Gnome for the Holidays

While deleting draft posts from the page, I discovered this post that I'd started in January and never got to finishing.

I had got this far:

Christmas Day I painted gnomes, and a halfling with a crazy '70s mustache. First little bastards painted since the end of August.

And now I can't remember a damned thing about what steps I took to paint them. Here goes with the addled recollections.

This is a great miniature. One of those "ohhhh, I need this... I really need this..." purchases. It's from the Citadel Fantasy Adventurer line, FA34-2 Gnome Warrior Thief. This particular miniature was released in Spring of 1982, a variant/resculpt of the previous Gnome released the year previous.

It's a Michael Perry sculpt and it is tiny; just over a half inch to the eyeballs. You wouldn't think it given how much wonderful detail is on this. The smile is what gets me every time. I vaguely recall having a lot of fun painting this. Looking at this photo (and I really need to dig the miniature out to confirm this) I'm quite pleased with how the eye(s) turned out.

More of the fantastic details that help make this a dungeon adventurer.

This one I need to dig out so I can properly identify the manufacturer.

The palette on this one was kept really simple. I painted it in green and white with the intention of contributing it to the Oldhammer warband project. I don't know why I didn't to be honest. It's not a bad paint job for me and it works.  I'm particularly happy with the way the wood on the shield turned out. I think it was a base coat of oak that I then dragged a 'clumsy' oak/white mix through to create the idea of grain. Clumsy in that the white and the oak don't quite mix evenly and the brush tip has both colours on it creating a streakiness when drawn down the shield. It's something I'll need to try again as I really like the effect.

Also: most excellent facial hair which is hardly ever seen on a halfling miniature.

***

I have actually painted in the last week. One of John Boyce's Colony 87 miniatures. I'll aim to finish that and do some work on some eldar or dark elves. I'm still fixating on the idea of doing chore-ish squads and units punctuated by some of the odds and sods I have from various kickstarters/indiegogo campaigns and ebay impulse buys.

Let's see what the week brings.

Till then.

Eulogy for a Games Store, and godawful funks.

My favourite local games store, Burdette's, is closing this Friday.

I am gutted.

Burdette's was a place that I felt comfortable socially. Which is a big thing, given my level of discomfort generally. The owners and the other customers/gamers were all around my age. The atmosphere was family friendly and relaxed. I tried to make it in every week to play Friday Night Magic, which was free of the brash, competitive bullshit that seems to pool in venues with much younger crowds.

There are other stores here, and some a little further afield, but right now none that can replace Burdette's.

***

This has been a year of descent into the depths. Lack of energy, general apathy and black moods have cut into any enthusiasm or motivation to get things done. Paint brushes have been unused, I have developed a lead hillock (not a mountain as such) and my work desk is a slippery slope that sends cats sliding to the floor. I've got 5 blog post openings that I've just not got back to.

Things will turn around, I'm almost sure.

***

Right, here's a link to a great set of miniatures made in the near three decade old Rogue Trader style:

Colony 87- 28mm sci-fi civilians

They are very crisp, very characterful miniatures. If you didn't know about these, look around the kickstarter and keep an eye out. Jon Boyce has put together a very successful kickstarter and is very approachable with any issues (a little damage to a miniature). I've chosen the first one I want to paint and now I need to get to it!

Now, I'll return to the virtual shadows...

Dead Computers.

My netbook died laat week. Bad memory, I'm forced to assume.

And now my only internet capable device is my nook colour, which is like typing on a brick.

A TOTAL TRAGEDY! I scream from the velvety comfort of my chaise lounge as I fingermash a screen the size of a penguin book.

I've started gaming at a local store. FNM at the moment. It's been a decade since I last played amd I forgt how much fun it can be. I also forgot how frustrating it can be too. The folks I i also played were easy going but they're invested in the game at a much higher level than me. I don't have the money or.the time to really be competitive. Which is okay by me for the most part, playing is the journey. I just need to work on the mana conspiracy, I mean, my shuffling, no, I mean...

***

Yes, well. Painting-wise I undercoated 20 or so dark elves. I've got to face facts that the way to play with these minis is to bite the bullet and play the latest version of the Great Wyrm's games.

The most recent stuff painted aside from my wife's nails have been a couple of old harlequins. I love the original background for thses guys, the theatre geek in me to be sure, and the original eclectic, electro-clash painting style that went with it. Think cirque de soliel meets commedia del'arte meets grand guinol meets high art new wave punk elves of a dying high decadence empire with flashing blades, acrobatics and the blur of comic speedlines, ONLY COOLER.

Recently, the colour scheme has gone from a wild anything-goesindividualised regalia to a stolid uniform diamond patterned costume. Think of a trajectory like the one from Queen to Lady Gaga. They're both successful in their own right, it's the degree of the influences on each that tell.

In the interests of self preservation I painted them black, bone, purple and green with sky blue as a highlight colour. There's no freehanding yet. I want to get them all based and varnished before I start painting on stripes, or checks or other freehand designs.

I am deeply chagrinned at the lack of photos. I shall thrash the errant knave of a netbook and replace it at earliest opportunity.

***

GIGO:

The painting guide in the WARLORD 1st edition rulebook, by Reaper, is very well done. It goes into some very different techniques to those demonstrated by Games Warkshop. He book was worth it for this section alone.

LION RAMPANT and DUX BELLORUM by D. Mersey for Osprey publishing. I'm always on the lokout for intesresting rules that I can chuck my minis into. Lion Rampant is a pretty nifty set of small warband skirmishes set in the middle ages. Dux Bellorum is a dark age Arthurian rules set. I've not read DB yet but both books have a lot of great painted miniaturea from different companies. This is nice. I love seeing photos illustrating rules, and I love that the rules are not tied to a single miniatures line.

The big difference to my eye, is that LR is one figure = one man, while DBlooks to be one base of 2-3 miniatures representing a much larger number.

The LR book is very well written with plenty of good examples. The bibliography is good. I also appreciate that the author's voice creates a sspace where you can be as relaxed or as accurate as you like in terms of historicity.

I have SONG OF BLADES AND HEROES and MUTANTS AND DEATH RAYS from Ganesha games sitting on the pile to read.

WHITE DWARF I finally brought the new magazine for the harlequins rules and information. I just don't know. I just... This is such a corporate organ now; there are no authors credited, no staff painters named, and no sculptors to be found. I love the harlequin sculpts, and I really want to know who did them. I fear that the answer is now and forever more "Games Workshop."

I also ponder the 'eavy Metal brand, which has passed from the jokey context of "we listen to heavy metal while painting heavy metal" into something mysterious. What music do you listen to while painting resin and plastic? Synthesiser pop? The sounds of John Blanche and Jes Goodwin crying themselves to sleep? Who knows?

***

Would you believe that the above was actually written by the five cats who insist on running over the nook every couple of minutes?

Until later, take care.

Old Year/New Year

2014
I'll keep this short 'n sweet.

The Good: In April, I began painting with a regularity I didn't have previously. My skills improved and I began to take chances with new things. This confidence in what I was doing got through a mental block or five and I was painting miniatures I would never have, could never have, painted previously.

Personal standouts:

Imperial Dwarf.

Empire Flagellant. 

I received the first Dragon Bait indigogo campaign and fell in love with Kevin Adams' characterful sculpting.

Purveyor of luggage and scorn.

The Bad: I bought two warmahordes starter boxes and discovered the horror of piecing together plastic beasts and warlocks.

They look okay here, but don't breathe they may fall off their legs.

The Ugly: A change in job and medication caused the horror loss of focus that spun me through a cycle of shortlived interests/obsessions: Crowleyean Magick, Magic the Gathering, American Sign Language, sculpting, puppetry. 4 months without painting a miniature. Gah.

The Very Ugly: Wanting to buy Kevin Adams orcs and Discovering that the current Orcs sold by Games Workshop aren't capable of shutting their mouths (oh, and they're not sculpted by Adams). It's like staring into a Rob Liefield splash page: nothing but grimace.

Anywho. For the new year I have some goals. In no kind of order.

1 Finish my Dark Elf army
2. Paint more dungeon adventurers.
3. Start my eclectic chaos army.
4. Start painting the 40k Harlequins.
5. Get the orcs I have accumulated constructed and based ready to paint.
6. Press mold shields for the dark elves

7. Start painting with more care. It's going to make for crisper paint jobs. Which leads to:
8. Being more judicious with the army painter washes. This got me over a big hurdle in completion of miniatures, and I could get by on scruffy for a long time. Now is the time to step up the blending
9. Start some conversions/sculpting using  green stuff.
10. Make some terrain: medusa cave, ruined gate, hills etc.
11. Do more freehanding
12. construct dungeon tiles out of fimo.

13. Play warhammer against an honest to Nurgle live opponent.
14. Fingers very crossed to be able attend the next US Oldhammer meet.
15. Try out Lion Rampant, Sword of Blades and Heroes and other rule sets.

Pie in the Sky 16.  hope to get some of my stuff from NZ. Eldar and Skaven are a calling...

All of the above is subject to change, correspondence may be entered into, no guarantees etc etc, so on and so forth...

Happy New Year!

Dragon Bait Indiegogo Gnome Chevalier

Back in May I supported an Indiegogo campaign for a range of dungeon adventurers bv Dragon Bait Miniatures. The miniatures are sculpted by Kevin Adams and are fantastic, awesome, beautiful and other superlatives that you can all read in posts on this blog.

Anyway: Dragon Bait have their second campaign up and running right this second with 16 miniatures in the offing by Tim Prow and David Soderquist. Kevin Adams sculpted a couple of miniatures before he was given a staff job at Foundry.

And this is one of them:

The Gnome Chevalier.

Joe Corsaro, the gracious gent in charge of Dragon Bait, sent me the Gnome Chevalier a couple of months back after he'd seen my earlier posts. A very generous out of the blue thing indeed and one that I am thankful for.

The mini is 3-parts: rider, dog and shield and they fit together very well. The details are crisp: the dog is magnificent in it's stature and anatomy and the rider has a very haughty cast to his features. There was no flash and the mold lines did not cause me any trouble. They are usually something that I miss and then find after I've painted everything but these were either easily removed or simply not there on this mini.

Todger!

Ahem, well. 

The Chevalier will be made available as a $10 add-on to a pledge when the funding reaches $3000. With just over 15 days to go, the funding is just over half way there.

I'll be backing for the full collection and have no doubt that I will be well pleased with the miniatures. Joe Corsaro created a great first campaign that was fulfilled quickly and totally top-notch, and I'm 100% sure that the second will be the same.

Life in Slow motion... some Dragon Bait... new job

The last couple of weeks have been in go slow mode. I have been painting (a gnome, a goblin, a samurai, a ninja) and I've repaired some skeletons, cleaned up a horde's beastie and constructed a few more knights.

I tidied up my work/miniatures area too. This process gave me a much better idea of what I have. Looks like I can chuck together an Empire army, an orc/goblin army and some skaven, chaos and dwarf/halfling allies.

***

Joe Corsaro of Dragon Bait Miniatures saw the minis I'd painted and emailed me. He's a great guy with a great company and he has plans in the near future, and I was pinky sworn to keep my trap shut for a little while.

He also pointed me to concept artist Mike Burn's Dark Fable Miniatures which have a great selection of egyptian themed minis sculpted by Kevin Adams and others.

***

The big disruption was changing jobs. I've moved from being a fairly loose in-home nanny looking after a toddler and an infant to being one of two lead teachers in a structured, curriculum-based classroom (gads, I have a classroom!) with 8 infants between us to wrangle! It's all part of a new preschool start-up within the church my family attends, it's based heavily in the local community and is aiming to be as diverse as possible. Exciting, stressful, new stuff.

On the plus side I have wrangled some packing foam that looks like it could make some keen ruins.

***

As part of my Naghammahd gaming, I've been trying to locate some dungeon tiles. I've got some hidden in my RPGnow library, it's just a matter of finding them and making sure that they do what I want them to.

This week? I'm going to try and finish the gnome, start painting some hordes and get some more of the dark elves cleaned up and based.

Dragon Bait Minis: Half Orc Druid with Pig and Hats.

Harg likes trees. And Boars. They make him happy. Deep forests make him very happy. The trees sing to him. Nancy, the Boar, he likes Harg. Harg takes him places he wouldn't normally see. Like holes in the ground, and fields of the dead. Together they have seen forests across the wastes, and the fungal copses deep underground. They have learnt many songs. They like songs. What they don't like is questions about their hats.

Harg, the Druid and Nancy, the Boar

Ah, skin and fur and eyes. My bete noir. The bulk of the painting I'd done last night, and I wasn't satisfied then and didn't feel better with it this evening before beginning to paint again.

Yes, Harg is a very green half-orc. As with the frost giant I painted much earlier this year, I spent a lot of time trying to get the skin right. These are the steps: Dark green base, strong wash, dark green with bone overbrush, cursing and swearing; another dilute AP strong wash; a light brushing of apple green, more cursing, sleep, taking a 10/0 brush and lightly swiping dark green to delineate knees, ankles, calves and elbows. It looks much better.

The fur was a dark brown with a strong wash, which didn't work well against the boar which was a slate gray with strong wash. The solution was to use the blacker dark wash.

(Quick note because I'm probably confusing people. For washes I use predominantly the Army Painter (AP) range, so when I talk about a Strong Wash and Dark Wash I'm using rich brown ink and dark black inks.)

The boar's snout, tail and ears were built up from a bone base with highlights of bone and flesh.

There is a backpack that I need to paint and attach, though I think I'll varnish this before doing so. 

 

My wife looked at it and said "Whoever made this is fantastic, you can see all the teeth." Good job, Kevin Adams, you have the Carmen Meinhardi-Dale seal of approval!