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. 

Color Scheme Designer, A Great Online Colour Wheel

Just a quick post today to direct anyone who's not seen it to the excellent online colour wheel available at http://colorschemedesigner.com. Really worth a look if you're starting a new project and need some inspiration, or are looking to spice up an ongoing army with spot on additional detail. 

The UltraMarch Project: Mucky Marines Take Shape

Here are a couple of my very mucky Ultramarines. I fear it's only going to get worse for them! As per usual I'm building up glazes and washes over a series of highlights (hence the white), however, this time I've decided to get all experimental with the Tamiya Color 'Clear X' range of paints. These are glossy, gloopy, transparent colours available in Blue, Red, Yellow, Green and Orange. 

I've mostly used the orange here, building up from a heavy covering over the basing cork and up the legs. Then, I added some into the deeper recesses on the models, which I overlaid with the clear blue Tamiya X and some purple wash. This combination is proving very good for open-ended process I favour. These Ultramarines will end up quite some way from the squeaky clean GW preferred look. To my mind, 40k should be covered in deep layers of filth - the Eldar perhaps being an exception. 

Artistic Inspiration On The March

On the weekend we took the children and their grandmother to the National Museum in Cardiff. The children loved the natural history sections as they always do and we had a few minutes to fit in some of the art galleries. As we had the kids in tow this was done at double quick time, but I did have a chance to snap a couple of what I think are new additions to the collection. Both of the following show the kinds of colour mix, blends, overlaying and shading that I'm experimenting with at the moment. Except that I'm doing it on a cyclops and a ghorgon. 

Woman at the bath - Edgar Degas.
National Museum Cardiff

Effect of snow at Petit-Montrouge - Edouard Manet.
National Museum Cardiff 

Storing Paints In A KR MultiCase: The Ideal Solution For A Nomadic Splatterer

It seems that I've found an ideal solution for my nomadic painting lifestyle and I didn't have to look too far away - in fact, only as far as my excellent local games store, Firestorm Games. Yesterday I picked up a basic KR MultiCase and my paints have a new home that can easily travel around with me: around the house, to the in-laws, and to my new digs in Oxford (I'll be living there during the week from early October).

Here's how they fit:

Only a little modification required in order to fit the larger bottles - for these I simply slit down the dividers, taking care not to dislodge them completely, thereby creating larger sections. Simple stuff and really effective. Now I just need to demonstrate self control and not buy more paints...!

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 Hulk - My Entry For The Forge World Open Day Competition

On Sunday I went to the Forge World Open Day and entered the painting competition. This was first time that I'd shown my work in public and I was rather nervous. It was, though, an amazing experience, which really made me feel part of the community. It was also an immense pleasure to have some of my work in a display cabinet with other dedicated and talented hobbyists, and to display my work in GW HQ only meters away from classic and contemporary works of painting wizardry. Thanks again to everyone who gave me wonderful and positive feedback, including one of the FW designers who thought I'd won (I didn't).

By pushing myself to participate/compete I've now got the confidence to work harder, stretch my abilities and enter more competitions. My work is very different to the vast majority of what's out there, but seeing it side by side with the 'mainstream' I've had an opportunity to reflect on how it holds the same value, despite standing out for its stylistic and painterly departures. I began painting as a therapeutic exercise in dark and difficult times: I hope you'll forgive me blowing my own trumpet a little because it has evolved into a genuinely self-asserting craft.

Nurgle CSM Mutilators WIP #1

The fluff for Chaos Space Marine mutilators is better than the available GW models. Who doesn't think that fleshmetal is a great concept? For my Nurgle worshippers I decided to employ my hitherto nomadic and rather unloved river trolls as mutilators, reasoning that their appearance was suitably rotten and that I could develop an interesting technique for representing a hybrid of organic and machine. Here is my early progress. 

Plenty still to do but I'm laying down a kind of work that I've not tried before, namely capturing two different kinds of light and shade, which are opposite to each other. For the green areas that represent the hardened armour plates, I'm using highlights in the regular way. For the pinkish flesh parts though, I'm attempting lowlights, as you might say, to hint at a molten underbelly to these foul beasts. 

A Really Rotten Start To 2013 - A Deep Winter Of Nurgle Goodness

Happy New Year to one and all. 2013 begins for me with a deep winter love affair with all things Nurgle. Over the coming weeks I'm focusing exclusively on my joint Chaos Marines / Chaos Daemons force for 40k. I have all the models I need and I'm getting properly stuck in - as coming up-dates will show - with an eye also on the rumours that the new Great Unclean One is due out within a month, and will be accompanied by some kind of Plaguebearers riding giant flies set (please, please, please be good!) Fortunately I have funds set aside for them.

Generally this year I'm going to be far more project focused, as I've really got into the swing of things with my painting style reaching a very pleasing point of development. This won't mean 'to-do' lists as I'm still not keen on them and still have nothing specific to prepare for - I don't play tournaments, but I would like to tour my finished forces around a few gaming clubs at the tail end of the year.

So the early winter months will be Nurgle focussed. Around March I anticipate commencing the final push to get my beastmen finished, and these will be fully themed as a chaos undivided army (some Tzeench ungor skirmishers will be heading this way, for example). That should take me up to the summer when I will embrace my Dark Eldar and compete with my brother in something like an army-in-a-month challenge (or something like that... he'll be doing Dark Angels I think).

Speaking of my brother, he's a big collector (plastic crack addict) but not a blogger so I plan to feature some of his collection and work in the Gazette. A few other regular features will begin to appear, including some snappy book reviews (probably). We'll see.

Later in the year... who knows, but I very much like the idea of doing some Imperial Fists, although that depends on the freeing up of some serious cash from selling the depths of my collection...

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

Razorgor Conversion, Plus A Quick Review Of GW Texture And Base Paints

I'm quite taken by the bulgy-eyed weirdness of the GW Razorgor model, but seeing as I have a surfeit of bits(z) I decided to see if I could bash one together. It turned out to be a rather simple marriage of boar body and manticore head, with added spiky bits. I wanted this to be a dynamic piece so I'm posing him leaping over what will be an abandoned tomb of some once-celebrated warrior... or something like that! Anyway, I'm pleased with how this has come together so far.

I've photoed Boris (as my son has named him) at this stage because it also gives me a chance to mention the Ceramite White Base paint and Stirland Mud Texture paint that I used for the first time. I must say that I'm pretty impressed with both. The base white covers over my Army Painter white primer perfectly, while the texture paint is much better than I'd hoped, being rather flexible in how much gritty coverage it provides (I realise this photo doesn't do it justice, so you'll just have to take my word for it!). Well done GW on a couple of very useful products. 

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.

Painting Nomad Seeks Organisation, Must Have GSOH

In an effort to overcome my disorderly nature during this premium month for getting some serious painting done, I've made sure to kick things off with a good sort and tidy of the old paint box. Over the last year or so this got extremely jumbled, just like my mind specifically and life more generally. So some kind of reorganisation was on the cards. I'm what you might call a painting nomad in that, unlike those fortunate enough to have a permanent base for their painting operations, I move mine around constantly as the tides of daily life with two small kids dictate.

I'm not sure how anyone else organises their paints and because the chance of me misplacing then buying the same colour again was almost a reality last week, I enlisted the help of my wife; also known as she-who-knows-about-things. On her advice I have reorganised thusly:

This sort of follows the colour spectrum - with the obvious anomalies of metals and flesh. I've more-or-less phased out metals from my work following the development of a very simple but satisfactory non-metalic-metals approach. More on that as the WIP photos pop up over the coming days and weeks. 

Of Beastmen And Gardening Leave

Today I received the wonderful 'real world' news that I've landed a new job. As I'm virtually at the end of my current fixed contract I can now indulge in some 'gardening leave' while I see out my notice. So it's time for a bit of a painting challenge.

My aim is to fully cultivate 2000 points of my beastmen menagerie during October. This won't cover everything that I've got - a handful of large monsters and characters will be held in reserve - but it will mean that I'll finally have a completed, fully painted, playable force.

Here's the list I'm going to work with:

Lords

Beastlord with additional weapon, heavy armour, on tuskgor chariot

Great Bray Shaman

Core

22 Gors inc. full command + additional weapons

5 Chaos warhounds

10 Centigors inc. Warhoof + full command

Special 

3 Minotaurs inc. Bloodkine + additional weapons

Razorgor

10 Harpies

Rare

Ghorgon 

Jabberslythe

Total
Just a shade under 2000 points

BaneBeasts Blood Maw WIP #1

Oh boy is this guy fun to work with! Yes it's the Blood Maw from the fantastic BaneBeasts range and on the basis of this model I would happily have the whole lot because the quality is top notch. As with all large resin kits, this one took some work to put together, but what's a few bits of greenstuff between friends?

Here he is wearing a straightforward base coat. I'm going to make he very fleshy with tons of contrast and depth all over the place. In particular I'm looking forward to doing all the chipped details on his claws and teeth - which will be a bone-white when complete - and that pink slobbering gob. My brother suggested this model might make for a proxy Great Unclean One. That's a possibility. I'll have to see how carried away I get with all that craggy and gnarled skin...

Kissy, kissy

Folk Art Wicker White - A Review With Pirates

It will come as no surprise to regular visitors that I've been distracted away from one project by the lure of another. But as this temptation is my original Marienburg project I don't see any reason to feel bad about that! However, rather than talk about how that particular army is progressing and the plans I have for it (more on that next week... probably) I wanted to do a quick review of the cheap and cheerful white paint that I've been using to base coat the metal minis I'm using. 

I always seem to have trouble with metal models because I never get the priming and base coating phases right. Not anymore though. Wicker White by Folk Art is a very basic art supply that I've had hanging around for a while and I thought I'd give it a try for achieving a good base coat on my Foundry pirates. The results were exactly what I've been after - a good, strong pigment and a thin runny paint that can be slapped on and moved around with an easy flow and matt finish - happy days. This was important because I've decided to paint my Marienburg folks in a highly stylised 'technicolor' scheme that's reminiscent of the costumes from 1950s and 60s Hollywood movies... should be an interesting experiment!

Genestealer Cult - Full Cult-In-Progress

Well dear friends, here is the full cult-in-progress. So from left to right clockwise we have: Psyker Battle Squad with Overseer; Zoat mercenaries (used as Ogryns); Pure-bred Genestealers; two Broodlords; Genestealer Patriarch (Canifex model using Hive Tyrand rules); Genestealer Magus (Primaris Psyker); some Brood Brothers; three Cult Priests.

Plenty still to add, mostly full units of Brood Brothers, and I still need to figure out exactly how to model the hybrids. I also need to work on a basing scheme that builds from the 'industrial' poses that all the Space Hulk Genestealers have.

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. 

Minotaurs - Stage Two WIP

A couple of torso close-ups on two of my work-in-progress minotaurs from Scibor. As with all my work now I'm laying down bold lines of highlighting across and over multiple layers of shading. As I've said many times now, I'm not interested in developing a realist-cartoon style that is so popular at the moment; rather, I'm more inspired by the 'dirty' painters of the 80s and early 90s.

I am, however, fascinated by light in a way that work from that period rather neglected. This is why I've started using bold white highlights across all areas of my miniature painting. This was something that I started doing on canvas and paper and decided to import wholesale into my work with models.

The Scibor models have been ideal for developing and experimenting with this method as they are craggy, rough and full of brutal detail. Hopefully I'll get the finishing touches on these over the next couple of days.

WIP, WIP, Hooray! Let's Hear It For The Paintbrush Punks

We are all - at heart - deeply insecure people. If you don't agree with that then I fear you might be a certifiable psychopath and you should probably pop along to your local psychiatrist. If the tabletop hobby blogosphere is to be celebrated for anything then it should be for works-in-progress photographs, because it is these humble offerings that allow us all to bask in shared doubt. I value these types of picture more that anything else: certainly more than the flashy, semi-professional looking snaps of squeaky clean, cartoony miniatures, in all their finished/finalised glory. 

Scibor Minotaurs WIP

Sometimes I do like to look at pictures of models like that, but without the in-progress views granted by genuine hobby blogs, it's difficult to fully appreciate them. I want to see from others what I see when I down paintbrushes at 11.30pm under the pool of light from my daylight bulb and say to myself - 'what the fuck does that look like?!' - before going to bed with the three most reassuring words repeating in my head: work - in - progress.

I also like when fellow hobbyists share photos of their 'finished' work, not in a sense of triumphalist completion, but in a sense of artistic abandonment. These people aren't following a formula, either technical (smooth, cartoony) or regimental (just getting the rank'n'file done) - these are the paintbrush punks - where expression matters more than perfection and where the terrier of doubt nips at the heals the whole way along.