Scenery Week Pt. 1, GW Moonscape Craters WIP

Sometimes I just feel like I've lost my painting mojo, sit in front of a model and have no idea where to start or even which end of a brush is which. Long breaks don't help. When this happens I try to look for alternative hobby jobs to get my hand in and confidence back. This past week I've been working on a scenery project for 40k with just this aim. And here's some of the first examples. 

I've had this moonscape for a while. It's now OOP, which is a shame because it was great value. I like the new Quake Cannon craters too - they have tons of detail - but they don't cover even half the area of these older scenics. Here I've simply primed in Army Painter Necrotic Green and then given them a liberal coating of 50/50 Antelope Green and Paynes Grey inks from DR. Next up will be a light dry brush with a mid-grey then a couple of lighter colours, some washes into the recesses and static grass around the edges. Nothing revolutionary yet very psychologically soothing. It does remind me that I need to finish Castle Davenheim sometime though... Oops. 

Genestealer Cult Leman Russ Squadron

Things have been a little quiet recently but that doesn't mean that I've not been busy. Mostly, I've been beavering away on the mech for my Genestealer cult in my little attic room in Oxford. As I'm back in Cardiff for a few days, I thought I'd do a quick series of photo updates. In this first one you can see my original Leman Russ now has a friend. 

The other noticeable thing is that I've just got around to adding a contrast colour to this scheme - the brilliant Flame Red ink from Daler Rowney. I've enjoyed exploring my painting style through these and I'm looking forward to getting them finished sometime soon and getting some good shots of them to show off the punky painterliness that's becoming my signature. More tread-head goodness tomorrow. 

Paints: The 'Hidden' Hobby Expense

News of newly purchased miniatures elicits a distinct type of displeasure from my wife. New paints on the other hand, are generally fine. This is odd though as paints are bloody expensive. I've not worked out how much this lot must've cost me, although it's easily over £150 - more, due to the price of the Daler Rowney inks:

It doesn't even look like a large collection to me (which is worrying...). How many paints do you have?

The simple truth is that I don't need to add to this money pit! I have a great selection of all the main colours I like to work with and what I really need is to be able to see them all when I'm painting to I can make the best selections.

I got them all out like this to sort through everything I had and to think of a better way of storing them - at the moment they sit in a rather messy huddle in a toolbox. I have to store them this way because I'm a nomadic painter without a permanent place to paint at home. A consequence of this is that I'm never entirely sure of what I've got. This is probably why I have 17 shades of green...

I'm determined to increase my productivity and quality of my painting so I'm on the look out for a neat solution... One that prevents me from adding to the 10 browns I already have...

How do you store and use your paints?

Plague Marine Conversions, Part The Second

For stage two of these guys I decided that third party backpacks just weren't going to cut it, so I delved into by double-Dark Vengeance box and fished out the backpacks from the chosen (which I'll replace with standard chaos ones from GW via mail order). Here are a couple in shiny-white primer, and a few more wearing a base-shade of Daler Rowney Antelope Brown ink, which has proved to be an amazing base-shader (with a littler medium and a drop of water added.

The first test model alongside my version of Typhus from Scibor

The base-shaded 'command group'

Some in white primer toting various weapons 

A bit of base shading done on the Scibor snail

Probably the best example of my base shading approach on a mildly kitbashed Helbrute

Achieving Super Bright Highlights

Being a hobby butterfly with a large and diverse collection it's only recently that I've begun to think seriously about the latter stages of painting my models. Although many of my paint jobs have reached what many would consider a 'tabletop standard' I'm really a painter above all else, so I'm constantly experimenting with style and techniques across numerous models. With my efforts to get a completed beastmen herd onto the gaming table I'm now experimenting with super bright highlights and the latter stages of paint jobs (from my own arty-farty perspective).

Something I've always liked is a strong contrast between dark and light. This is something that's employed by miniatures painters with very different styles - the blogger James Wappel is an example of one end of the scale, while John Blanche represents the other end. Using Daler Rowney inks I've been able to achieve a very satisfying range of dark shades. In order to match this with bright highlights I've turned to the Deco Art range of craft paints. The other day I was after a strong pink, so I picked up a pot of Emperor's Children from GW, only to find that it's better described as a light purple - a good colour actually, but not what I was after. A trip to Hobby Craft and the Americana range from Deco Art gave me all I needed. These paints make ideal substitutes for the GW and other ranges - they're inexpensive, well pigmented, AND you get over twice the paint for less of your cash. I know there are some great bright colours available from Game Color, but the prices of these ones is unbeatable. Check back to see how I get on with these paints in the coming weeks as I push forward with my beastmen project. For now though, here's a WIP of one of my warhounds.

Lahmian Medium (Citadel Technical) Review

As someone who uses several different acrylic mediums already I was sceptical as to whether Lahmian Medium from the 'technical' section of the new Citadel paint range would be of any use to me. I'm quite sure now that I was mistaken - it's extremely useful - but this might be because of the specific paints I use.

I love to use Daler Rowney acrylic inks with my miniatures, I find everything about them a joy: the range of colours, their flow... everything. But the trouble with using artists' acrylics as opposed to paints made specifically for miniatures is that the finish can very often be too glossy. This is where Lahmian Medium steps in! It's perfect for adding in small doses to the Daler Rowney inks for achieving a matt finish - just a small brush-load mixed through the ink completely alters what you can achieve.

Using a medium when painting is a very wise move in all cases of course, but if you've ever thought about using artists' inks then this might give you a good opportunity to go ahead and do that. A note of caution to end on though, I wouldn't personally try this with regular artists' acrylics as they're totally the wrong consistency for miniatures work. 

Nurgle Champion

A wet and windy weekend with the family away meant that I was able to get some serious painting time in and complete this Nurgle champion for my brother. 

This is from Engima miniatures Massive Darkness range and is actually called a ‘skull dwarf’, although it’s much taller than the average stunty and should therefore fit neatly into one of his marauder units. I lopped off one of his arms and replaced it with the massive chaos sword from the GW manticore kit and put together a simple cork’n’bits base to raise him above the rabble. 

Although there was some altruism is doing the model as a gift it also provided a good opportunity to experiment with a number of paints and techniques that I’ve been wanting to try out for a while. The armour, for example, is Birdwing Copper from the D&R pearlescent range, built up with multiple washes and glazes, including the new Citadel orange wash and Model Color’s Vergitas glaze, both of which are very flexible and effective. 

This isn’t exactly as I’d like it to be, but I’m pleased enough with both the model and my paint job to consider this a success. One thing that I’ve noted above all is that my loose and multi-layered approach is pretty much entirely open ended. I know the old saying that ‘a work of art is never finished, merely abandoned’ and that seems the case here when you stray away from the paint scheme formulae presented in The Big GW Book Of Painting Space Marines (And Such)… you know the kind of thing. Anyway, I’m messing around this evening with a base then wash-glaze-wash-glaze-wash… approach that seems reasonably swift and still kind of arty. We shall see how this works out during the month of May…

Daler Rowney Inks - Review (Because Other Paints Do Still Exist!)

With the release of the new Citadel paint range and the general marketing push by our good friends at GW, I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk a little about the inks that I use from Daler Rowney. I've been planning on doing this for a while and it seems like a good time to let everyone know about some alternatives that they might not consider because they're not specifically sold as a miniature paints range. On their website painting guides GW are now suggesting that in order to paint blue, for example, one actually requires five or six different kinds of blue in order to achieve a desirable result. This is - quite frankly - a silly and blatant marketing ploy. Any experienced artist will tell you that you can get a very wide range of shades from a limited number of colours, and that you should restrict your palette accordingly. The FW range is very good for this. Some of them are opaque while others are transparent, and all can be watered down to achieve reasonable washes - although to give GW some credit, their washes (sorry 'shades') are still pretty unbeatable in this area. 

The FW artist ink range from Daler Rowney

Unlike the Citadel '145' range, which has been expanded (insert trumpet fanfare etc.), the FW inks are available in fewer colours, but this is a strength rather than a problem, especially if you actually enjoy mixing your paints. The dropper bottles these come in makes this incredibly easy, as there is a pipette inside each of the screw caps, making the transfer from bottle to palette painless.

A few bottles from my growing collection - Flame Red, Flesh Tint, and the extremely versatile Payne's Grey

These paints are more expensive at around £5 a bottle here in the UK. But as with brushes, you get what you pay for. Also, the ease with which different tones can be mixed means that will a little forward planning, money could be saved (one or two blues, not six...). Using inks also takes some practice because they are (rather obviously) more fluid than other types of acrylic paint. I'm finding it really worthwhile to give them a solid, central place on my painting table - highly recommended. 

Ghorgon - Stage One WIP

Of all the Warhammer monster kits I've worked with, the Ghorgon is my favourite. When I put the model together I was pleased to find that the Cygor parts are all interchangeable, so I was able to make mine look even more dynamic and powerful with the upper left arm pointing upwards, and the lower right arm grasping a ripped apart statue as a weapon. I held off attaching much of the 'skull-bling' (TM GW) as, well, there is such a thing as too many skulls, even on a raging psychopathic beast such as this.

I decided to get started on the paint job yesterday as I was pretty exhausted and didn't feel up to the close attention my giant requires in the final stages - more on that next week I think. Once again I employed the white primer, bone undercoat spray method, followed by sepia shading to bring out the detail. I've started to work on the foundation tones of the skin with Flesh Tint ink from Daler Rowney - once again (yes, again again) I've found it to be perfect for me. Overall, I think I'll keep the palette very limited on this one, with the possibility of some very fine detail picked out in contrast colours. Should be fun!

Warhammer Giant - Stage Three WIP (Plus March Pipe Dream)

With March already upon us it's time for some progress and some wishful planning. In that vein, here are some new WIP shots of my giant. This chap is likely (although by no means certainly) to be the first model I complete in my 'canvas' style of painting (i.e. the slow approach - yes, yes, I know everything I paint is done slowly, but like my marriage, I have to fit my hobby into about 45 minutes most evenings...). So the March Pipe Dream is - to finish the giant and crack on with the Jabberslythe.

So far I'm really happy with how this paint job is developing. This evening I picked up some more of the Daler Rowney inks - a white, a cyan, and a scarlet (all lighter colours for highlights and/or some blending) - I've only had time to dabble with them so far, but as with the other DR inks they are superb. I hope you'll be able to see the influence of the artists I looked at in my short 'artistic inspirations' series coming through in my work here.

Painterly Methods: Sketch (Fast), Canvas (Slow)

John Blanche apparently has two approaches to painting miniatures - one fast, one slow. Seeing as a) the man clearly knows his way around a palette, and b) I adore his work, I'm in the process of stealing/adapting/perverting this split approach. My version will divide along two lines that I'm (pretentiously) calling 'sketch' and 'canvas'. Overall I want to develop a painterly style that predominantly works with colour over line whether I'm working swiftly or at a drawn out pace.

A bottle of Daler Rowney acrylic ink and a rather experimental Marienburg greatsword

The Sketch Method

AKA the 'fast' approach. Starting with a bone colour base coat I'm trying to develop a way of using inks and washes to quickly develop light, shade and colour. I'm restricting my palette to only a handful of colours for each project, although all will be founded on the bone base, with sepia and dark grey shading, through to bone/white mix highlights.

The Canvas Method

Although in terms of technique this will be very similar to the sketch approach, the canvas method is going to be open-ended, draw on a wider palette, and be more expressive. When using the canvas method I also plan to use thicker paints in order to develop texture through visible strokes and mounting layers  - this will particularly be a focus for larger models and characters.