu rises!

Hi All,

  Well I finished that huge Cthulhu model last night so I thought I'd share my painting "notebook" of the process.

  I started with a plan.

I decided to use this picture as a reference and ran it through the adobe color custom palette thing to get an idea of the colors. I ended up skipping on the purples and blues, but that was mostly a time issue. Also I've done purple tentacles a couple of times already.

So here he is dry fit with Abdul Goldberg for scale. Next were some shennanigans with various putties.

I used a 50/50 mix of green stuff and milliput yellow until it got unworkable. I then tried to finish it up with Tamiya.

DO NOT use Tamiya putty on bones. It is worthless.

After chipping off the worst of the flaky Tamiya I just used straight up green stuff to salvage the mess.

Spray paint.

Brush on more paint because the spray paint feels tacky and leaves a powdery residue on your hands when you pick it up.

Slather it in a black ink wash to preshade and further try to seal things down.

I got the idea to do all the belly, under arm inner leg stuff the lightest color.

I wanted to transition but the edges were super hard. One issue with craft paint is that some are super viscous. Getting them to flow but also cover was a constant battle. Each color probably got 3 coats.

In the thumbnail i thought this might show the stippling of the transition layer, but it just seems to be a different angle of the last shot.

Decide that you're going to need a beer to get this @#$&ing thing finished. (Four Peaks Hop Knot for scale) Decide that three beers was maybe one too many to efficiently paint.

This picture shows the transition stippling on the belly and a little on the spine. Start stippling Zinc on the head, hate it and then go for it with charcoal all over using a size 2 brush.

Paint in the veins and eyes, then dry brush the gray parts. Then slather the whole thing in "grunge" wash. (4 parts Raw Umber, 2 parts Burnt Umber, 1 part Black ink) This batch of was is a little dark and I accidentally let it pool in weird places, but I think it got the look of being dredged from the depths.

One more shot to try and show the spots etc. I need to take some "studio" shots of these latest figures. After I varnish them of course.

Anyway, thanks for looking. If you have one of these bad boys I'd love to see how you paint him. Who knows he may even make it to Oldhammer weekend.

Paint Table Saturday - 135 Orcs, Cthulhu and Chaos

Hi All,

Busy with the last regular meet of track season, but I did get some figures washed and a little bit done on the orcs.

A little bit of work on these but still way too late. I need to push harder on these because I've signed on for a couple more competitions (maybe too strong a word) on Facebook.

For the Bazaar of Crooked Wonders group's "Big Things" comp. I'm doing a Reaper Cthulhu. He's a big bastard.

Foe Herohammer International I'm doing a Tzeentch themed Chaos Army. Here's a unit of 4 Chaos Warriors plus Champion. I finally got the majority of the paint off the Marauder figure on the right using Krud Kutter Graffiti remover. It was fairly cheap at home depot ~$7 and took off the paint in 5 - 10 minutes. I can't decide if I'm going to change out the shield or flatten his shield boss. My original intent was to try to recreate the original scheme my brother tried but couldn't execute.

Anyway, I need to have all this completed this month. Hmm.

Lastly, I processed these in Adobe Lightroom and added a graphic watermark. Just trying some things out. Any thoughts?

Otherworld Warlock

Hi All,

Finally finished another figure.

I decided to try my hand at blending my layers more so it was 3-4 colors blended between each other to bridge the gap. I think I blew it on the robe by being to hasty with the final highlight.

Similarly the flesh doesn't have enough contrast. It almost looks like I just color blocked it in the highlight color. I'm not sure if the blending itself is wrong or if I just slopped the final highlight over the previous layers.

I like how the Bronze mask came out and the ebony staff. I'm particularly happy with the Emerald eyes I painted on. It was a new Reaper metallic paint. Look for it more when i come back around to High Elves in the future.

And I guess I should mention that this is part of a themed thing for a Facebook Group. The Bazaar of Crooked Wonders.

Welcome to new follower Michael Dunnage. He doesn't have a blog listed and was put at the bottom of the list because he doesn't have an avatar picture. Friend Connect is also a little buggy today and I had trouble getting anything but the first page of followers to display.

I'm also in the process of sending off figures to Stevo of Stevo's Mini Soldiers and Orcyboy(Tartar Sauce) of Old Orcs Never Die because I read on their blogs or had a comment back that they could use some figures that are sitting in my leadpile.

People have given me things over the years and I really enjoy paying it forward. I also don't  see the point of holding on to figures that I've had for years and don't see myself ever using or had for a short time and don't have any real attachment to other than to horde.

Anyway, I'm converting another figure and thinking about how I want to paint some others. I need to get on finishing those Boar Boyz for Don. They've been in my possession way too long.

Cheers.