Chico's Challenge: Wild Card Drunk-arsed gnolls.

I should have got these photos put up on Monday, but misplaced the camera. Yeah, excuses, excuses. I did do one final touch today, which is the trouser patch. The red it was originally just didn't click.

I like the way that I've painted them, and am fairly chuffed with some of the things that I'd never really done much of before (some blending on the arms, the patch).

 

The gruesome twosome on their walk of shame. This was sculpted by Michael Perry, so it was a MP scribed into the base.  

 

Close up of the details from the top. Ah, the joy of ale. How I don't miss the gluten poisoning. And the bum patch, of which I am all out of proportion proud of.

Now to find more of the characterful little blighters.

Base, base, bastard, base.

I did a cursory tally on the miniatures I have acquired in the nearly two years since getting back into painting and it is lots. Like several hundred. Several very cheap and large purchases have bulked it out (like some near complete 5th and 6th edition WH boxes and a 100 piece Empire army for the price of an army case). 

Of these miniatures I've painted about 100. Which is actually pretty good, considering I don't really have a grasp on what is where. Unfortunately, none of these are finished with bases, shields and varnish.

It is a best intentions situation. I totally plan on doing this task. I have the materials and I've decided on the look. But I can't help but procrastinate. What was once a small speed bump on the road to painting has turned into a freaking unpaved mountain at the end.

I just know that doing the bases will make everything look better, especially the dark elf army that I've been mucking around with since the second month.

Here's the planned look. Not too sure if I like the all slate over the all Probably going to have the earth be a black brown and drybrush the larger rocks (HO clinkers) slate. Black edges on the base to raise it from whatever surface. The flock is the autumn blend from Gale Force Nine clumped on with PVA dabs.

Since beginning this entry I actually went to the Oldhammer FB page and asked when people did their bases in the process. Most people sand the bases before doing the undercoat because it's not quite as messy as at the end. Which totally makes sense. I guess I am going to have to appeal to my innate laziness to do it now to avoid an even bigger job at the end :0)

WIP Wildcard Challenge Citadel Gnolls.

 

Progress! I sat down for an hour and added layers. I think that I am enjoying painting individual miniatures more now than I have ever done in past. There's something freeing about simply painting a miniature and knowing that there isn't an army or unit waiting for it and dozens more like it. I love my Dark Elves, but I'm sick of the sight of them. To the point that I am really questioning getting into painting another full on army. My planned beloved Skaven and Nurgle armies? *deep breath*

Makes me appreciate Mordeim and Warband style games all the more.

Random thoughts that I had while choosing the photos: 

The wet palette makes it so much easier to flit from colour to colour.

I'm still not happy with the skin of the duo; they're too similar, not blue enough. I'll do a blue wash to get the colour I want into the recesses. I really needed to have an all out green tinted blue as the base colour.

I'm quite pleased with the way their legs turned out. Orange makes for a fantastic leather/tan base colour. 

Oh, and red is totally the wrong colour for the patch on the bum. 

And now for something completely different...

...though really similar. I painted my wife's toes. 45 minutes of dinking around with nail polishes and a size 3/0 brush makes me really appreciate the formulation of acrylic miniatures paints. Nail polish is the hammer to the toe's, well. nail. Carmen suggested that I open a nail painting business. Only if I could name it "Hands of Glory."

Left foot.

Right Foot.

Left foot, close up.

The photos give you an idea. Light green base. Black used for the silhouette. Emerald green used for the dots on the smaller toes and for the sheep eyes and grass. Purple on the flower. Fluffy pink for the wool.

WIP Wild Card Challenge: Drunken Gnolls

Another of Chico's challenges. This time a wild card. I chose to do the drunken gnolls (I thought they were goblins) after seeing someone (Jamie Loft) post a photo of their drunken Citadel orc villagers.

I picked these guys up along with the frost giant and a bunch of other minis. Didn't know who made them, had no clue where to start. Did a search on ebay on the off-chance, "drunken orc" "drunk miniature" etc "drunken goblin" got me a listing that gave me all the info. And the cost, in case I wanted to pick up a second copy, was 26 of those United States dollars. Uh... O.K. Would only make me spend $26 on a bunch of other stuff. Like a lot of miscellaneous miniatures with all of the buried treasures that turn up in those things. If I were an avid collector of early Citadel then the price might be right. I simply can't imagine paying that though.

Citadel FTG10 Drunken Gnolls. 

Anyway, after a quick detour through Stuff of Legends, these friendly chaps are officially from Citadel's Fantasy Tribes Gnolls range. Their code is FTG10 and they are simply 'Drunken Gnolls.' Stuff of Legends tells me that these miniatures were also sold by Ral Partha and were later folded into Citadel's 'C' goblin code. I don't know who sculpted them and the only mark on the bottom of the base looks like 'MF'. It's badly filled in with spray enamel so it's hard to tell if it's an 'F,' a 'P,' a 'B,' an 'E,' or an 'R' I'll clean the bottom of the base and get a better look. I hope for laziness sake that it might be 'MP' for Michael Perry, only because he's the only sculptor with the first initial 'M' that I could think of that worked at Citadel in those days.

I took the photo seconds after finishing washing them with the shade. Shiny and wet. Like they've just been on the dungeon's best pub crawl. At this point, I've put on all the base colours. The leggings, laces and shoes will all be worked up to various shades of tan and brown. The other colours will get a couple of highlights. I wonder if I've made the skin colours too pale. The green one is 1:1 army painter barbarian flesh and greenskin, the bluish one is 1:1 that first mix and an ultra blue. I may have to repaint the skin with a darker mix and then work up to what I have them at here. I also brushed a little bit of red/brown mix across nose and cheeks. They are happy drunks, after all.

Here they are leading the walk of shame. I really dig the way their arms are supporting each other. The mugs were painted metallic iron, and I like the way that the wash has coloured the mug of the drinking gnoll here. I think I'll try and extend the colour to the entire mug, giving a tarnished, well used look.

Painted stuff for May 5th

Every other Monday I go with the wife and kid to ceramics and while they paint rabbits, hearts and nativity scenes I paint tiny machineries of war. Last night I touched brush to Dark Elves and added faces and touched up some colour, but I just wasn't in the mood for the grind of regimental types. I decided to finish two that had been sitting in my paint case for a long time: a preslotta Citadel Fighter and a Reaper Alchemist.

I love that somehow I managed to make her eyes look quizzical. "Oh, really?" I do need to add a spot of white to the right edge of her right eye. Eyes are new for me, as in this will be the fourth miniature I've added them to. At the moment I'm trying the white base with the black dot added approach. If I mess up, then I switch to black base with white edging. This is before I do the Quickshade wash. The wash takes off the edge of the white and the effect is quite attractive.

I decided to use the strong quickshade I'd picked up on a whim earlier in the day. I usually use the dark QS and I was quite surprised at how warm the strong shade is. This is more brown than the Dark's black and I love the warmth it adds to the miniature. I'm thinking that I'll start using this on skin.

There is something about this miniature that is really quite charming. As per usual, I really like the packs and pouches on the back of this miniature (and again! photos needed of the back.)

A Reaper miniature from their warlord game, alchemist I think (I had big plans to be really precise and well researched and now I'm relying on my swiss cheese memory). Another miniature that I'd painted the base colour on and then ground to a halt. She turned out quite nice after applying some highlights to her robes. I experimented with some blending on her jar and it's pretty rough. Something that I'll get better at the more I do it. 

Pretty Blue Dragon

I was going to write a great big gleeful post delving into my memories of seeing the Tom Meier Dragons in White Dwarf and how I fell in love with them the instant I saw them. But do you think I can find them? No, of course not. I found the Nick Bibby sculpted dragons in 'Eavy Metal (Red, Blue, Green, Spined and Imperial) but couldn't find any of the Meier ones. I remember vividly the advertisements for the green dragon with the running dwarf and I think it was opposite an Illuminations page for Ian Miller. And again, this would be the citadel sculpted one and not necessarily the Meier one.

Why am I talking about this? Because I have just received the fantastic Blue Dragon sculpted by Tom Meier that was produced by both Citadel and Ral Partha.  I got the RP version because it is about 4 times cheaper than the Citadel produced one.

And I bought it based on memories of having seen it in White Dwarf in the late 80s, early 90s,

Isn't she beautiful?

And now I am in a weird situation. Because I can't find this specific blue dragon in WD to save my life. I'm fairly certain that it's in one of the damned things but I don't have physical copies to hand (stuck in a box across the pacific) and the scans available often cut advertising (idiots! that's oft-times the best part)

I did however find citadel's serpentine dragon, by Nick Bibby, which is a very similar sculpt from the issues that I had and I am wondering now if this is the dragon I actually saw. Or perhaps I saw both?

This did appear in a Citadel/GW publication, just unsure where! 

The Nick Bibby Serpentine Dragon as showcased in WD 96.

(Pictures nicked from here: http://solegends.com/citdragon/)

The end result is that I now have a miniature that I love, based on  misremembering another (albeit similar) miniature that I also love. Which is hilarious to me. The memory is now a superimposition of the Meier dragon and the Bibby Dragon, both blue, both similarly posed and both produced by Citadel around the same time. Curses, I now need to find the other blue dragon!