Painting Challenge: "Would Sir like some scorn with that drink?"

Chico comes through with another challenge (number 7)  that gives me a jolt of interest to paint. This time the theme is 'Other companies.' Which is just any other mini manufacturer than Citadel/GW.

Which means I now have an excuse to paint this supercillious little b'stard from Dragonbait miniatures.

 

This is the halfling butler which was an extra given to people who backed Dragonbait Miniature's indiegogo campaign. As I painted this, I was distracting my family with my giggling. I have never had this much fun painting a miniature. There is a lot of character in this sculpt that just thumped me in the funny bone, from the pose to the hair to the expression (the EXPRESSION!) I knew that Kevin Adams was a skilled sculptor but this was the first time that I had really, consciously experienced it.

The paint job was simple.
Base coats of pale green, red, slate gray (facial hair, foot hair and pony tail), white and pale blue.

A wash of army painter's strong wash.

And then touching up with the base coat again. 

"Would sir like some phlegm with sir's wine?" 

I spent the most time on the face. I wanted this guy to be a powdered fop stereotype. I worked up the colour on the face to a very pale flesh. Brushed as light as I could some red on the cheeks and drew a line of red on the bottom lip.

And 'Frederic, butler to the villainous' is born.

The kicker for me is that all the way through the campaign and right up until I got the miniatures in my hand, I HATED this miniature. Didn't think much of it at all.

I am glad to be 100% wrong.

Monday Night Painting at the Ceramics Shop: Dark Elf Warrior Women

Finally brought myself around to complete the half-painted Dark Elves I'd had lying in my travel case. These were the ladies that had become a millstone around my neck for the last three months. I'm been a little burnt out on Dark Elves. Still more to be done, but these seven are no longer on the list.

I didn't realise that white hair on dark elves was the trope for the Dungeons & Dragons Drow until recently. I must have absorbed it some time or other. I'm really thinking I may need to add in another colour. Electrics, perhaps?

Seven little dark elves all in a row. Rough as guts, and looking pretty all ranked up.

It took me a moment to work out why I couldn't get them to face the same direction. The mysteries of basing catch me again...

I love the poses on these two. The knock-knees on the mace-wielder and the tongue on the swordmaiden (which I need to pick out) are nice touches.

Another Chico's Challenge: Sci Fi

It feels like I haven't posted here for a while. Been what? 2 weeks or so. Not much painting done until the last week, and the planned construction and cleaning of hordes didn't happen at all. The Dragon Bait miniatures indiegogo campaign arrived which was like Christmas in June and I think I'll save that for when I am truly uninspired.

It was only with Chico's latest painting challenge (as here: http://oldhammeronabudget.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/challenge-week-sci-fi.html) that I got the brushes out and as I only had 4 miniatures that fit the bill (the other 2 being the Peter Davison Doctor and the Delgado Master) terminators it was.

I decided to try colours from opposite sides of the wheel. Blue and orange, and purple and yellow. I also decided that I would try not to use the quickwash to create shadow. I was semi-successful. On the Inquisitor the blue was blended (clumsily) from blue-black up to electric blue. I think the lesson here is that I need more inbetween tones to make the gradation smoother. The orange was three tones.

The Daemon hunter ended up being purple and bone with drucci purple and quickshade washes. The bone was worked up with increasing ivory added to the bone. The hood was given a wash of stong quickshade and then highlighted with a couple of shades of tan.

The 'metal' (bionic leg and gun barrels) was dark black-gray highlighted with slate gray. I'm kind of pleased with the lit buttons on the legs, they're just a simple thing that set the whole mini off. The force rod was bone, highlighted with ivory and then white.

The photos hide some of the scruffiness of the work!

Chico's Challenge: Finished Chaos. A rose between two thorns.

Three miniatures finished with bases, shields and as many highlights as I could fit in before the hysterical crying (between three and four).

Marigold with her two very protective friends.

It's only when I had all three miniatures together like this that I realised that they fit wonderfully. The idea insinuates that the reason Marigold is yellow isn't because she's a mixed up necromancer, it's because she's a Princess in Yellow, a follower of Hastur's King avatar. Clickity, clickity, click. I love it when something unintended surfaces.

 

The chaos warriors ranked up and with a look at their shields. The shields turned out well with a little careful work. I'd initially painted the design in a white/yellow mix over black. The step today was to sharpen the edges with black and then went over the design with the standard yellow. I'm pleased with the look and I'm glad that I have finally got the shield hurdle out of the way. I appreciate just how little space there are on these things now, and really have great admiration for the steady of hand who perform little masterworks on their shields. I'm aiming for stick figures.

The bases were beach sand glued on with watered down PVA. They were painted black with a 1:1 paint with water. This gave a near black with a hint of brown underneath. After I'd finished painting the minis I dabbed PVA patches onto the base and sprinkled HO scale coal clinkers on. These were drybrushed slate gray, washed with strong quickshade and finally patches of flock were stuck in opportune places. Voila, bases.

Different angled views of the three minis are below.

 

 

Chico's Chaos Challenge, WIP. It must be the end of the world...

...'cause bases and shields!

Citadel CH 3 Champions of Chaos: Haktgore and Stro'knor Macekiller. 

This is where I am as of about 30 minutes ago. I want to do a few more highlights on the two of them, and tidy up the leather. Haktgore's armour was an experiment in blending with wet paints. Trying to get the blues to have a smoother gradient from the dark to the electric. I think I may have done one colour too far, and lost some of the middle ground.
 

The shields are so far from being done. On the back , I did a black base and lightly drew white lines lengthwise. Then I mixed black with brown and water and slathered that over the top trying to make it as streaky as I could to create a grainy effect. How does it look? Weeeell, it was a nice idea, and the brown looks good. I'm just glad it's on the back of the shield :0)

The sigil is a dear old friend from Robert Chamber's the King in Yellow. I've been reading a lot of Delta Green recently and I'm dying to see True Detective and the King in Yellow feature heavily in both. Hastur, a nominal god of decadent insanity, transmits craziness through the word. A perfect little cult for the text-rich ruins of Naghammahd. I definitely am going to tidy up the sigils.

 

When I got these two they both had hexagonal bases and now having ranked them both up on square 25mm bases.  They look ever so slightly off center with each other, I wonder if they were sculpted without a square base necessarily in mind. Eh, it's not an issue, just a spur of curiosity. 

Monday: Chico's Challenge, basing and WIP

In no attempt at any order: Warmachine Cryx, Heritage Necromancer, Ral Partha Giant, and Cold ones and a Chaos Warrior from Citadel.

After my lament recently about basing, I have spent today addressing the issue. Holes filled in with blue-tack, slightly watered down PVA over the bases and then sand (scavenged from Petoskey on our last anniversary) is poured over and left to dry. Next will be to colour it black with a mix of AP dark wash and black and then to stick stuff on it.

Chico (of http://oldhammeronabudget.blogspot.co.uk/) has announced another of his painting challenges. I'm finding these a great way to get something done. Whether it be one model or a dozen, I've enjoyed just cracking on and doing stuff.

This cycle's theme is Chaos and for me that can only mean Chaos Warriors. I'm aiming to get Mr. Mace above finished. Which for me means based, shield and varnish! By all that is pestilential, I vow this by Papa Nurgle's tallies. I'm also going to start on another Chaos Warrior (Haktor, I think) and get him to a similar state of completeness.

The fetching lass on Mr Mace's right is Marigold. Her favourite things are daisy chains, kittens and making those cute little skeleton's dance. She doesn't understand why people are upset when she holds her tea parties. The long deceased seem to enjoy the company and the cuppa.

Yes, she is also planned to be finished.

Forgive the atrocious photo, it's made everything look like a bad pastel. This is some random dude who will be a part of the Knights of the Scroll. He will be special because he will be first to be snipped from his base and attached to his cold one.

More work was done on faces of dark elves, eyes mostly. Ghastly. I've hit the wall on these guys. I think I need to take them out of the paint case and concentrate on doing other minis. I have a Hordes Legion of Everblight starter I can put together and a bunch of reaper and citadel singles I can paint. I will finish the Dark Elves but a breather is required.

Monday's WIP: Dark elves, Heritage necromancer, Ral Partha rogues

Straight to the piccies:

From L to R: Eastern Front Paladin, 2 Ral Partha Rogues, Citadel Dark Elf, Heritage Necromancer,  Citadel Dark Elf.

Way back when, in the dark mists of late 2012, I won a lot of cold ones with a bunch of these guys and the marauder sorcerers. In trying to work out a way to make them into a unit that made some kind of sense, I decided to just lump them all together. Sure, they looked like sorcerers but they'd be plain old cold one knights. It was a solution, sure, but not a very convincing one. I put them to one side and every now and then drag them out and ponder how to make them work. I hadn't really worked out what rules set I wanted to use and knew that if I wanted to play the latest edition I had to make them WYSIWYG* which for me meant depicting lances and shields on my riders somehow. It was while thinking about those I came across my answer. I would have their lances be covered in scrolls. The reason that they looked like wizards, wasn't because they were, it's because they wished to become wizards. A bunch of bored nobles with burnt out nasal passages (cold ones stink to high heaven) who have discovered something to follow, a cause. The Knights of the Scroll were born.

A citadel dark elf. This is her good side. The other side of her face looks like she has stored acorns in her cheek like a demented chipmunk.

This photo was taken by Jfk187, the awesome storeowner on Ebay who sold me this miniature.

This was the state of the Heritage Necromancer when I bought her. Whoever had it before me had undercoated it and started the process of painting the flesh. The face was bad like 2 year old playing with make-up bad. The lips were a red slash and the eyes were huge black dots. She looked like the Other Mother from Coraline with her shiny button eyes.

And this is where I got her to tonight. With some tidying up of the flesh the black and the red toned right down and reveal a very serene face. Most unlike what you'd expect someone who trucks with the dead to be like. I am finding that I really like the heritage range. Even the barely defined hands add to the character of this miniature.  I base coated the gown with orange and spent a long time layering yellow on top. The effort was worth it. I waver on whether red and yellow are the worst colours out there. They force you to use multiple coats to get the coverage, but I'm finding that the frustration gives way to satisfaction at the depth the added layers give.

A Ral Partha rogue. Another mini that has real problems with definition (the mouth is barely there, the hands are teeny) yet this adds to the overall character.

A different angle on the necromancer. The skull on the staff is goofy. Her face is wonderful.

Footnotes:
*For those who come from other areas of my life and haven't suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous rules-mongering, WYSIWYG is a painful acronym for "what you see is what you get."Simply means that what a miniature looks like is what it is, what a miniature is carrying is what it is actually carrying as far as the rules go. If the goblins on the table carry bows then that is what they are: goblins with bows. I suspect that this became important in competitive/tournament play to lessen confusion. If your opponent doesn't have to keep on asking things like "what did you say they were armed with again?" or have to take back charges because your giants are being represented by a single small goblin then things do runs smoother.

I also suspect that this single 'rule' required people to buy more miniatures as the army composition rules changed.

I'm really talking about Games Workshop and the Warhammer games here. The company has pushed the tournament angle so hard that this appears to be the accepted mode of play. And as time has gone on, rules changes coupled with WYSIWYG have rendered chunks of everyone's collections "illegal" (in heavy, underlined, wanker quotation marks) for tournament play.

And as the product that is being produced has gotten more and more expensive, people are, I am, less and less inclined to keep up with it all. Ranty, rant, rant, rant.