Airbrush stuff continued...

If you don't know and follow Tom Schadle, over at Tom Schadle Miniatures I highly suggest you start reading his blog and following his amazing work. He's won awards and paints professionally and all the other stuff that most of us aspire towards. Anyway, look at his stuff... ^_^

I borrowed (See 'blatantly stole') his colour scheme and technique for his Infinity terrain and used it to see if I could reproduce something that kinda looked the same... Good News! What I've produced doesn't suck!

Was disturbingly easy as well. I used exactly the same method as tom did in his post here. Worked like a dream, I'm sure things will get better with more practice... 

Space Barrier.
When a regular sandbag just isn't good enough...

That marine couldn't hide behind that if his life depended on it... Wait...

Greetings folks, I've managed to finish the painting stages of the Blood Angel Assault sarge, there's bits and pieces which still need to be done, but the painting is done so I thought I'd take some photos and share ^_^

 

 

There's nothing really new that I've done here, but I'll break it all down as I do:

 - Blackstone Gems: Done as per [url=http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/315358.page]my tutorial[/url]. These are easy to do and only get easier with practice. If you have trouble with gems just do these. These are Fire Gems, but it works for any colors you want.
 - Wings: Wings are black lifted to white through some layering. Standard stuff, just layer up with progressing grays to white.
 - Silver: This was different than normal. A lot of time my silvers are dirty, but I figured I'd try do something different and bring them up with layers of BGS > Chainmail > Mithril. Looks quite good. Dunno if I'll keep it for everything, but I like the brightness of the plasma pistol and the straps.
 - Plasma Glow: Same method of doing the lenses, but brightened up to brighter than yellow.

That's pretty much it. As always this message will self destruct in five seconds... And I appreciate you taking the time to have a look ^_^

In an effort to keep Gitsplitta from kicking my ass I've been painting... Shocking I know...

Anyway, day one of the Blood Angels Assault Sarge. As with anything the less we do something the harder it gets and painting is haaaard for me right now... Everything is pretty much as per the others except the power sword. The sword was done with my airbrush first. I'm not 100% happy with it, but its the first time I've blended something like the sword... Still lots to do... But hey, painting something is better than nothing :D

As always I appreciate all forms of constructive feedback ^_^

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 

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... ^_^

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

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

Venerable Dreadnought Complete

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Grrr, somethings wrong with my Picasa program... Can't get them to upload from the default and it's screwed up my settings...

Finally completed my metal Venerable Dreadnought. I've been putting this off for too long and I think the final result has suffered a little bit because of it. But overall I'm quite pleased with the look. It's the first time I've really tried the weathering like this and the result, for me, is good. It's the one thing that was missing on the tank I did and the last dreadnought I painted and the fact that there is so much wasted space looks wrong, so learning the weathering technique is something I'm quite happy with, and as with all things practice will make perfect...

I was going to take the advice I was given and go with all the lenses the same color, but when I'd done all the targeting circle lenses I made the decision that the helmet lens had to be a different color. I was umming and erring about using blue or the red, but as it was going to be highlighted by the gold helmet I figured the red was the way to go. Maybe a little less bold, but more in keeping with the theme I had going...

The other thing I did a little different was really push the purity seal brightness so the vivid green really stood out. Not sure if it works and chances are I might tone them down a little later, but they really catch the eye...

Not really much else for me to say... As always I appreciate any and all comments and constructive criticism about my stuff... I'm still learning... ^_^

Venerable Dreadnought - Arms and Weathering

Some more work on my Venerable Dreadnought.




I've had a lot of trouble applying weathering to large surfaces and edges. I either go to far and it looks messy as hell, or I don't emphasis the right points and it looks wierd. I think I've hit an ok balance with this one.

There are bits which need more and some areas are conspicuously missing weathering, but overall I like how it looks. Big thanks to Brother Michael over at 40k forums for his assistance in how to do the weathering. As with everything, practice makes perfect :)

Overall there seems to be quite a lot still to do. Both arm units need to be completed, more weathering needs to be applied, maybe some pigment work, but from then on it's mostly detail work.

I must say he looks quite imposing with his arms on. I like it ^_^

Venerable Dreadnought - Day three

A smidge more work on the venerable Dreadnought. I'm usually a 'Base Last' kind of painter, but I was getting bored with the body so figured I've move onto the base early.




I love secret weapon miniature bases. They do 80% of the work of looking cool. All it takes is a few build up layers of drybrusing and a few minor effects (The road lines) and you're done. I normally paint bricks red, but as there's so much red already I went with brown and I think it works quite well, both the grey and the brown. The yellow gives it a touch of color which is good too. I'm going to add some fake grass in there somewhere as well at the end...

On the body I started all the little stuff like the wires and the helmet. These are more guide colors than anything else and they were done with straight foundation paints. I'm going to brighten them up a little with regular paints next...

Still to do:
The Feet - I've been looking over the best way of doing dreadnought feet and it seems heavy scuffing is the way to go... Not totally sure on the technique but it's always fun to play... ^_^

Lenses: He's got quite a few of them at eye level... I dunno whether to do them all green or a variety of colors?

The red: Touch ups and stuff still to come...
---
Head choice from last time.
Wow... Talk about varied opinions... Some people say one type looks great while others hate it... Personal flavor rules the day I guess... I'm leaning towards 6, 3 or 4... I like the simplicity of 6, the lethality of 3 and the regal bearing of 4... Maybe I should paint all three and see how they look then?

Day Two of the Venerable Dreadnought

Day Two of the Venerable Dreadnought. Not really that much work done today. Considering 'The Wise Man's Fear' came out today I'm surprised I've done any work what-so-ever... Or even remembered to shower and eat for that matter...



Done today:
1. Seals: Worked the seals in Dark Angel Green then lightened them with varying shades of scorpion green. Glazed with 1:1 green : water. I also darkened up the parchment with another targeted wash of sepia...
2. Cloth: Foundation purple with a purple wash, more highlights happening... Heh, there better be anyway...
3. Red Armor: While it may not be overtly visible I cleaned up a lot of the armor with some touch ups and started a little bit of blending...

Wow... Considering all that took me like 90 minutes it doesn't seem like much work does it...


Starting some more prep work for the Shadow Sanctus Captain I'm sending to whalemusic. I've had a few people say they didn't like the head I decided on so I figured I'd throw out some alternatives. If you like one let me know!

Oh well... Back to my book...

Venerable Dreadnought - Day One or OMG HE'S NOT DEAD!

Day one of actual painting for my old school metal venerable dreadnought. Yes, that's right I'm not actually dead...



This has been sitting around for awhile, a long with a few other things... I've been combating some pretty major loss of inspiration lately. So much is going on with Earthquakes, and people and work and painting has seemed less important with each and every day I've been putting it off...

I'll talk a little bit more about losing motivation to paint in a few days, but first let's see what I've done today:

1. Red. Basecoat red was done with my airbrush (Which then broke. I shit you not, broke. But that's another story). The red went over black so has come out a little bit dull for a miniature with such large areas, I'll be trying to brighten up the red in places with brighter coats and some blending.
2. Gold. The gold is my standard recipe (BGM > BG x 2 > brown washes). Those with sharp eyes will notice a difference between the golds though. That comes from using different washes at different stages. They'll all be tided up later on, and some highlighting applied.
3. Skulls. The skulls are done with 2x layers of bleached bone and a wash of Orgyn Flesh and a light brush of badab black (spelling?). Again; touch ups & highlights need to be applied.
4. Parchments. Used Menoth base (p3) for the parchment base coat and have only applied one layer of Sepia wash. I'll need a few more layers of the wash to achieve the right brown; one that is different enough from the gold...

That's pretty much it so far... My lack of motivation and inspiration is quite telling when I look at the dreadnought; I haven't taken care in some places and there's significant paint transfer... And in others it just looks wrong. I hope with a little more care it'll start to improve...