Paint Table Saturday 194 - Bbblllggddp and Bob

Hi All,

I keep on hoping to post more than once a week, but right now it's all I can manage. It was week 3 of the #BeerMaW challenge. I figured I could do these two for this week.

Bbblllggddp and Bob are old citadel Fishmen that are currently sold by Wargames Foundry here. The idea was to paint them up in basic colors with orange spots, like koi or oscar type fish. I maybe went a little too simple with them, but I wanted them to not be super fussy.

I wanted to show you guys this picture, the first one I took, because it illustrates the problem that I see in a lot of miniature photography. Absolutely everything in this photo is the same as the one above except for one thing. The light spot in the background is behind the figures in this shot. The problem with this photo is that the light background behind the figures has made them appear dark as the camera tries to compensate. So many people use a white background and then don't touch up their photos to fix this darkening. But I digress.

All blacks, greys and "whites" used.

Blue's for the belts, straps and gloves. Red for the eyes. Dark brown wash for all over.

Two varieties of Burnt Orange for the spots.

Brown, reds and tans for the maw and teeth.

Metallics used.

For the next week I'm going to try and finish some started figures.

I may not do these ones yet because...

I'm over a year now on finishing these for Curt and Dave B.

Wish me luck, and thanks for looking.

Paint Table Saturday 193 - Philomena Volapuk

Hi All,

Seems like a lot of stuff going on in the background but not much to show for it. I did, however, manage to just finish another figure for the Miniature a Week challenge.

Philomena Volapuk

I kept with the concept of her being a cyborg zombie and I think it works ok. The baby I painted up in my genestealer hybrid flesh scheme. I was going to do him with a harlequin patterned onsie, but it quickly got  unmanageable to finish today so I scrapped it.

Since I had him handy I thought I'd take a family portrait of the Volapuks.

Next up I think I'll be painting Bbblllggddp and Bob. I feel like they may go fast. The paint scheme should be a tad simpler I'm thinking Koi/ Oscar type coloration.

So for the paint notebook portion we have undead skin and tanned skin triads.

Philomena's Hair.

The gold and Silver colors used. I went with mid and highlight for the gold this time.

Baby accent reds, fur trim, robe.

My grey triad for the bases, also the top two for the "white" areas. Purples for the cloak and jewels.

Washes for the metallics, cloak, robes and fur/ruff. The purple was used on the baby skin before mids and highlights were reapplied.

Just a quick shot of the paint/photo desk. Lights a little farther away help. One of these days I'll get set up to use my DSLR again. The phone works ok if you don't get impatient. Sorry about the list to port.

Later.

Paint Table Saturday 192 - Balthazar and Philomena Volapuk

Hi All,

Just a quick post to show what I completed last week and will be painting this week.
 I decided to try and do the Beer Phase Miniature a Week challenge (#BeerMaW).

Since I have a bunch of Colony 87 figures primed, and I've been on a Necromunda/Shadow War kick, I thought I'd go with those.

So I finished ole Balthazar here yesterday. This is a different picture than the one I posted to facebook. The lighting is more natural and I just left the camera on auto. I had always intended to do my Space Nobles with Vampiric flesh tones, but reading Whiskey Priest's post here really brought it home for me.

Next I'll be doing Balthazar's wife, Philomena. I have the vague idea that she is some kind of cybernetic zombie. Maybe I'll bring out the new Zombie flesh triad.

So I used white with a wash of grey for the boots, straps and trim. Ultramarine for the cloak and pants.

Walnut for the staff and as a shade mixture and wash for the fur. Intense brown as the fur base and then drybrush with blackened brown and intense brown. Bronze and Gold for the jewelry.

Vampiric flesh for the flesh. Palomino Gold with a wash of Chestnut gold for the braid and fringe. I probably could have gone darker.

Red triad for the cloak detail. Grass green for the jewels with Walnut and white mixed in to make the shade and highlight. Carnage red for the Vampire eye effect.

Sapphire Blue and Sky Blue for the hair. Pink Horror and Titillating (?) Pink in mixes and washes for the jacket.

There you have it.

Painting Notebook - Genestealer Kill Team Leader

Hi All,

I haven't done one of these notebook posts in awhile and I wanted to remember how I painted this little guy.

He's my Genestealer Cult Kill Team Leader for Shadow War : Armageddon. The leader can have a power pick or power maul, so there you have it. I still need to paint the eyes, but he'smore or less done.

My sci-fi ash waste color combo, I think. Actually the mid color is probably darker and the mid I used here may be the lightest instead of the drizzle. That's the problem with not writing things down.

Metallics. As usual probably way too many for one model, but why use one when you can use seven? I forgot to include the Walnut Brown for his gun stock. I may also add a highlight to it.

Clothing. The color scheme is supposed to conjure up the fiery comet of salvation streaking across the sky. So Yellow, Orange and Red but muted ones.

Lastly we have flesh and chitin. I sort of followed GW's video tutorial here in that I put a purple ink wash over the shadow tone of the skin triad and then tried to layer on the highlights. Still a little rough in my layering. Nothing painting a few hundred more models won't fix. I'm not sure that the Reaper Blue Triad I picked really matches the genestealer blue recipe from GW. I might try mixing a little whit into the Ashen Blue to lighten it up. The Sky Blue was a spot color on the wires of the Power Pick. Perhaps last time I painted wires I used Sapphire Blue.

I'm also thinking about ordering some game tokens from Litko. Need to do it soon. I also need to check to see if I have all the templates and dice I need. I suspect I do.

Thanks for looking.

A slight complication with Dormur

Hi All,

So a little wrinkle in my plans to paint the Reaper 25th Anniversary figure of Dormur for the Imperial Outpost painting competition.

I found out yesterday that we were only allowed to use 8 colors. At first I freaked out. I had already put three base colors on and had about 20 colors out on the table. I've been using the Reaper Triad system more and more and even using craft paint shades as triads. This approach obviously wasn't going to work.

At first I though about not bothering to enter the figure. I don't expect to win, but if my primary objective of getting more involved in the local store leaves me without key information as to the rules of the contest, there seems to be little point in participating.

Somebody from the store (the owner?) replied to my question about the rules and apologized. There was some talk of getting my entry fee back, but I have the figure and the cost wasn't exorbitant. He mentioned going oldschool and using black and white to mix up shades and highlight. I was already considering grayscale and other options so I decided to have a think and a google search about it.

So I found this thread on the Reaper forums. Guy painted a whole figure with 3 colors, looks pretty good. I also re-found this PDF from yaktribe of using washes to paint figures. I think he used about 7 washes and one paint.

So here's Dormur. Flesh is Bronzed Shadow 09259, Cloak is Uniform Brown 09127, Ghostly Apparitions is Sky Blue 09018. The Sky Blue is the only one that is a highlight of the triad, the rest are the shades of their triad. So I did a test in my notebook of mixing Walnut Brown 09136 and Pure White09039 to get he shades and highlights. This would give me three more colors to work with.

Repeat of the picture from last post, showing colors used.

Sorry for the lighting, just a quick snap at the breakfast table. The center (more square) patch is the base color and then sloppy blends with Walnut to the left and White to the Right. I'll have to break out the wet palette to even attempt to do this right, but I'm feeling more positive about challenging myself to do this.

Wish me luck.

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.

Zombiecide, more putty and a little painting.

Hi All,

Just thought I'd share what's going on.

We made it through the intro scenario, the zombies were worrisome. I got Clovis killed right before the end. The last room had 4 zombies in it. He had three dice to attack and missed all three. Was shredded by the zombies.

The second game was over quick. The necromancer and Abomination came out in the first two turns. Baldric took care of the Necromancer with a mana blast and Ann and Clovis burned the abomination with Dragon Bile. we were fortunate to find the bile and a torch pretty easily. I did wonder if we could use the inferno or fireball spells to ignite the bile.

Moebius Sphincter is coming along, I've got some ideas for working up his armor.

I fixed the gaps on the left arm and wings. It's still too hot outside to prime, so I'll do it in the morning.

I've also started mailing out the t-shirts.

Thanks for looking.