Ruminations on the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge

Well my first time participating in Curt's illustrious event went about as well as could be expected. I experienced the gamut of emotions; excitement, despair, frustration and anxiety but overall it was a positive experience.

If you want to get the perspective of a champion, check out Loki's post mortem here.

Lessons learned:

1. Have a plan. I followed Andrew's lead and made a list and planned it all out. It quickly fell apart as I dawdled and had to scramble to get in my first themed entry. I never really recovered as I seemed to always be up against the next themed deadline.

2. Be flexible. I am a fairly dogmatic person, I like to do things in a certain order. Allow yourself to improvise and don't get locked into an idea that means not meeting the deadline. I probably could have had my last stand/ entry figures as one submission if I had just let go of my original last stand idea.

3. Work in batches. I think Andrew had it right when he said he worked on large projects 3 units at a time. I personally got bogged down in groups that were too big for me. At this point I think 4 or 5 figures is the sweet spot for me.

4. Get things prepped before the challenge. A lot of my themed entries were completely fresh/ on the sprue before I got to work on them during the challenge. Don't do that to yourself.

5. Don' be afraid to go for it. I held myself back quite a bit as  I was afraid of messing things up and thus not be able to submit them. In the interim I plan to try and improve and expand my technique so that it won't be so much flying blind in the future.

And that about sums it up.

Here's a few shots of the stuff I didn't finish that will be done in short order when I get back from my trip.

Just need the teeth painted , shields touched up and glued on. Then varnish and flocking.

My Cross of Iron themed entry figure group. Need to sculpt a tiny bit.

My aborted last stand theme project. I'm still going to try grayscale. It seemed original at the time.

This will be scheduled while I'm in flight.

This week in Talomir #8

Over at Talomir Tales we have the battle fought by Stygustan and Treyine on St. Lindorf's day. Any resemblance between St. Lindorf and St. Patrick is purely coincidental. You can read about it here.

Leaving for London tomorrow. I'm mostly packed and just have a few things left to sort out. I'm not sure if I'll have time to schedule some posts, or post on the fly. But I'll try.

I did the comic with Comic Life 3. In the past I have used GIMP. I think it was quicker and easier overall, but I still have a lot to learn and I think that some of the choices I made may not have been the best. Please let me know if you have any constructive criticism. One of the things I'm still trying to learn is when to take a picture that tells the story I want to tell.

Cheers.

Look at me, another entry for the challenge.

I'm increasing my output, finally, but it's too little too late to reach my goal. Any how here's what I wrote to Curt.

I present to you Lord De La Warre of Treyine and his men. To create some interest in my red and white theme I broke it up into solid red, half red and white and quartered red and white. I figured that this would represent each of the knights and their retinues. As with the previous entry these are a mixture of Zvezda English Infantry of the 100 Years War, Miniart German Knights, Airfix Robin Hood and Strelets Military Order Warriors. They are all 1/72 (20mm) scale plastics.

All the same painting techniques, but this time only Vallejo matte varnish at the end. I feel like it dulled the metal a tad too much and it almost looks like NMM. Still flailing around, but why change how I work now. I'm just glad to get another batch done. It only took me the whole competition to do it.

There is nothing particularly special about the two footmen, I just hid them on the work bench and found them after I'd photographed the main group.

You can see the entry and a few more pictures on Curt's blog here.

I've painted myself into a corner, in as much as I have a lot of figures left to do for the final themed round plus my entry figure. Better get started.

Welcomes, whining and Leia's Metal Bikini

Hi All,

  Last post I forgot to welcome two new followers to the blog:

ChicoDaSatanic of Oldhammer on a Budget. This is one of those blogs that you thought you were following but weren't and can't figure out why not. Very good stuff for Oldhammerers,  the recent Malal stuff is quite nice.

Zabadak of Zabadak's Zombie World. Lots of good zombie stuff, I especially like his terrain. I already follow him and thought he was already a follower. Nice to have you aboard.

Now for the whining. Bleh, I feel terrible. Last week my wife had some kind of flu which then turned into severe allergies and she lost her voice. I had one night of flu like symptoms but have not yet lost my voice, although I sound terrible and my throat hurts something awful. To top it off my wife is away on business so I'm solo with the kids. I'm keeping it together so far but it has been a challenge. I have a ton of painting to do but only managed a fraction since I was volunteering at the school today. My son is closing in on his 40th mile in the running program they have at school and I seem to be the only person willing to show up to help the kids log their efforts.

And lastly

While I absolutely hated Return of the Jedi, I do appreciate Leia's ensemble. For those who don't know there is a website called Leia's Metal Bikini, lots of pictures of Leia herself and the "Fans in costume" section is interesting.

Have a good one.

Bowmen of Treyine

Woohoo, this weekend I entered my first regular entry into Curt's challenge. Here's what I wrote.

These 20 1/72 scale plastic figures are meant to represent a portion of the army of Treyine in the Talomir Tales campaign. Treyine is supposedly 100 years war England in flavor. This bunch comes from Zvezda English Infantry of the 100 Years War, Zvezda Medieval Peasant Army, Airfix Robin Hood and Strelets Military Order Warriors for the two footmen.

I have been futzing around with these figures for what seems like months. I have to say that painting the 28mm figures feels like a breeze compared to these. I cut out the final dry brush over the ink wash as I didn't feel it was going to add anything. I also experimented with both Burnt Umber and Sepia washes and I like the variety. The varnish step was a little more problematic and a couple of the figures came out ultra shiney. I was able to knock that down with some Vallejo Matte Varnish, excellent stuff. I will do a post on my blog with comparison shots when the figures are released to be put up there.

Same picture protocol, but it was 5:00pm here when I took them so the light is not as strong as it could be. I need to experiment more with lighting.

Oops, forgot to rotate the middle row on the left.

I hope you all enjoy my very first non themed entry. I'm hoping it will not be my last.

One thing I did learn with this bunch is that Vallejo matte varnish is truly matte. I used it to fix some figures that came out extra shiny.

All three of the above figures were varnished with the Liquitex matte varnish. The one on the left is acceptably shiny for me. The middle and the right were both equally shiny, due perhaps to over doing it with varnish that was not mixed enough. But in the picture you can see that the shine was knocked down successfully with an application of Vallejo Matte varnish over the shiny layer. I think it worked well. More to come soon.

Late but here's Old Stuff Day, GM's day and 100K views

Well, I've been floundering around a bit with projects and let several things pass by that I wanted to touch on.

March 2nd was Old Stuff Day. I did this last year here, and think that this is a good thing to observe on your blog to try to breath life into those posts that need a little more love.

This year I want to draw attention to these posts:

Yet again I'll point your attention to Fabulous Maps of Greyhawk, not so much for the post itself but for the maps. Anna Meyer has done an incredible amount of work and her finished maps are quite stunning.

I have no idea how many view this one got, but Superhero SFX Tokens was a good bit of fun.

No one took up the call in Another Meme? Perhaps it was too silly.

And of course Fladnag the Beige.

March 4th was GM's day a sort of memorial to Gary Gygax and an excuse to break out your RPG stuff. I'm getting excited about the Kickstarter I joined for solo gaming, it's releasing fairly soon. It is The Covetous Poet's Adventure Creator and Solo GM Guidebook. Frank Lee's blog is here.

It also snuck up on me this week, but I've passed the 100K views. I will have a giveaway to mark this milestone, but I will have to put it off for a little bit so that I can complete a few things.

Lastly I just wanted to mention that the family will be travelling to London and Paris over our kids spring break. We'll be in London on the 22nd to 25th and Paris from the 26th to the 30th. So if anybody wants to get together drop me a comment or an email. I may not have time for a game, but SWMBO says I may be allowed some time for a pint or something when were not on the sight seeing thing.

I missed it, perhaps you didn't, but the battle report for Mirish versus the Abyss is up on Talomir Tales.

Watch this space.

My favorite character figure

I almost forgot to do this one as the previous round had been bumped back due to Valentines day being on the weekend. Anyhow a big thanks to Dave D of One man and his brushes for reminding the rest of us that it was due this weekend via the challenge Facebook page.

You can see all of the entries here, and as usual you will not be disappointed. The following is a re-blog of what I sent to Curt.

This weeks entry owes a big thanks to Dave D. Without his reminder on the Facebook challenge page I would have totally missed this entry. I don't have a chance of making my target, but my secondary goal of entering all of the bonus rounds looks like a reality.

Without further ado I give you Nar, also known as Nar the Plunderer. He comes to you from 1992 when my buddy Charlie and I began our Mighty Empires Campaign. The idea was that Orcs and Men had come to a critical mass and were about to fight a pitched battle for control of where they lived. The winner would found his capital and the loser would be forced to search the map until another capital hex was found.

I amassed a large force of cheap troops, Charlie a smaller force of quality troops. He chose to play Empire. Needless to say I lost the battle, but in the ensuing play by post (we hadn't yet discovered email) my territory greatly expanded. The background of my blog shows the map I made to commemorate it a few years ago. I hope to at some point revive this campaign, possibly as a play by blog or a la Talomir Tales.

Nar is supposed to be a Black Orc level 25 general. I have no clue as to who manufactured him anymore. He is white metal and 28mm scale. With so much metal on him I decided to try and make him interesting so I used Bolt Gun Metal, Bronze, Copper and Gold. The wash on him was 2 parts Burnt Umber and 1 part Black, I feel like it worked very well. His flesh color was Forest Green, with a drybrush of Hauser Med Green. I like how the fur cloak came out except the final dry brush may have muddied it too much. In my notes I found that he had a magic axe and runic armor. I tried to show this with my interpretation of an Arcane Circle on his shield. The symbol and the axe had a thin gold wash applied, but it doesn't seem to show and the varnish may have unset it on the shield design. I should have let it dry more.

Same basing technique. Bead of glue, airdry clay, texture gel, sand. After varnishing the flock and static grass were added.

I went for a vignette look, but cropped it close so it may not show. Aperture priority, F16, natural light. It rained here off and on most of the day.

Not much else to add, I was really annoyed with the piece of static grass on the axe blade that I missed. You can see it fell off in subsequent shots. I will say that I am hoping to get more than the one or two votes I normally get. I feel like I'm starting to get back into a serviceable painting mode. Perhaps large batch painting is just not my thing.