Large scale diorama finished and much painting done (of sorts)

Well luck was with me and I did get to do more paving work, but on Christmas eve.  I did the mortar work on Christmas day however.  Then a rest day on Boxing day and onto assembly of $800 of Ikea furniture and two clear coats on all the wooden bits (with the wife helping out so the job only took half the time).  So much painting was done, but most of it was with a 2 1/2 inch brush ;)

So nice now the blood and sweat is washed away

Sometime in all that we had Christmas and I routed out two table tops which are next in the pipeline.  But apparently this blog is about miniature painting too…

Given the time constraints I targeted a few small areas.  First off was the shotgun, which I’m 80% of the way there.  Happy with the result so far.  I will have the shotgun with the hammers facing the ground to try and hide the fact the piece was miscast and only has one hammer.

Two barrels, one hammer.

Second was the start of the dust work on the boots.  I did a glaze of AP Desert Yellow followed by a mixture glaze by adding some VGC Earth until a final glaze of almost full VGC Earth was done.  I will be using pigments to finish off the dusting but will do that just before the varnish coat as pigments are too messy to be hanging around for long.

Dusty boots

I also used a much reduced version of the first dust glaze on all the armour to give it a bit more depth (and less shine).  The result was very good.  The shine is gone, but the highlights and shadows are still there.  Also a few bumps and hollows have been picked up and in all the armour is finally getting to what I want.  Took a long time but I’m no longer worried about the armour finish.

Ammo and armour

I also finished off the ammo belt front and did each of the shotgun shells.

Yep, that doesn't work at all

Lastly I had another go at the puffy right top sleeve.  I just can’t get what I want and the few attempts so far just don’t tone with the rest of the figure.  The colours grate.  I tried some yellow on the deep recessed parts of the sleeve but it came out much too bold.  Just going to have to try something else there.  Failing that it’s time to cut my loses and go total repaint.

More armour shading and large scale diorama work

Get me painted!

So the never ending quest for metallic shading continues on El Torres as I reworked his entire front breastplate another two times.  Just can’t seem to get what I’m after here.  The full bloom effect is now gone thankfully and I’ve reduced the spot highlights down to two small areas on the middle part of the breastplate.

I’ve also cleaned up the face a little and starting detailing up the ammo belt that he wears across his chest.  I think I’m going to have to stop working on the armour otherwise it will end up death by a thousand cuts.  Plus the more you fiddle on a figure, the more likely you end up with a mess of lumpy paint and inconsistent shading.

Rusty tongs, wood post optional

I’ve also painted up the rusty tongs.  The rust was done by painting on brown and then orange spots and then used pigments (red oxide, dark ochre) over the top.  I plan to varnish the tongs (to seal in the pigments) and then I’ll do an oil wash over everything.

On the Doom side I finished the six Hell Knights.  They are now waiting for a varnish before being put back in the box never to be used again :)

Just like a real one

Also I stained and varnished the display plinth.  Next step is to add some putty/clay/something to the top to make the ground level for the figure.  I might even use the modelling foam I have as that is very easy to work and not as messy as clay.  Good thinking Batman.

Road base done, just add sand, pavers and sweat

I had hoped to do a bit more but I’ve been working all weekend on a large scale 1:1 diorama.  Many trips to the hardware store and much shovel work was involved.  If I’m really lucky I’ll get to do some paving on Christmas after lunch.

Merry Christmas to all and I hope Santa got all your letters.

El Torres and display plinth

As usual a few different painting streams going on this week.

Firstly the Doom figures are moving slowly.  I’ve finished the shading on 5 out of 6 Hell Knight figures so may be able to finish them all off next week.

Getting tired of being on this stick

Secondly I worked on the breastplate and shoulder pad of El Torres.  I’m pretty happy with the back, but I’m thinking the front is too clean and shiny.  I need to add some damage wear to make the whole thing look more realistic.  At the moment he looks like he just stepped out of the buffing machine.  I also cleaned up a few mistakes where I had missed with the brush and also tidied up his left eye.  I still need to clean up a few marks on his face where the blending isn’t good enough and you can see the different colour lines.

Hello Mr Hell Knight in the distance

Since the photos I have also worked on this ammo strap at the back and the smaller straps on the knees/elbows that hold on his armour there.  My dark to light mix there was

VMC German Black Brown
VGC Earth
VGC Khaki
VMC Iraqi Sand

Thirdly I’ve started working on the display plinth.  Originally I was going to use a rectangular piece of pine but changed my mind when I saw a raw wood lounge leg in Mitre 10.  These legs are the kind that screw into the bottom of your lounge and can be stained to suit.  Not sure how you would loose a lounge leg in the first place.

Traditional Cedar stain test

I removed the screw, plugged the screw hole with a piece of dowel that I glued in and reduced the height by approx 1/3.  With the wood that was removed I did some test stains/paints.  I tried enamel satin black, a Japan black stain and a “Traditional Cedar” stain.  The picture is with the traditional cedar with I think looks the best.

So next week will hopefully be more Hell Knights, armour damage on El Torres and starting the diorama extras (gun, cup, tongs) for El Torres.  Also I need to go back and have another try on the sandstone.

Weekly update

Still grumpy

This week I’ve been continuing on with two streams of painting.  First off I’m working on some more of the Doom Hell Knights at lunch time fixing up the shading.  I have the first figure I completed as a guide and am slowing getting through the figures.

Secondly I have started the metallic shading on El torres.  I’ve done the knee pads, elbow pads, gloves and lower armour skirt so far.  I’m pretty happy with the progress as there isn’t any big obvious line of black paint in the shadow areas but instead the shadow areas just look darker.  I can’t paint this at night as the lights reflect too much of the metallic paint.  I need some natural light it get the highlights right.  My dark to light paint mix is

VMC Black
Citadel Blotgun metal (old range)
Citadel Chainmail (old range)
VMC Silver
VMA Aluminium

The aluminium is used just for the extreme edge light bloom as it really pops.  So next daylight session I have I’ll finish off the breastplate and top shoulder pad.

Knee pad action

I’ve also started making notes on all the mistakes I’ve noticed so far, e.g. where I accidentally brushed some metallic on the pants.  That way I can have a clean up session and not miss something which I saw one day but forgot/didn’t see later on.

These are slightly smaller than Vallejo bottles

I have a number of old Citadel and Reaper paints that are slowing drying out.  To extend their life and increase paint density on the desk I purchased some paint dropper bottles off eBay (20 15ml bottles for $5) and decanted the old paints into the new bottles.  I also purchased another Miniature Scenery dropper paint rack from The Combat Company as well.

While at The Combat Company I picked up a copy of F.A.Q 2 from AK Interactive.  300 pages of AFV painting and weathering techniques gold with great quality pictures.  Looking forward to reading this.  I also got some complementary glow in the dark dice.  Cool but pretty silly unless you play games under a black light :)

El torres and Doom figures update

He should really wipe

Over the last week or so I’ve been working a few projects.  First up is the slowly progressing Doom figures.  The Mancubus figures have now had all their base coats done.  I decided to use some of the various metallics I have as painting mainly Dark Ages figures you don’t have much need for metallics outside of chainmail.  Plus the paints are all starting to go hard.  With all the base coats done I experimented with a coat of AP Soft Tone.  I will probably go for another layer of either strong or dark tone on the gun arms.  Then the final highlights.

Hard to pick your nose with those hands

For the El Torres base I have some broken column resin pieces (from Secret Weapon) which I though would be more interesting than the original table idea.  I have about a dozen pieces (they came in a set) so I tried a few different marble type effects.  However the columns are not smooth, but rather very coarse.  So all the heavy wash technique most people use for marbling didn’t really work.  The washes kept running into the cracks.  Instead I might try and paint them as sandstone which would suit the texture of the column better.

The un-shaded armour looks quite bad now

On El Torres I have been working on his face, collar (last week), pants, boots and shirt (this week).  The pants have worked out very nicely and I’m quite happy with the result.  My dark to light colours were

VGC Beasty Brown
VGC Leather Brown
VMC Golden Brown
VMC Tan yellow

For the purple socks I used

VGC Black
VGC Hexed Lichen
VMC White

The pant studs were done in Citadel Gun Metal.

For the boots/shirt my dark to light colours were

VGC Black
VPA Shadows Flesh
Citadel Blood Red (the very old tall hexagonal bottles range)
VGC Orange Fire
VGC White

For the green shirt puffs I’m not 100% on them yet.  The silver buttons don’t work.  Colours were

VGC Black
AP Angel Green
VGC Dark Green
VGC Sick Green
VGC White

I might try and redo the silver in a gold to tie that area back to the pants.

The face was

VPA Shadow Flesh
VMC Medium Fleshtone
VMC Dark Flesh

The collar was Citadel Bleached bone shaded down with VGC Earth and highlighted up with white.  All those frills and folds took a long time to get done.  I did the face first as I needed that to be right before going further.  If the face is wrong on this scale, the rest of the figure is pointless.

So now I have the ammo strap and the armour to do.  I think I will do the smaller arm and leg armour pieces first to see if my chosen technique works in the larger 54mm scale.  Plus that large breastplate is intimidating me a bit.

Airbrush general equipment

In an effort to give people an idea of some of the extra equipment and costs (in AUD) of getting setup with an airbrush I've made a quick tally of some of the extras that I have purchased.  Like many tools none are essential but most make things easier.  For pretty much all of them I would recommend eBay as a source of supply, especially on the disposable items.

* Glass cleaning pot - $15-20

When cleaning out your airbrush between colours you need to spray some cleaner/water/etc through it.  Rather than spary that into the air and contaminate the piece you are working on you instead spray into this heavy glass pot.  The lid has a filter on it so the paint/cleaner stays inside.  The pot also doubles as an airbrush holder.  Recommended.

* Cleaning brushes - $5

Usually sold as a set of different sizes these are small brushes to clean out your airbrush.  I don't use mine much now that I use q-tips, an old toothbrush and paint brush instead.

* Disposable mixing pots - $2 for 40

The clear plastic shot glasses sold in grocery stores make great mix pots.

* Q-tips (ie the things you clean your ears with)

I find these very good for cleaning out the paint cup and needle of my dual action airbrush.  They absorb the last traces of paint that always seems to be left in the bottom of the paint cup.  Buy decent ones as the cheap ones come apart and leave bits behind which will block up the airbrush nozzle.  Yes, this is the voice of bitter experience.

* Quick connector - $2-3

Handy as you can disconnect your airbrush without draining your air tank.  That way you can do a full clean or swap airbrushes.  For a dollar or two more you can get ones with a small screw dial that limits the air flow too.

* Plastic pipettes - $2-3 for 20

Great for mixing and adding water/thinner/etc into the paint cup.  At art stores I saw them for $1 each, so another item where ebay is the winner.

* Airbrush holder - $10-15

These have mounts for both normal gravity feed dual action airbrushes and other types with side cups.  Now that I have the glass spray pot I don't use this anymore except when I'm using my Paasche Model H.  Some models clamp onto a bench, others are free standing.

* Needle oil - $5

If you are going to buy a decent airbrush, best to look after it.  A drop or two of oil every few sessions is all that is needed.

Doom figures and El Torres

Mancubus needs some Fitness First time

Been a quiet week on the painting front.  I started on the six Mancubus figures from the Doom boardgame late in the week after undercoating the figures and doing some preshading.  So far all I have done is the basic flesh and the start of the details (guns, claws, nose).  I went for a light green/grey look which I then highlighted by added more grey and white to the mix.  All these colours were airbrushed to save time as the figures bigger than a normal 28mm figure.  Hopefully over the next week or so I will finish of the base colours and start the washes.

The big belly undead

The Doom zombies were finished off.  These were another quick and dirty "three colours with washes and highlights" job.  For the twelve figures I did 4 each in blue, brown and green jackets just to add some variety.  Even on Mars you need safety orange stripes on your clothes :)

After staring at El Torres for the week I finally got started and got the base colours down.  The green will change as the current green is just the under layer as the final green I want to use doesn’t work over white.  It’s just too thin.  The armour also just has the black preshade so far.

Using a similar scheme to my recent Wood elves I put down all the initial colours.  I find I need to have all the white covered before I start painting further.  I see a lot of online pictures where other painters work on one part to completion and leave the rest of the figure undercoated.  I find that  throws off my colour sense (what little I have).  Just too orderly in my ways.

I’m pretty happy with the colours and really like the light purple next to the golden brown on the legs.  I might change the boots as they are the same colour as the shirt which may be too much sameness in the figure.

In parallel I will also been thinking about the base.  My initial plan is to make a diorama where he (El Torres) is next to a table or something similar with some food on it and his shotgun is resting on the table as well.  Like he is waiting for someone, but waiting in the open.  His facial expression is one of world weariness and I want to align to that.  I recently got some 54mm scale food items and plates which I think will work well.  Of course it’s going to help if I get the figure finished first.

True Metallic Metals (TMM) tests and El Torres by Degra.

After my NMM test piece I wanted to try out TMM (True metallic metals) or to put simply painting metallics with metallic paint, but with shading.

Old school flat pack figure

My first test piece was an old Julie Guthrie Grenadier figure.  A fully armoured knight so lots of metal there. Originally I was going to use VMC metallics but found the mica/sparkle particles in them to be quite visible in the VMC Gunmetal (72.054).  Remembering I had the army painter metallics (I had won the complete Army Painter range last year) I got them out to have a look.  I found them to be excellent.  So smooth in colour.  Much better than the rest of the AP range which I find to be rather thick.  The only negative was that there wasn’t a huge differentiation from the dark Gun Metal to the light Shining Silver.  To add to the colour spectrum I also purchased VMA Black Metal (71.073) and VMA Aluminium (71.062).  However I still find the VGC Silver to be brighter.

I base coated the figure in AP Gun Metal and shaded down with the Black Metal and all the way up to VMC Silver.  I got a really nice smooth transition especially on the larger shield.  However all that shiny metal means you don’t really see the difference.  In 28mm the paint job looks better than the usual paint/wash/dry brush highlight but not by much.  There is just too much light reflection.  The lower the light the better you can see the blending from near black to silver.  But in normal light not so much.

The feet are a bit miscast

 My second test piece was from Eureka and their Conquistadors range (part 100CON01).  Originally I went for a very heavy black lining over most of the figure.  That was too harsh and I toned it down by painting over it.  Given the translucent nature of metallic paints I went for a higher number of layers on the highlight.  From other people’s examples I also really tried to ‘pop’ the highlights to an extreme.  Most tutorial have the majority of the figure in darker gun metal hues and then go for a more extreme highlight in silver to mange that.  I tried that and it worked better.  My blending on the first figure is better, but the end result (i.e. you can see that there is shading) is better in the second.  The heavy highlighting there helps.

Get in my belly!

Silly detail levels

Next up will be a figure I got from The Combat Company, Degra
Miniatures - 54mm El Torres.  He was the reason I did all these metallic tests as he has a very large breastplate.  Given the larger scale I’m hoping the smooth blending I did in the first figure will work better given the larger area.  The figure has a crazy amount of detail and really shows what you can get out of a resin figure.  I have to admit I’m a little nervous and I’m not sure my skills are there for a larger complex figure.  But when failure looms, you can always undercoat again.

Eureka milking set, Conquest Games Normans and something special

I have finally finished the Eureka milking set, just in time for it to be released.  To jazz up the base I added a small wood stack and some rocks/flowers/grass as usual to break up the large expense of unbroken ground.

I really do like the faces of the milking woman and the boy.  Both dreaming of a better life…away from the cows.

On the WIP front I have put together the 7 Normans from Conquest games which I will be using for the Flemish swords for hire.  The figures aren’t as well armoured as the official versions but I play social games so I don’t think anyone will mind.

The figures went together reasonably well but I found the arms a bit annoying.  The arm socket in concave and sometimes the top of the arm piece is a bit flat so the join isn’t too good.  It hides the joint but doesn’t always result in a good join surface.  When in doubt add more glue and blow to speed up the drying process.  The odd man out is from the Eureka Dark Ages range and seems to fit the part, even if he is a bit on the short side.  I’m sure the other 7 guys respect the diversity he brings to the group.

Dapper Dan

Racing stripes

Finally something that makes painter dads proud.  I purchase some architectural models for my kids (6 and 3) to paint.  The 6 year did pretty well (having been painting since 3 years old), but then started to embellish.  I’m sure pink and green skirts will be back in fashion as some stage.  The 3 year old was more of a study in wet on wet blending technique.

NMM trials and Wood elf bases

Firstly apologies for the picture quality, just didn’t have the right lighting at all today.

For the end of last week and this week I have been trialling Non Metallic Metal (NMM) on an old Ral Partha Ravenloft figure (from set 11-111 “Lords of Ravenloft”).  He had a nice large metal breastplate and sword with minimal details which made for an excellent trial piece.  I’ve never tried NMM before so as a painting exercise off I went.

My first trial was to use a mid grey (VGC Cold grey 72.050) then darken with a darker grey (VMC Black/grey 70.862) and highlight up with a lighter grey (VGC Stonewall grey (72.049).  At the end I had a very nicely shaded grey breastplate.  But it didn’t look like armour.

On the second trial (and after some more web research) I went of a base with more blue in it (Cold Grey mixed with VGC Night Blue 72.019 and black) as that seemed to be a common technique.  Also I used just black for the shading and white for the highlighting.  This worked much better and I was starting to see a much more armour look at the end.  The sword worked better but that was more due to the narrower space which worked well with the highlighting.  I probably could have gone up a few more levels on the highlight.

Another technique that I practised was trying to get my glazes working.  I wasn’t until recently that I got the difference between a wash (flood the area with watered down paint so some pigments ends up in the cracks) and a glaze (paint on watered down paint so that when it dries the whole area has a tiny amount of the glaze colour).  It was also a experience thing to get my eye into recognising when the paint was at the correct consistency.

So for the other areas of the figure after the usual base colour, shade/highlighting was done I then did a glaze of the base colour over the entire area.  This resulted in the visible layer difference (i.e. between one colour and the next) dropping quite dramatically.  Or to put another way it go much hard to see the different shade/highlight colours.  Everything just started to blend.  Definitely one of those “so that’s how it’s meant to happen” moments.  Now I just have to get good at it.

Also I finished off the bases for the wood elves.  Although I have another 20+ to paint they will probably go on hold as I keep trying to skill up to do one of the 54mm figures I have.