Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas everyone!! As the end of the year rolls around most of us are lucky enough to get that miniature we've wanted for awhile, and even better some time to actually paint!

My new years resolution is to paint more often and work on a bunch of techniques and stuff I've been putting off. This is not helped by my boss buying me a PS3 for Christmas... But I'll try to survive somehow ^_^

Wishing you all a safe and happy holidays!
Mike

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Not exactly the most stunning update, but I've been super busy at work...
One day I'll finish a squad... one day I'll play a game... :D


















Big Red Marvin was purchased at the Auckland Armageddon. He appeals to me for some reason :D 

Sunday, October 9, 2011

40k Poines... A sign of the coming apocalypse? I think so...

Oh the humanity... So Bronies have invaded the 40k universe... Nothing is sacred... What does this have to do with my painting blog? Nothing... Just thought I'd share ^_^


Saturday, September 17, 2011

A single cry in the darkness?



The pre-order cost for Dreadfleet in the United Kingdom is $70 GBP. This converts to 133.34 NZD.

The pre-order cost for Dreadfleet in the USA is $115 USD. This converts to $138.75 NZD.

The pre-order cost for Dreadfleet in New Zealand is $220 NZD. This converts to $155.45 GBP.

I live in New Zealand.

Will I be playing this game? No... No I will not...
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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Blood Angel Test Mini...

Blamo... Rattled through the last few steps for the test miniature...



- I went with Firestone gems. Seemed more appropriate for some reason?
- Flamer housing is yellow, I thought about making the chainsword yellow as well, but black is better with the scroll on there...
- Simple flagstone painting for the base
- I'm trying a couple of new varnishes on his legs, so far shiny... much too shiny... But he will be well protected when I'm finished :D - Jump pack engine thingies are just a progression of dark to light grays... Rather than glowing I wanted it to look well used...
- There's a tiny amount of wear / tear on the miniature. Mainly just his legs. I want them to look like they're going back into the field rather than in the midst of battle... Not sure why... Who can say how the dark recesses of my mind works... I do things on a whim :D

And that's all she wrote...

Oh I don't like the photos very much, but the weathers going down the crapper and I can't find my lights... Meh... What'cha gonna do... ^_^
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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Blood Angels - Assault Marine Test Mini WiP

Day Two!

Not really day two, more like the accumulation of many small bits of painting as I've been giving my hand time to rest and recover over the past few days... The very fine detail work still escapes me as you'll notice from the helmet lenses, however they're passable for me ^_^





Done today:

- Helmet. Base coated with the Foundation yellow, heavily watered down. Then I've given it a few coats of really watered down wash to darken it and get into the corners. Almost 2:1 water to wash. This helps spread out the wash and you don't get those streaks. Only problem is the drying time, but hey, you can't have everything. Then I've gone over it again with the yellow and then added some bright yellow to the mix and gone over parts of it again. The Chalice on his helm was going to be gold and probably still will be, but it'll be lightened up quite a lot so there's a contrast between the yellow and gold.
- Wings. I went with White and Grey for the wings on his left shoulder. I was going to go with gold, but I like this enough and it's a good contrast, plus it's easy :D

Everything else is pretty standard for me.
Gold is boltgun > Dark Gold > Medium Gold > Orgyn Wash > Light Gold
Seals are Dark Green > Medium Green > Light Green (Still need to another green / yellow there)

To do:

- The armor needs touching up in places. Some of it looks messy as so I'll do that as well, this is more from my inexperience with my airbrush than anything else...
- The weapons! For the life of me I have no idea what to paint the housing of the flamer... Some of the GW stuff shows them as black for housing and silver for the internals, and I might try that, but I think a different kind of red might be nice? Opinions? Anyone?
- Gemstones! This one has a crap load of gemstones to do, and I'm not sure which colors to do. Fire gems or Green stones. You can see examples of either in the thread somewhere... Green is nice and makes a good contrast for the red, but he's a Blood Angel... And he's using a flamer! So maybe Fire gems? Gah... I'm not usually this indecisive...
- Jump pack lightning? Should I go with blue? Or would adding another color mess the balance up? Dunno... Batting a thousand today aren't I...

As you can tell I need help making some decisions, I'm a mess... And please note these color choices will be applied to the whole squad... :D
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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

In an effort to stave off absolute boredom I decided to try and paint some stuff using my Airbrush. While I've used it for undercoating before the concept of fine control wasn't something I had tried, and bored as I was it seemed like a good idea at the time ^_^



Drawing heavily from Eggrolls Blood Angels I figured I'd give it a go with the red (Vent... Work with Red you say?! Surely not... And don't call me Shirley...) Overall I think its quite interesting, like anything, the more I use the airbrush, the better I get, and I think I require a few more squads before I'm fully comfortable with it. That being said, it is hellishly quick to do, so I imagine I'll be using it more for squad work...

I think the biggest thing I learned from today is too contrast the colors, go for a really large shift in colors to make things really pop. I think you could go from black to high end red if you wanted to and the effect would look pretty cool...

Dunno about the fine detail brush work and my hand yet... maybe in a couple of days... But yay! Painting! :D

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Friday, August 5, 2011

Space Hulk Replacements - Inquisitor Fuellner

I imagine the first thing people will say is that I haven't written anything on the shield, and you're right... I haven't, my goodness you are clever! I'm still at a loss of what to write... Hopefully inspiration will strike as I'm painting other things. The shield comes from the Terminator box set. It's attached via a Space Marine arm to the body. I decided the colors needed to be linked to the colors already in use, and the shield has good ridges for washes :)

Inquisitor Fuellner - Ordo Xenos



Cue the Charles Xavier jokes :D
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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Another day, and more painting! OMG TWO DAYS IN A ROW! ITS SOME KIND OF RECORD!!


Done today:
- More work on the green. Brightened it in places while trying to get the blending together... Mixed success... I might have to redo the collar. - Added the hammer... Went for bone, and its gonna tie into the shield colors... When I choose the shield... (Curse you Whale!!) - Lightened the skin, got a tip from Edmundblack over at 40k forums to lighten the skin and make him look twisted. I think it looks much better...
Won't have time tomorrow for any painting, gotta work... and then out to dinner...
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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Space Hulk - Inquisitor: WiP

Anyway, onward... Forever onward... I have been painting a little more, which is a good thing, but I've gotten a little rusty... So things are taking me even longer, and some times I'm not happy with how things turn out...


- The red took me a lot longer than I would of liked... I've tried to make it a little more brighter than my normal red, as such there is many, many layers of red...
- I need to touch up some of the green; add some highlights, brighten some transitions... I'm also at a loss of what color to do with his shield... If you have any ideas shout out...
- I'm going to be making the little hourglass thing in a bright blue, just to give it a new color...
- Various other things; the gold, the face, the fur, etc...
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Thursday, May 19, 2011

The boring update... After a Disaster...

So begins my tale of woe:
I'm normally one to have a small disaster when I'm painting something, especially something for myself, but this time the disaster was forced upon me by my niece... She came over while I was painting (With her Dad) and was... unleashed is the best term...

I go down stairs to talk, they leave, I go back to my painting table and the miniature I've put about six hours into is sporting a brand new bright orange smattering of paint and several finger prints... and if that wasn't enough there was orange paint all over my painting desk...

And so begins the cleaning... The desk was easy, but alas the inquisitor was reduced to a disaster... I have had to subject him to a dip to begin anew tomorrow... Don't get me wrong, I love my family but holy crap I'm pissed...
ANYWAY! To go along with this most boring update in the world I have the bases I'm using! That's right! Instead of a Figure update, you get bases! ;Woohoo! Break out the amazement...




The bases were pretty easy:
- Square base with a square bit of plasticard and then a few extras chucked on top as I wanted.
- Undercoat in black
- Heavy Drybrush with Charcoal (Dark Grey)
- Medium Drybrush with Battle Grey (Medium Grey)
- Light Drybrush with Astronomican Grey (Light Grey)
- Sponge on Black, Brown, Silver for base rust - Use some pigments to give it a little more "reality". I'm not so good with the pigments yet.
- Put some wash in the cracks / Cuts.

Done!

Still needs to be varnished otherwise the pigments walk away every time you handle them. Simple but effective enough. I wanted the Bases to impart a sense of devastation and ruin. And yes, before someone tells me I am aware that a vacuum doesn't create rust, but my space hulk has an atmosphere inside... And it's moist... So things Rust... I WIN!

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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Space Hulk replacements

Alrighty! Here's the starting miniatures for my Space Hulk Replacements.





I really like Space Hulk. It's a fun game (Which I always lose, but thats beside the point), but the biggest problem I've always had is with the awesome looking Terminators dying so easily in close combat against the Genestealers! A normal solution might be to play better so you never get into close combat, but I'm not that good, plus this way I get to paint stuff I don't normally get to paint, so here we go:

Inquisitor Space Hulk Assault Warband GO!

In the Character / Leader department we have an Inquisitor and Lord Commissar taking over the roles as Sarge's, and a Primaries Psyker as the Librarian. Other choices for the Psyker were potentially the Assassin Psyker, or an Eldar character. Seeing the Psyker miniature sold me though. It looks cool

The Specials, ie the unique weapon choices and such we have a Death-Cult Assassin as the lightning claws, as the Assault Cannon we have Gunnery Sergeant Harker. For the heavy Flamer and Trooper with a chain fist we've got a Kasrikn flamer and Sarge.

Filling out the troopers are regular Kasrikn troopers. I was considering using normal IG minis, but the fact of the matter is they look naff. The Kasrikns look mean as hell and the hotshot lasguns look neat too. They require some reshaping, but overall I'm quite happy with them.

So there you have it. The starting shots of my Space Hulk Replacements.. . Knowing how slow I paint, this is gonna take me forever... I might get good at the game before I finish! HA!Oh and the bases are square for ease of space hulk positioning and such. I didn't have enough square bases so a few have circles for now ^_^
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Monday, April 25, 2011

Don't ask me how he uses the weapon...

Sorry for the delay WhaleMusic, but with Zombie Jesus statutory holiday and ANZAC day and insane robots trying to kill me I've been busy... Oh so very busy... ^_^

Completed Shadow Sanctus Captain! Hooray!





More stuff I've done:
- Tried to tone down the purple highlights and tie them together with a few diluted washes. Result: Mixed success. The front ones look OK, but now they've lost some of their pop. The back ones, who can say... I've been looking at them too long ^_^
- Gem Stones are done. Not happy with a couple of them, but only noticed the problem when they're blown up on the photos... Usual method of doing them, just using the greens and yellows instead of the red, orange and yellows...
- The backpack! I've said it before I'll say it again. I dislike Space Marine backpacks. They're boring as hell and seem to take forever... Pain in the ass...
- Completed the Base with one more drybrush of a light grey and then added some brown plant stuff. No clue what the model name is...

Stuff I'm not happy with:
- The handle part of the weapon under the guard is rough as hell. If I'd noticed it before hand I would of tried to chip away some of the superglue build up, but I didn't. Bah...
- No freehand... Again... Sorry Whalemusic, don't feel confident to slap some freehand on him so this is how he ends. I know I should be trying it, but honestly I didn't have the heart to screw it up and have to fix what I've shanked...

---

This ends my Trade Marine Obligations... I think? Anyway, I'm moving onto a project for myself next. It involves 12 miniatures, all ordered from GW Direct which cost me an arm and a leg... But I wanted specific miniatures... If anyone wants to guess about what the 12 miniatures are for shout out... I'll give you naming rights of one of them if you get it... Hmmm what has 12 miniatures in a GW game?
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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Day two of this trade marine. Obvious additions are the head and the arm. I'm liking how it's all coming together... Took some extra special attention with the head & I think it's paid off quite well.




Done today:
- Smoothed out the purple a little bit. I felt the transitions were stringy... If that can be used to descibe painting?
- The helm is done with Bolt Gun > Base Gold (Andrea Paints). Then a glaize of Sepia, then detail lines with Orgyn Flesh, then Devlan Mud and then finally black. To highlight the gold I used base again followed by White Gold (Andrea Paints).
- The eyes and head gem were done with my regular gem technique. I might have to redo the left eye (His right), it looks a little funny...
- The Base: Pretty simple, did four layers of greys, each drybrushed...

To Do:
- Detail work: Gems, parchment wording, etc. - I'm a little unsure about what color to make the leg laurel, I was thinking gold, but I might be a little overboard on the gold, maybe green? - A little more work on the weapon. It's a dark grey right now, might lighten it up a couple of touches of grey... - The Backpack! Crap! I forgot the backpack... AGAIN! *sigh* - Anything else I can think of, or get told about from all of you :D
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