Cancon 2015

Packed and ready to go

Once again I made the journey to Cancon and like last year took the whole family and made a little holiday of it.  I entered both my 54mm Knight and Samurai that I have been working on during last year.  Didn’t win any prizes, but the judge that I talked to last year remembered my 54mm El Torres figure and was very encouraging in his feedback.  Always nice to be told that what you did this year was marked improvement from last year.

Still need to work on my blending and still need more light into the top of the figures.  The fact I made sure everything on the Samurai base was off square (i.e. the wall,road,etc weren’t in parallel to the sides) was noticed as was the effort spent on the wall.  Got some good tips for shading yellow (use crimson for the darkest shades) and some general painting tips.

Lady on a bench

My daughter entered her “lady on a bench” figure and was awarded a certificate and got a Cancon dice (something all the junior entries get which I consider to be an excellent idea).  She was well proud and had a big smile for some time.










The second hand stall was a bit of a let down.  I estimate there were over 100-150 people lined up so by the time I got in wasn’t much that I wanted.  Note there were plenty of bargains to be had, just nothing that I was after.  So given that I don’t really buy 28mm figures anymore the swag bag was pretty light on.

- Burfitt Tools drilling jig - $25

A special holder for odd shaped items (e.g. roundish things) for drilling.  Just liked it and not a thing you can easily find.

- Burfitt Tools tweezers - $10 each

Some very nice fine tweezers to replace the $2 store ones I have currently.  Time to make some more trees one leaf at a time.

- Field Tool Shop 1/35 - $5

Second hand store purchase.  At $5 happy for that to go into the spares box.

- Soviet tank crew, winter 1943-45 - $5

Second hand store purchase.  No real need or use, just felt I had to buy at least two items from the bring and buy.

- General Stanislaw 1/35 - $5

I very nice 1/35 resin figure from Scribor miniatures.  Great pose and a good face so purchase just for painting.

- 6 Secret Weapon pigments - $12

These were on sale at $2 each.  So grabbed some lesser used colours just because I could.

- Victorian fence - $15

From The Combat Company store.  They never seem to have these in stock when I visit so I grabbed one.  Very nicely the kids each got a glow in the dark d20 as well.

- 3 Reaper Bones figures - $15

Two for the daughter to paint, one that the wife liked and wants me to paint for her.

That was it.  The problem with only painting a handful of figures a year is that I don’t really need to stock up on figures or supplies like I use to.  I’ve got more 1/35 scale bits than I will ever get through, lots of 54mm stuff and still all the old 28mm Ral Partha figures in case I get bored.  And Dungeon Saga if I get really keen.  A bit sad that the days of mass purchasing are over, well at least until the kids get into some new army game :)

54mm Prince of Novograd finished

Been awhile with a near two month break in the middle due to home issues but his is done.  Pretty happy with him.  Now onto my 54mm samurai.

Miniature ivy creeper vines, one leaf at a time

Twigs, glue and birch seeds

This week I blended in the shield tip and feet of my 54mm Prince of Novograd figure to the base snow .  This took a few days as each day was glue on one layer of snow effect, wait for it to dry, then the next day do the next layer.  As the figure is all but done my wife mentioned that he needed some extra colour/bling.  She suggested some green growth on the rear tree.

Growing slowly

I first thought of using lichen but that never looks as good as you want it.  I just can’t seem to get it looking any better than just a lump of badly glued and painted lichen.  Should do some research on that.

My next idea was some laser cut or brass etched vine leaves.  I went to Hobbyco and got the “HO scale laser cut Mini Virginia Creeper” made by Noch.  Absolutely amazing detail on the paper laser cut vines.  However they are a bit small for 54mm.  No waste there as they are just right for 28mm figures.  Guess those wood elves are going to get some serious basing bling.

I had heard of people making their own vines by hand, but didn’t really know a good way to do this.  I recently got a copy of “The rise of fantasy” by Juan J Barrena (recommended reading) where he describes the process using twigs, super glue and birch seeds as leaves to make vines.  Since I already had the birch seeds and the garden has lots of twigs I gave it a try.

Action shot

One sick tree

Surprisingly it worked really well.  I was expecting a mess of glue and tears like my first attempts at making water reeds.  Instead I got some ok looking vines.  One of the key techniques is to let the super glue start to get tacky as that aids in holding the leaf.  Otherwise you are trying not to shake as you wait of the glue to dry, and usually failing.  Even with the very small attachment point the whole thing is very solid.  I’m sold and expect to be having vines and custom trees appearing a lot more in my bases to come.  I do however need to purchase a decent pair of tweezers as the $2 shop ones I have aren’t much chop.

Finishing off the Prince of Novograd figure base

Snow time

This week was all about finishing off the base for the Prince of Novograd figure.  After all my lovely oil colour work I covered it all up with snow effects.  The first layer was done with Noch snow glue with AP snow over the top.  Once this had dried overnight I did another layer of snow glue and sprinkled with Woodland scenics snowflakes.  Also some small brown grass tufts were glued in.  Once that had dried overnight I added a layer of 50/50 PVA/water mix and using the Noch static grass shaker applied 4Ground Snow static grass.  Again after that had dried overnight I was ready to check the results.

It was good but the final layer of static grass was a bit too fuzzy.  Ie the static grass was standing up too much.  This was especially noticeable on top the rock.  So I first wetted down all the static grass (not too much otherwise I ends up looking like alien fungus) and then applied a layer of 50/50 PVA/water mix over all of it to keep the static grass down.  This made the snow effects look much more like clumping snow which was good.

 

Getting close...

Then finally the figure has been glued on to the base.  I have repainted the bottom of the banner (some paint had rubbed off when it was stuck in the cork that was holding it) ready for it to be glued.  Also the pin in the helmet has been painted dark brown to hid the pin when it is stuck into the small tree.  Now the only really issue is how to stick the shield on securely.  There aren’t any attachment points so I’m thinking of drilling a small pin into the resin rock base and using that as the bottom anchor point for the shield.  Then a extra bit of snow can be used to hid the join.  Once all the pieces are glued in then the final blending of the figure into the base can be done with oils and/or pigments.  Almost there.

Basing and ground work

Trial layout

Milliput ground work

No update for a few weeks I’m afraid.  Real life and family issues overwhelming any painting time.  However this last week a few bits got done.  I also got seven old issues of the Figure International magazine off eBay :)

I continued to work on the base for my 54mm knight.  Originally I was going to use some foam to make up some of the ground work but decided that it was unnecessary.  Instead I used Milliput (standard) to make some rolling ground work.  I really like the water soluble nature of Milliput and you can shape it with a wet paint brush.  I however dislike  the slime factor which is why I normally use green stuff for ground work.  I always end up with yellow slime hands that smell for a day or so.  For the bigger base Milliput was a more cost effective solution.  Plus my Milliput has almost gone off so I wanted to get some use of out it.

Rear view of first paint trial

Once the Milliput had dried I primed with Vallejo black primer and then painted all the ground with VGC Earth.  This was then shaded with VGC Charred Brown and VGC Khaki.  After that I coated all the ground with matt varnish to take off some of the shine caused by the glazing.  The end result wasn’t what I was after.  I just looked like brown paint.  I should have textured the Milliput with some sand rather than leaving it smooth.

Breaking out the oil colours I re-did the ground.  I shaded down the burnt umber, payne’s grey and phthalo blue and shaded up with burnt sienna and white.  The blue added to the shadows really worked well.  I had picked this up from reading a few oil painting books.  This also matches up with real life (almost like those painters know what they are talking about) as when it gets darker things get bluer.  This was left to semi dry overnight.  I could have done this with acrylic paints but I just like playing with the oil paints.

Oil paint make great mud

The next day I got the white and a small amount burnt sienna and padded the white paint onto the ground where I thought snow fall would sit.  Not dry brushing, more like sponge applying but with a brush.  This resulted it the ground colour still being visible but there being a white covering/dusting.  Where the rock/tree was overhanging the ground I left the ground colour as is.  I was afraid that the contrast of the brown ground with the stark white flock/etc would be too much.  I think this will make a very good underlay and transition to the later snow effects I have trialled.

Rear view of the "snow" dusting

Now to wait a few days for the oil paints to dry before going onto the next stage and adding the snow effect products.

The best laid plans… and the grey pile grows

Finally coming together

Plans do tend to go astray when sick family members and life comes up.  Spent half the week out of town so pretty much a bust this week.  I spent a couple of hours reworking the shield which is getting better slowly.  I also started working on the mock up of how my knight will sit on his base.

Rather than do dry run tests on the nice stained pretty base from last week I cut out a piece of scrap wood the same size to use for trials.  That way I can drill holes (and drill again when I change my mind) in the wood to work out the positioning of items without any worry.  I have the resin rock centred on the base with the bent tree at the back and the tree stump at the front so the helmet can rest on it.

I found that for the figure to sit properly I will need to grind down some of the rock (in foot size holes) to get a nice standing position.  Also in the final piece the flat ground area will be covered in milliput to give some undulation to the ground.  Then the snow on top of that.

Inanis in box

Also this week my “Inanis” figure from the Ater range by www.deadsculpt.com arrived (this was the Ater Kickstarter project).  A very well run Kickstart project that went along with no issues at all.

The figure is a 54mm resin sci-fi figure of a humanoid who happens to have a large hole in their chest.  Well packed in a little box and wrapped up in bubble wrap.  Some very nice details and hardly any flash.  The figure is quite skinny however.  Maybe I’m just use to chunky medieval knights.  I got the figure as it’s not normally something I would paint but the example paint job I saw was quite inspiring.  Into the projects draw for him :)

Flags and shields part 2

Things picked up a bit this week as I made an effort to get back into painting.  I’m doing most of my painting at night as even during the day on the weekend there isn’t much sun due to the winter weather.

Shield of shading

Banner

After a few nights of working on the shield I had to start again (again).  The dark blue paint I’m using for shading I think is getting a bit old and separated.  It keeps leaving tide marks when it dries and that ruined my second attempt on the shield.  Changing tack I base coated most of the shield in the first shade colour (rather than the base sky blue) and started shading from there.

My idea was that all the shield would be darker (being lower down on the figure and in shadow) so it would be easier to make the first shade colour the base colour of the shield and go from there.  The highlight would only be one or two steps above the base sky blue colour used on the cloak.  It worked better and managed to avoid most tide marks.  However I’m thinking my dark blue needs to be replaced.  It’s just too watery and seems to have no binding medium left in it.

Raw wood display base

I also started on the display base.  I’m thinking of using one of the resin rocks I made with the pinkysil and easycast resin previously as the main part of the base and a few small twigs as broken tree stumps.  For the wood I got a chair leg from Bunnings and cut it half and stained it much like it did for the display base of El Torres.

After staining

Next steps are tidying up the figure of all those little mistakes and doing a full trial of the snow effects.  Also I need to do a few more glazes on the shield and lower cloak area (for the mud splatter).  The good thing about using one to the resin rocks is that I can make as many as I want as trial pieces :)

54mm Prince of Novograd white work and 28mm Flemish figure for Saga

Two main bits of work this week and a bit more detail on painting white.  Things were a little rushed last week hence the short post.

 I spent some time this week working more on the white surcoat of my 54mm knight.  This is a challenge as I don’t normally paint white and there is a lot to cover.  I’m using a very similar white range as I did for my test 28mm viking figure with some more shading down.  Colour range current is

VMC Black Grey
VGC Sombre Grey
VGC Ghost Grey + VGC Dead White - base
VGC Dead White
VMC Gloss White
VMA White

I’m pretty much done with the shading and am still working up the highlights.  To avoid that paste like consistency of white paint I’m working with very thin glazes with a unifying glaze of the base coat every 3-4 steps of shading or highlighting.  My shading was a bit too dramatic (i.e. bad) but with a number of base coat and mild shade coat glazes all over the surcoat I managed softened the transitions.    So I’m still not getting the smoothness of transitions right.  It’s getting there but is very slow work.  After an hour of thin whites and greys you aren’t really sure you have changed things much.

In addition to the base coat glazes to unify the shading/highlights I’m also doing some glazes of the shade/highlight colours.  But I’m being selective on this so for example the top half of the figure is getting more highlight glazes and the bottom is getting more shading glazes.  All this is in an effort to achieve that zenithal lighting result of the lower portions of the figure being darker than the upper portions.  Thus your eye is naturally drawn up to the face of the figure.

Taking a break from white, grey and gloss white I painted up another Flemish figure for saga.  This figure is from Eureka Miniatures from their Dark Ages range.  An ok figure but with horrible little squinty eyes.  Really deeply recessed and hard to not blob on paint all around the eye socket.  Just need to finish off the base now.

A little bit of 54mm white

This week involved with working on my 54mm knight with most of the work being on the white surcoat.  I started with a base coat of 50% VGC Ghost grey / 50% flat white.  Thus was shaded down adding mid grey to the base coat colour.  My first shading was a bit rough so I had to reglaze back with the base coat a number of times to try and return some of the smoothness to the transitions.  After that I tried to remember that after every new layers of shading I needed to do a glaze in the base coat again.  On the lower parts of the surcoat I also did some very light glazes of VGC Earth and VGC Khaki to represent dirt/mud.

The cloak was base coat painted in VMC Sky Blue which is a lovely light blue.  Just what I was after.

Work and home life conspired and painting days were in short supply so that was pretty much all that got done.  I did get a new (old) 54mm figure off eBay.  I picked up the “Samurai with Naginata” / MAA84 from the Osprey Men at Arms series.  The lure of the multiple bright colours and wooden lacquer effects of samurai armour was too much and the price was very good.  The figure itself is well cast and minimal flash.  I do think that the body of the figure is a bit on the flat side.  I bit like figures from the early 1980s.  

54mm face painting, Ice Viking in 28mm and some static grass

A mixed bag this week.  I spent the first part of it working on the face and hair of my 54mm knight figure.  There isn’t much flesh on the figure as the alternative head I choose has a beard.  So I went for my usual flesh range (dark to light) of

VPA Shadows Flesh
VMC Medium Flesh (base)
VMC Dark Flesh
VMC Flat Flesh
VGC Dead White

Yes, Medium Flesh is darker than Dark Flesh :)  I also usually add some dirt shadows with Earth or so other dark tan.  After all there wasn’t much washing in the middle ages.  I took the highlights beyond what I normally do (I have the Cancon painting classes with Meg Maples/Mark Soley to thank for that) and yes, it does look better.  At a few meters away the face really pops.  Not 100% on the right eye, I think it may have to move up slightly.  Never been good at eyes and my own eyes aren’t helping things as they get older.

Slightly over exposed there..

For the hair I tried something different and went for fully white hair.  Normally I do the standard brown or grey.  The base colour was a warm off white (i.e. looked a bit yellow) VMC Light Sand.  Rather than do my 28mm hair technique of doing a dark wash followed by some dry brushing I tried to paint the entire hair as one piece, much like painting an irregular shaped sphere.  Another technique picked up thanks to the internet.  This was helped as the sculpt had the hair in waves down the head.  I medieval perm job.  On the underside of hair wave I shaded down with a tan yellow to brown and on the top of the waves I highlighted up with flat white to gloss white.  The end result was a little harsh on the shadows, so I need to go back and have another go.  But this is the way to paint hair so it looks like hair rather than strands of straw.

Still not being sure of the main colours for the knight I did a test figure using an old Ral Partha 28mm figure.  I went for a cool (blue) white for his shirt and a light blue for the cloak.  For the flesh I went for a lighter nordic skin colour and made the VMC Dark Flesh the base.  For the white tunic my range was

VGC Ghost Grey + VGC Dead White
VGC Dead White
VMC Gloss White
VMA White - I find the airbrush range white is great.  Very bright but totally smooth.

For the blue cloak the range was

VGC Magic Blue
AP Electric Blue (the lightest blue I had)
VGC Dead White
VMA White


So a “grey white” and “blue white” combo.  The blue cloak was too dark for what I was aiming for.

The final highlights of white are too extreme next to the Magic Blue.  Next time I will start with a lighter blue.  I’m also going to trial some snow effects for the first time on his base.  I’m not sure if the 54mm knight will have snow but currently he is looking like being a very cold colour scheme so the snow would add to that.

I’ve been doing some reading of various learn to paint oils/acrylics/etc books to expand and improve my skill set.  Something I picked up was that it is almost impossible to make a colour lighter and brighter by mixing.  By adding white you make the colour lighter/whiter but adding white always makes the colour duller.  Mixing any two colours will always also result in a colour darker than the lightest.  This is because paint is colour subtractive.  So for really light colours you need to buy them.  So after 30mins of trying to make a blue lighter and brighter than the AP Electric Blue I found those books know what they are on about.  I could get a lighter blue, but it was dull as.  Luckily I’m 5 mins away from The Combat Company so I went and grabbed a pot of VMC Sky Blue.  This is all going towards doing the cloak of the knight as a faded out blue.  So a very light blue base up to white/linen due to sun fade and weather.

Finally in all that excitement I finished off the bases of my two Flemish warriors with my usual dirt mix, flock and static grass.  More recently I’ve started to paint the grass tufts a few different greens and yellows to break up the uniformity.  Green base rims just to kick it old school.

Soldiers 54mm Prince of Novograd and Warlord Games Druid figure

I started work on my 54mm Soldiers figure, Prince of Novograd this week.  The first part of the figure to do was the chainmail as the dry brushing on it can easily over spray onto the rest of the figure.  After a black undercoat I dry brushed very lightly up through:

VMA Black Metal
AP Gun Metal
AP Plate Mail Metal
AP Shining Silver
VMA Aluminium

I also did a gradual highlighting with the dry brushing so as you go up the figure there is more of the lighter metallics.  So on the legs I only went from Black Metal to Plate Mail.  Under the arms up to Shining Silver and only on the tops of the arms did I get all the way up to Aluminium.

After all that I did a glaze in VMC Earth to bring things back a bit.  I find I can’t do much work at night under lights with the metallics as the high reflection factor make it very hard to judge colours.  My next step is to start working the sky/earth glazes and some more general shadow glazes over all the chainmail.

While I was dry brushing I was trying to work out what colours to do the other main parts of the figure, the cloak and surcoat.  The box art has the figure all white but I didn’t want to do that.  I considered a Crusader looks, or even something totally made up.  Not being sure of my white skill I broke out the box of misc. 28mm figures and found one to trial things on.


The figure is a Warlord Games figure from their Ancient Celts: Druids 4 pack.  I wanted to try two main things, the first was a cool white scheme, the second a dirty linen look.

On his tunic I did a very cool white with grey/blue shadows.  In the picture it comes out a lot more yellow than it is.  I need to try taking the photo again in the light cube I have.  The colours where light blue, blue grey, dull white and gloss white.

On his cloak I went of off yellow linen effect.  The colours used were

VCG Earth
VMC Tan Yellow
VMC Iraqi Sand
VGC Dead White
VMA White

I was pretty happy with the cloak, the tunic less so.  Still need some more practice on painting white.  I finished up the staff and flesh as further training and grabbed a piece of foam to base him on.  This came from a comment from the wife who mentioned that he looked better tilted back a little like he was on the side of a rock.  I agreed and liked the paint work enough that I wanted to finish him off with a fancy base.  Also, more basing practice.  Now to let the glue dry and then I’ll coat the foam in PVA glue and some texture material.  I will perhaps try using the oils again to paint up the base as I like playing with the properties of oil paints.

Re-org time, with a little bit of painting

Not much painting this week as kid number one was sick most of the week so sleep was pretty much not on (getting up two times a night four nights in a row, very ugly).  As a result the brain and the eyes were just not willing to do much.  In the end I managed to get a bit more shading done on 75mm man, but nothing much.  However while painting in my LGS another customer wandered past and asked me about using a wet palette and I sprouted enthusiastically about it.  So that was a win.

With my new 54mm knight I just didn’t like the helmeted figure.  It just looked like a suit of armour, not a person.  So I ordered some extra 54mm scale heads (MIG’s medieval heads 2).  I ripped off the current helmet and after some cutting and sanding had a new head in place.  The difference is huge.  As soon as the new head went on the figure came alive.  I wanted to paint this figure now, instead of looking at it with a “oh well, guess it didn’t cost much” feeling.

Only a flesh wound

While playing doctor chop shop I also cut off the right leg and turned it in some what.  The original feet positions were at approx. 90 degrees to each other, which is a very unnatural pose.  Now the feet match the rest of the stance a bit better.  With all the cutting done I finished up with some green stuff to fill in the gaps.

My painting area has become a bit crowded of late.  On three sides I have terrain/basing materials, half done figures, 1/32 left over bits, undercoated figures, glue, etc.  The wife had seen a steel 10 draw unit in Officeworks awhile back and suggested I check it out.  It being quite nice I purchased one for $99.

Each draw is slightly larger than an A4 sheet of paper and about 5cm deep.  The 10 draw units come on wheels too.  The draws can be removed too.  This extra storage allowed me to move all my basing/resin cast/etc into the draws and empty out the painting area.  I lined the draws with a layer of non-slip matting and some felt.  This stops things from rolling around.

In fact I liked the 10 draw unit so much I purchased two 5 drawer models for the shed.  They are a perfect fit for the narrow hammerlock shelves I have in there.  So if you are looking to tidy up, I fully recommend them.