Tidying and Preparing...

The dust is settling on a manic August personally, but September has been even more of a challenge, so far. However, when things are this crazy, I tend to find that I am drawn more and more to the calm of the painting table.
Add to this a new momentum brought about by last weekend's Wamp Workshop, where I met a great bunch of painty types, shared some knowledge, thoughts and stories, and drank copious quantities of rum - and beer with slices of orange in! Don't ask... - I have got it very much in mind to have a little clear through of part painted models from the desk, and to get on with my winter projects.
Mix in the fact that my first Kingdom Death shipment is en route, with the big box to follow in around 6 weeks, and I think that I ought to get on with it!!

The Workshop will get its own post in the very near future because there's a fairly large amount of photos to put up, but big thanks go out to Brett of WAMP for setting up the Kickstarter that provided the weekender as a pledge, and to Andy of 4TK gaming store for providing a comfortable, well set out place for our event. It really is ideal for painting and gaming gatherings - at the same time too, if needs be!

So, once I rebuilt my man cave, having dismantled much of it for the event, I sat down last night with some new brushes and some new paints and got busy tidying and progressing two models. It was one of those sessions where for the first half and hour I was wondering what the hell was going on, and by the end of it was wondering where the hell these new toys had been all of my life!

The paints were the Scalecolour flesh and Steampunk sets (both available via the Wampstore in the link above), and the one particular brush which may have changed the way I paint forever was the No2 Blender from the Wamp Select Series. This brush is a kind of "Filbert" shaped Kolinsky brush - basically a small flat brush which comes around into a tapered point. It allows fine detail work with the tip, wet on wet blending, glazing, and goodness only knows what else. So far it also seems equally at home on a 54mm model as it does on a 28mm one. It is just magic!
Now, I have a very particular style, so it may just be me that this brush suits, but the combination of this brush and the very particular properties of the Scalecolour paints made for some rather satisfying results, even over existing paint works. Base colouring using the Scale paints takes some getting used to, as they seem to move around a lot more than paints that I am used to, but the blended finish is really nice. With some more practice I am looking forward to seeing what I can come up with. I am also itching to try them out through the airbrush. :)

So, pics of what I've been on...

The JoeK minis Dragon Huntress herself is mostly painted, barring a few details, the hair and some tidying up. Then I will work on her shield and the actual dead dragon in the base.

The Poppy's Angels piece is mostly finished in terms of skin, stockings and gloves. Need to do the scarf like the one on the chair, then add a little texture; then the final push will be the lantern/drip and books...

I'm thinking that I should actually use some metallic paint for the glasses and the details on her leg and gloves.
The shoes will be done in patent black finish, no tricks, just glossy black, which will be done when the whole piece has been matt varnished.

I'm keen to get these through now. There are a lot of toys on the way which will distract me, so I need to clear the decks and get myself set for the "end of term" after Euro, where I retreat to the cave and see out the winter! ^_^

Until next time :)

Teacher's Pet

I've been a bit quiet again, sorry.

This has partly been because the progress on the Poppy's Angels charity piece has taken time to keep tweaking the skin tones and smooth things out. It is surprising how much you need to alter your technique when working on larger scale. I want to do a bit more tidying up before I next show her, especially after seeing Bohun's recent jaw dropper! LINK

The other reason is that I have been preparing for a class that I shall be holding this weekend. I haven't taught for a couple of years now, so it's quite exciting, and I've managed to sort it that the class is being held in my own home town, which is a real bonus, especially as I know where the pubs are that sell the beer that I like! ^_^
The class came about as part of a Kickstarter by Wamp where they launched a new paintbrush line. For some reason it was thought that I would be useful in helping people actually use their new brushes! lol
The course is happening over two days of the weekend, with myself teaching on the Saturday, and my friend John Keys, aka Megazord Man.

I managed to get those wonderful Blacks & Whites of Hasslefree Miniatures to help out with the subject matter, which on this occasion is the relatively new release, Steampunk Boudi.

She's a lovely little sculpt (emphasis on little. I forget how tiny and delicate, yet characterful Kev's sculpts are), and I spent a couple of evenings this week preparing an example piece for the class to look at. The sculpt is based on the wonderful concept art of one of my favourite pinup artists, Matt Dixon

She was great fun to paint, and hopefully the students will enjoy working on her too. I had to spend a while getting their minis ready, and now I have a mini legion of tiny Boudis!

I shall very much look forward to showing off some images of what the students themselves managed during the class, so that gives me a subject for the next post straight away!

Enjoy your bank holiday! ^_^

A One-Off...

In my last update I showed the early stages of my piece for the Poppy's Angels Super Raffle.

To remind you, you can buy tickets for this raffle at the Poppy's Angel Go Fund Me page - HERE

As I understand it, for each £2 donated you get a ticket. Make sure that you add a comment with your donation saying "Super Raffle". If, of course you, just want to donate, then leave the comment section blank.

Since that last update I haven't made huge strides because I've been painting walls and building furniture. Our little man had outgrown his bed which started out as a cot 3 years ago, and his bedroom was ready to be changed from the nursery look that we created for it when we moved in. He is pirate crazy so we've had a wall papered in a really cool pirate map pattern and he's now got a single bed that he looks tiny in! Still a fair bit of finishing off to do, but his little face was a picture when he saw the room so far ^_^

What I have done is get the conversion work finished off on the Poppy's piece, get it all primed, and begun work on the scenery part. I'm glad that I got the chair all painted because the fragility of the sculpt is ridiculous! lol
The drip/lantern stand obviously needs to be set so that the post is upright and the drip itself is hanging correctly, but I just slipped it into place for the photo...

The fabric still needs some blending and texturing, plus I need to follow it on with the bit around her neck. I shall most likely do a similar, but darker tone for her underwear and stocking tops.
The colour of glow for the drip/lantern is as yet undecided, but I shall create a bit of source lighting with it accordingly.

I am very pleased to now be able to reveal that this piece has its own unique concept art too. Having already built the model, I contacted Kingdom Death's main concept artist, Lokman Lam, about the piece and he was happy to revise the original concept to match what I had done. With the blessing of Kingdom Death I shall be printing off an art card to accompany the piece, making it a true one-off original just for this event...

How cool is that?! ^_^

Got to be worth a couple of quid, wouldn't you say?! Here's that link again... LINK

My only other news right now is that I have done a Q&A on the Noobs and their Paintbrush blog, which you can find here - NOOBS & THEIR PAINTBRUSH - it's a little insight into me and my thoughts about painting.

Until the next update...

Cheers,

Scott

A moment in time...

I posted that last Friday on Facebook I woke up to find that all 5 of my latest entries onto the Coolminiornot gallery made it to the "Best of the Week" page, with 4 of them actually occupying 4 of the top 5 spots at that moment...

I commented at the time that it wouldn't stay like that, but nearly a full week on and all 5 are still there (albeit with lower scores than on this picture, but nonetheless), which gives me a lovely boost, especially after some of the sniper fun I have had in recent times on CMON.

The 4 pieces in the image are the 2 finished Ilyad barbarians, plus the group of Kingdom Death Pinups and Clio & Erato. The fifth piece was the Hasslefree Lt. Thoran mini which I finished a little while back, but just hadn't got around to final photos.

Speaking of photos, I reckon I've got enough done of late to start a gallery on here, so keep an eye on the menu on the right of the page for that to be added soon. :)

There are links for each of the 5 pieces below. The Putty & Paint links also include larger images of each of the Kingdom Death girls, some of which haven't previously been shown.

Vorag Champion - CMON link - http://www.coolminiornot.com/383488
                                         - P&P link - http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/7737

Virago - CMON link - http://www.coolminiornot.com/383489
                 - P&P link - http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/7738

Pinups of Death - CMON link - http://www.coolminiornot.com/383496
                         - P&P link - http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/7742

Clio & Erato - CMON link - http://www.coolminiornot.com/383495
                                - P&P link - http://www.coolminiornot.com/383495

Lt. Thoran - CMON link - http://www.coolminiornot.com/383490
                           - P&P link - http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/7739

Big thank you must go out to Julien at Blacksmith Miniatures also, because I placed second in their Clio & Erato painting competition and received a piece of original Veneri Blu art work plus a copy of their latest model, Mahe le Marin...

 
   

The art work is up on my inspirations board, whilst the pirate gobbo type will most likely be my first dedicated model for my little boy, who is currently pirate mad! :)

What was going to be a short post is now getting big! Onto what I'm doing now...

I still have the Nightmare Ram diorama on the desk, but it has lost steam lately, so I shall come back to it when I'm in the mood again.

I am also working on some KD pinups, but they aren't for show yet.

I then started on the JoeK Dragon Huntress model. I have a feeling that he has sold through on this model now (though I'm sure that she is in stock in a few stores if you look around), and I know that she is one that he has mixed feelings over, partly to do with the original sculpt's head...

I wasn't keen on the head either, so I decided to do a little transplant, adding the KD Nico head instead, plus a little collar made from some Etch Master parts. I then started painting her and got this far (which I am quite happy with I might add!)...

She is absolutely tiny, and I have to be extremely careful with the spear thing that she has, as the resin is quite brittle, but beautifully detailed. I'm thinking of doing her in a kind of Chinese/Japanese styled outfit, seeing as the new head has a kind of oriental look about her and the dragon head is also kind of like the dragons in some oriental art too.

However... I recently started to see a lot of mention of a particular page on Facebook called Poppy's Angels.
 This page has been set up to support a family whose daughter, Poppy is suffering from cancer. The dad, Paul is a member of the mini community and several painters, sculptors and mini companies are donating their wares to the cause. The guys running the group are then planning shortly to raffle (and auction too, I think?) the models and games that have been sent in. There are already some mind blowing contributions, including a special one-off bust by probably the top guy around right now, Kirill Kanaev (aka Yellow One) and of course those good eggs at Painting Buddha too, to name just two.
I felt that it wasn't just enough to click "like" and move on, as is too easy to do when you're browsing along. I have my little boy, who is my greatest blessing in life. He has had his own share of health scares, but I simply couldn't imagine the kind of gut wrenching fear that this family go through on a daily basis. I also felt that a donation, click and move on wasn't enough either. I had to get involved. Cancer is a word that resonates strongly in my family currently, and I wanted to do something that would pick up a little of what someone with cancer may have to go through.

To this end, I had a look through what I had in my pile, and a strong idea hit me. The piece below is a conversion of the piece "Distracted" from Kingdom Death. I have left the hair off for obvious reasons, she also has a scar across her breast and the part which was originally a lantern is now an IV drip. I've not yet decided exactly what the books will contain, other than it might make sense that they were some kind of family photo album. There is all kinds of symbolism that could be added, but for now this is pretty much as far as I've got. It is kind of ironic that the original piece is called distracted, as that is exactly what has happened - I've been distracted from all other works until this is done. At the bottom of the post is a link to the Poppy's Angels Go Fund Me page. You can buy tickets for the raffle to possibly own this or any of the other donations, or just to give. I hope that you do, and I shall keep you all posted on how this goes...

Thanks in advance if you do join in and I hope to have some exciting news with the next post too.

Cheers ^_^

The link - http://www.gofundme.com/vd57g8s

 
                         

Nearly, nearly...

It's been a little longer than hoped to put up a worthwhile post. There's been several reasons for this. Mostly it is down to being a bit too warm in the cave to do much painting these last few weeks. It's not so much paint drying, it's more the fact that I would need to be just about naked to sit there, and the heat does my concentration in too. The other thing is that I've had too many projects on the desk at once. It ruins my work flow to have more than a couple at once there. I suspected previously that this would challenge me, and so it proved to be true.
My solution... I re-arranged the display cabinet (to help incorporate my most recent award from Salute), cleared a space in the lowest shelf for in progress/nearly finished stuff and cleaned the desk.
I had also been waiting on some special wood from a friend, which I have since had made into new plinths. 4 hours of sanding and varnishing later and I have over 30 spaces for new minis! Better get on with it! lol

That meant that I needed to get some cool air into the cave and get down to the paint, and a bit of mess making for the bases of the Ilyad pair from a little while ago. I prepped up the bases made out of cork, slate, coarse sand and sandy paste - oh, and a little bit of driftwood that I squirrelled off of the beach in Kos! - which I created as a kind of topper for the plinths - I quite like the effect of keeping some of the top of the plinth clean, particularly when using good looking wood. Last night I then painted up the toppers, which just leaves some blood effects, vegetation and a dusting of pigments to do, then I can call them done, at last...

The second image is actually a position where the two base toppers kind of interlock. It would take a bit of jiggery-pokery to place them on a single plinth, but I'll see if I can do just that once everything is finished.

While I was waiting I did do some painting, and one piece in particular was done as an experiment for the impending slew of Kingdom Death:Monster models. I wanted to see if I could paint up the survivor models quickly to a certain look, so I did the guy from the last update. I actually re-painted him from scratch, and did the whole thing in 2 hours, not including assembly and priming (probably another hour, but I built a whole crew all at once). There are still a few mould lines and some rough bits, but the effect for such a quick job was quite satisfying...

The effect was achieved almost entirely using heavily diluted acrylic inks (Scale 75 plus some old GW ones), some matt medium, and some GW washes. The skin was done with two skin tones. The inky eyes are a feature of the KD art that I really love, so I expect to do that a lot.
Hopefully I'll do a little step by step on another survivor soon to show the simple method involved. :)

I also started to put paint onto the Nightmare Ram. It is going to take longer than the Lion God that I completed a little while back. This is mostly because it is more intricate, so will need more brush work and less airbrushing. I want a kind of albino look to it in the end, so the odd purple tones fit my vision...

Everything is still rough on this. I think that I will paint all of the skin like this, then tighten up later (like I normally do) rather than finish anything before moving on. It's going to be a(nother) crazy one. I like that ^_^

Other than that, I had my birthday on the 16th. I did receive one lovely mini, with a second to follow apparently. The one that I got was a Pegaso piece that I've loved for years...

It ticks loads of boxes for what I love to paint - aside from not being a lady type - lots of skin, detailed armour, expressive face and weird monstrous sidekick. Just about perfect! lol
Can't wait to make a start, but lots to get on with before him!

Final note, I shall be at Figureworld in Oundle this weekend - DETAILS HERE - and will be bringing some of my toys with me. So if you're about, pop by and say hi.

Til then... ^_^

Just Kos...

I've been quiet just lately. Why? Well, fortunately I managed to dash off for a week in Kos with the family. It was a superb week where I nicely recharged the batteries - not least because we were sharing our room with the little one, so it was a load of early nights, which were were more welcome than I had realised. July and more so August are very busy months with my day job, so it was good preparation.

On my return, all keyed up to get back to the painting desk, I discovered that we brought the good weather back with us! The thing there is that when your man cave is touching 30 degrees at 9pm, it's not really conducive to painting. So I managed less than I might have hoped in terms of progress to show - but I have made progress on something that I can't yet show for Kingdom Death... ;)

Basically, I've thrown some pale skin tones down onto the Nightmare Ram ready to do some proper painting shortly. It is intended to be a kind of albino tone eventually, so it is probably a little too colourful right now, but I gives me plenty to work from...

In the last post I showed the kit bashed survivors that I cobbled together in anticipation of Kingdom Death:Monster finally shipping very soon - LINK - (Congratulations to Adam Poots and Anna on the birth of their baby boy too) and I have had a little play with some washes to see what can be done quickly and effectively, so that the game pieces can be put on the board with some colour on them.
I also want to explore the inky eyed look that is prevalent in the early artwork associated with Monster. There's something about it that just adds that something "more" to the people and I fully expect to do more of it, especially with my starting survivors. In fact, I just remembered that I actually did inky eyes on Allister and Zachary when I first painted KD's own starting survivors. It was eventually decided that the ink would be reduced in the final version, which you can see here - LINK - but I don't think that these photos have ever seen the light of day!

 

Funny, but these models seem like a lifetime ago in terms of personal painting progress, but I do still remember how much I loved painting these sculpts from JAG (of course!!).

Anyway, this was probably no more than a half hour to an hour's work on this new survivor's head...

Just slapping washes and inks onto models like this can produce some striking effects at a tabletop level. Sure, they won't stand up at display level, but I'm looking at quantity over refinement when I have between 70 and 100 minis coming!

A final thing which may be of interest to people who would like to see what I do up close...

WAMP ran a successful Kickstarter a few months back and amongst the pledges was a weekend workshop...

"Wamp Workshop

If you really want to take your painting up a level then this is for you. We are offering the chance to receive two days of hands-on personal tuition from two of the painters featured in this very Kickstarter. Scott Hockley and John Keys are renowned UK painters winning numerous awards between them and both experienced in delivering first class workshops. Each day you will spend with one of the tutors learning great techniques such as weathering, NMM, OSL and colour theory. You will also receive a miniature from the weekend and follow up advice after the event that allows you to go home and try things out and get follow up help meaning you can iron out any problems you may encounter.
The workshop will take place one weekend later in the year in the South East/Midlands area of the UK (the location and date will be confirmed later)
The Workshop is only available as part of the Ultimate pledge and the price includes a complete set of brushes, the brush soap and either a brush roll or case. Places are limited for the workshop.
(Please note the price includes Workshop Ticket, Brush package, miniature and paint. It does not include travel or accomodation)"

Now. Due to the date chosen for the workshop, two of the original participants can no longer attend, so we have two vacancies at time of writing. The class will be held on Saturday 29th August and Sunday 30th August in Colchester, Essex. The cost is either £100 for the two days or £150 and you get a full set of the WAMP brushes as detailed in the link above.
If you are interested, contact me ASAP via email or PM on Facebook (though things do get lost in the messenger there if you aren't a FB friend...) and I'll give you more details.
I expect to be concentrating on female flesh and faces for my part of the workshop, John's part is TBC, but it is sure to be great, as you only need look at his gallery - LINK .

Until next time. Have a lovely summery weekend, and don't burn your sausage!

Scott B-)