Cosplay shield and a few figures

So for the last few months I have had a side project to make a cosplay style shield for the wife with an Elder Scrolls theme.  She worked out the design (slightly organically) that she wanted and I got to make and paint it.

Warbla and craft foam, light areas the wood putty

I used warbla as the base material for this.  Previously for the kids I had made shields out of foam (ie garage floor mats) as they were going to be beat up a bit.  This shield would be handled a bit more gently.  Also I wanted a large project to learn how to use warbla.  There are 2-3 layers of warbla over most of the shield.  The was a main backing layer, a top layer so that the centre could be appear recessed and then a another backing layer as I found just one layer of warbla was too thin and bent a bit in places.  On heating one layer of warbla tends to wrinkle.  I found that with multilayered areas sometimes the warbla would de-laminate.

Gesso coat

Craft foam was then glued on top to form the petal pattern and the stylised hand in the centre of the shield.  Unfortunately I had a seam line (due to the size of the pieces of warbla I had) across the centre of the shield which despite filling with wood putty and sanding still showed through.  I was thinking it would be blended in pretty well but that was not the case.  The petal design was a late change to the design and if I had known about that in advance I would have hidden the seams under the layer of craft foam.  So more planning in advance would have helped like always.

Undercoat

After everything was glued/puttied/sanded I coated everything in three coats of gesso.  The pro builders use spray on plastic-dip and I can see why.  However it is rather expensive.  Following on from the gesso I undercoated everything black.

Done

The red sections were airbrushed on after I masked off (so much masking) the rest of the shield.  I used JS paints for this.  The gold was from the AK wax metallic range and painted on.  Very much like Rub-and-buff but it paints on much easier.  Almost like painting with soft butter.

Following on from the paint I did two clear coats (spray can) before the weathering with oils.  I thin the oils down with white spirit to do basically pin washes along the edges and some highlights.  However despite the clear cost some paint was still lifted by the white spirit.  I think next time I'll just stick with 100% acrylics.  I highlight blended up the red areas (to more plum red) and the black (to light purple/grey).  Totally monotone areas look very odd so variation is needed.  The gold got a raw sienna wash to tone it down slightly.  On the areas that the paint lifted I went back and padded/finger stamped on some black/grey to redo those areas.  I find this blends better than just straight painting.  More of a stipple than painting.  The petals and the hand were repainted in flat black to make them pop a bit.

Again once that was dried out (I left the oils 3-4 days to dry) some more semi-gloss clear coats.

Witch

Eureka samurai

Old school is the best school

Away from the shed I painted up a few old figures.  A witch from Warlord Games (I think), a samurai from Eureka Miniatures and an old Grenadier figure.  Just something to keep the brush going.  Still very much stuck in a rut on painting.  I cast up a new copy of my alien bust I did last year as another thing to paint and experiment on.  Still haven't gotten going on my 54mm knight with maybe a horse added.  This didn't stop me however going to a scale model show and buying some new 1/32 figures.  They were cheap however.  I've always wanted to do some American civil war project so the box of figures from Master Box seemed like a good idea at the time :)

Started painting again (at last)

So got back in the groove this week with painting two figures.  The first up is "Baron Meliadus of Kroiden" from Eureka Miniatures, part of the Hawkmoon range.  Who doesn't like the Order of the Wolf?

Baron Meliadus by Eureka

As an experiment I decided to play around with painting in grey.  My idea was a black wolf cloak.  However rather than have the head black I lightened it up considerably to make the head/shoulders the focus area of the figure.

On the cloak I tried creating texture where there wasn't really much there to begin with.  By doing what was close to pointillism I slowly added in "waves" of highlights to try and mimic the flow of fur.  Under these highlights I then shaded to make the highlight appear to be higher from the surface. It worked a bit, but would need a lot more to really start to come together.  The good news is that I tried a new technique and it kind of worked.

For the armour I got a bit muddled and was alternating between NMM and TMM.  I stopped before I made it worse.

On the shield I tried for some more extreme contrast.  Getting better there but I'm struggling as my colours keep dulling down.

Living Nightmare

The second figure I worked on was the "Living Nightmare" by Ex-manus who has been sitting around for some time now.  I finally got some colours in my head to use on him/it.  I'm going for violet blue on the lower section, yellow on the top and brown/orange on the wings.  Pretty much blue and it's two complementary colours.

For the blue I started with VMA Blue.  I shaded down with Liquitex Purple ink added to the blue and then added some black for the final shades.  Later I went back and added some old Citadel Leprous Brown into the mix as orange is the complementary to blue.  This is the push the colour contrast a bit more.  On an aside all the Citadel paints I have remaining are the oldest ones which came in the hexagon flip lids.  Anything new than those have all dried out.  Highlights were done by adding in white and more blue to stop the mix chalking out.

On the body I used Leprous Brown, JS Cadmium Mid Yellow and white.  Shading was done by adding some of the blue to green the mixture slightly.  For the area between the body and lower area I did some intermediate glazes to try and ease the transition between the two areas.

Klaus Copperthumb from Reaper

Finally I found a nice Reaper Bones figure "Klaus Copperthumb" which I thought would suit Dungeon Saga really well.  I trimmed off his base and glued him onto a Dungeon Saga base and sculpted up a small money sack to sit behind him.  Another "just for fun" figure.  I need to just paint more and stop taking 3 months to paint one figure hoping that it is competition standard.  I learn a lot more from 5 smaller 28mm figures than one 54mm figure.

Next week onto the wings of the Living Nightmare

Terminator Genisys and new Eureka Hawkmoon figure

Terminator Genisys

Not much this week as the mojo is rather low.  In preparation for Cancon I fiddled with some of my past figures seeing if they needed any changes.  Suspect I may have made my Banshee Anonymous bust worse however.

Terminator Genisys

I also finished off the two Terminator Genisys figures and prepped up a figure I got at Cancon last year, 'Baron Meliadus of Kroiden on foot' from their 28mm Hawkmoon range.  Always liked the Order of the Wolf.

Baron Meliadus of Kroiden

For the rest of this week probably more fiddling and then off to Canberra for the weekend.  Hopefully many new toys will be purchased and the second hand stall has some goodies (and I get there in time too).

Eureka Miniatures terrapin loving and colour trials

For my next later piece I’m wanting to try some different colours, mainly very light (and bright) greens.  However the figure I’m thinking about using is very detailed so I need to get my colours sorted first.  So I experimented on some 28mm trial figures.

These terrapins are from Eureka Miniatures and have been in the stash for awhile.  Originally I purchased them for playing Runequest in Glorantha.  They are a bit rough on the arms/legs with some simple indenting for texture which is always a pain as any glaze/wash will pool in those recesses.  But it’s a simple way to add texture.

For the figure with the spear I tried using a warm green palette.  I also wanted to try having two similar greens on the same figure but making them different enough so as not to blend.  The base green is Jo Sonja’s Sap Green, a very yellowish green.  For the shell this was highlighted up with Jo Sonja’s Yellow Light and then some white.  For the shades I used the complement of VMC Violet Red.

For the arms/legs/head I used the same Sap Green base and highlighted up with Jo Sonja’s Indian Yellow and white.  This kept the green values more.  For the shades I used some VMC Flat Red (I think).

The spear is meant to be bamboo so I found VMA Yellow Ochre as a good bamboo brown base.

For the figure with the bow I wanted an overall cooler colour scheme.  The base of the shell is VMC Sky Blue and an old Citadel Jade Green.  This was highlighted with some more of the sky blue and white, with a bit of Jade Green added to keep the green tones.  I couldn’t get the shades right and ended up with grey.  This usually means that I’ve got too many colours in the mix and I suspect that the Jade Green is the issue.  I tried various red/oranges/browns/etc and couldn’t get a clean shade that didn’t end up purple grey.  I’m thinking that the jade green has too many colours in it already.

The skin was the same base but highlighted up with VMC Lemon Yellow (a yellow I hardly ever use it being very cool and a bit green).  The shade used more Violet Red in the mix.  Although there was no detail on the bow I continued the bamboo theme and tried to replicate the segmented look of bamboo (even though I’m pretty sure a bamboo bow wouldn’t work in practice).

So on both I’m happy with the colour pop I managed on the shells.  It avoided the issues I had previously of trying to get things brighter by adding more white and ending up with bleached out colours.  I need more practice on getting the complements of colours however.  I’m also seeing more reasons to not use premixed colours and keep with just base colours and mix everything.  That way you know what it is in there and makes mixing complements easier.

Cancon 2017 and Crystal Dragon

Well Cancon is over for another year.  I failed to place with any of my entries in the Crystal Dragon but my daughter not only got a Gold in the Hatchlings (Junior) section she also got Best in Show!  The Darth Vader quote “The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.” seems rather apt.  At least she was nice and asked “When are you going to win an award daddy?”.  Pictures of the mermaid piece, award and prizes below…

Mermaid in the sea - Gold award

Hatchlings Best of Show

Prize pack

The second hand store was run differently this year with staggered entry which I think worked out ok.  The horrible crush from last year was missing thankfully.  I also scored pretty well.  There were also some great purchases to be had however I already had the items in question.  This means I’m getting older and my classic cool games are now moving into the “old crud no one wants” category ;)

Second hand store purchases

- Urak-kai scouts $18 - Always wanted these to add into my existing force.

- Gondor Knights $22 - I’ve got one box already so now I have enough for a decent size force (5 calvary figures alone don’t do much in LoTR I found).

- Gondor bolt thrower x 2 $12 - Only wanted one but at that price why not.

There were a number more LoTR box sets but I resisted.  It was hard.  I’m sure I’ll regret it later.  Maybe I did need another 10 wargs..

- Divine Right $10 - I purchased mine for $70 off eBay many years ago :(  This will be gifted to a friend who remembers the good olde days.

- Reaper Bones Wyrmgear dragon $15 - Clockwork dragon for $15, why not.

- Ex-Manus Explorer in Void Suit $3 - Really like this figure and can see a sea (narf) diorama with it.  Plus I saved $5 over the normal price!


Purchased

- Ex-Manus  Sinister Suit  - love the Cthulhu head on a carnival ring master.

- Reaper  Bones animals - animals good.  Just because I could really.

- Eureka Miniatures  figures - Count Brass and an Order of the Wolf from the Hawkmoon range.  Love the wolf figure.  Some more animals as I wanted some lions for my gladiators and some ravens for the Mr Sinister figure.

- Rowboat - cute little mdf rowboat from Battlefield Accessories  Some great stuff there.

I also got some more Reaper Bones for the kids (Son got some skeleton archers, the daughter a female wizard and a female rogue) and some mdf buildings from Knights of Dice for them to make as they have been enjoying playing with the existing 28mm terrain I have.

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.

Eureka Miniatures miking set

Late in 2013 I won the up coming “Milking Set” from Eureka miniatures.  This diorama set consists of a cow being milked, a woman milking the cow, a woman carrying two buckets and a boy churning.  Simple figures very much designed to be added as background to any wargaming table.  Which is exactly what I intend to do.  The figures will be put on a oval base with some ground cover, etc to add flavour to the table.

Base laid out

Once this set got out of the lead pile and onto the painting table it’s been an in-between  project.  So progress has been rather slow.  Also I have been trying to do a bit better on the shading and glazing so these have been trial pieces for that.

Milking time

For the cow I went for the Brown Swiss variety.  Not 100% with the end result as I made the off white stripes a bit too uniform.  Also my white shading needs a lot of work.  The boy is my favourite figure as he looks suitably bored in his activities.  The woman carrying the milk buckets has a bit of an odd face.  The woman milking the cow is fine with a reasonably smooth face.

Dreaming of a better life?

As can been seen the figures are pretty much done and I have glued them onto the base and started the ground work.  I have to smooth the figures bases into the ground, paint the ground and then flock.  Hopefully some completed pictures coming later.

Peasants love brown