Where do we glow from here...?

Hi all.

I'm not sure whether I've made lots of progress or not much at all since my last post. The two Kingdom Death pieces that I showed in the last post both have paint on them, that much I can confirm, but I'm not sure whether I've given myself a massive workload to each piece, or made them somehow simpler.
Dealing with each piece individually, I'll start with the Lion God model. I hummed and harred about converting it and also how I would paint it. In the end I've not converted it virtually at all, barring a minor tweak of the face position, which allowed me to get on with priming it.
The colour scheme though was what I needed to decide next, and this essentially hinged on whether the pile of lanterns that he stands upon were to be alight or not...
I've decided that they will. This will make for a rather more complicated paint job, as I will need to work out which parts of the pile create a glow against his underside and go from there. There will then need to be a cold, kind of moonlit contrasting look to the top of him. Should be interesting...
I don't have any new photos though, as it's basically a more grey looking grey than the last set of photos! lol

The Visonaries vignette in comparison has moved on quite a lot more. The size of both this piece and the Lion God has led me to use the airbrush quite extensively up to this point, and in the case of this vignette has given me the opportunity to play with light effects which I shall end up pretty much copying into the Lion God.
In this case I wanted to get two very contrasting light effects into the piece while applying an overall gloomy, twilight kind of feel to the scene. To this end I wanted to make the female Visionary's lighting to be predominantly made up from the flaming skull lantern in her hand, with any areas not lit like this to be cool and subdued.
For the male Visionary, I want him to appear in the scene to be leading the pair of them towards some eerie light in the distance, so a green kind of glow is suffusing the other side of the vignette.

First of all I airbrushed the earth and stone tones of the scenery with just a bit of neutral highlighting where I expected light to fall...

 

Next I worked in some blueish shading wherever required, picked out the "global" highlight of a pale blue grey colour and added in the green and fiery source lighting (once I had stood both of the models back into the scene...

 

Up to this point I haven't touched the piece with a paintbrush, so I was quite pleased with what I had managed to create in terms of the various textures in the base and the different light effects. All of this was done with Tamiya paints by the way.

Now it is time to get the brushes out and I couldn't resist starting with the female Visionary's shield, which is just superb. I should add at this point that I think that the sculpting of both of these by JAG is just fantastic. I've mentioned in the past that his sculpting of the starting survivors for Monster are fantastic and characterful, and these two are equally as impressive.

The shield in the scene isn't getting any source lighting to the front of it, so I used a slightly warm grey (VMC Medium grey and VMC Panzer Aces Splinter Base) to highlight, and then I used Scale colour inks - blue, violet, green and red - to varying degrees to add a bit of interest to the shading of the shield...

 

 

At this stage I used some of the inks to start colouring in the cloak on both sides. I need to matt this down to see if it is any good, because the shine is horrendous at the moment!

A slightly shorter update than usual perhaps, but I've been tucked into the Walking Dead and the Leftovers in the last few weeks too, so table time has been less, plus I've been so busy with work that surfing the hobby forums, blogs and sites has been diminished somewhat too.

Oh, one other thing. Lady Grimdark picked up a win in the WAMP Synthesis competition.
I haven't entered any online contests for a while now - I used to regularly enter them on Wamp, and there is always a good competition going on there - so it was nice to place. It was a "just for fun" competition too, and Lady G was always a fun piece anyway, so all in all very pleased. ^_^

Until next time, cheers all!

Well that escalated rather quickly...

Hi all.

Since my last post I've been busy again with clearing the last piece off of the desk, and then predictably I got sidetracked...! lol

I tend to find that sometimes my motivation to paint can ebb and flow, but I still want to be at the desk doing something. In this instance I was working through a Kingdom Death Pinup that had been on a cork for months while commissions and other pieces took priority. I got her skin and  much of her "clothing" done, but I felt a bit of brain block kicking in, so rather than force myself I opened up the cupboard and looked for something that I could do that would challenge me, plus possibly bring back the inspiration/motivation to finish the KD model.

After a bit of rummaging I had a Confrontation Wolfen model and Knight Model's version of Gandalf on the table. I decided to build Gandalf. What happened next was a bit of a whirlwind of glue, airbrushing, painting thousands of tiny texturing lines (while drinking beer), playing with inks and glazes and making up a plinth of paving stones and foliage. With very little in between stages, I had a complete Gandalf on my desk about 4 days later!

 

I love it when pieces suddenly fall into place like this, as I sometimes feel bogged down with details on models that can run on for what seems like forever. It was almost like doing a large version of a Hasslefree model, in that the model seemed almost to paint itself, so I could just enjoy myself and enjoy the result.

Gandalf can also been seen/voted for in my Coolmini gallery - HERE -  and also in Putty & Paint - HERE.

With Gandalf swiftly on and then off the table, I went back and completed the Pinup. This is the Lioness Pinup and she is another yet to be released Pinup that I received an early copy of just after the Kickstarter. She will be released alongside the game when it comes, and probably on a public release thereafter.

There was a fair amount to repair on her, as she had quite a few bubbles and wrinkles in the cast (which may have contributed to my relative lack of enthusiasm to get her finished), but she worked out quite well in the end, and again it was quite inspiring to paint her kind of in the Lokman Lam concept style...

Again, she can be found in my galleries - COOLMINIORNOT and PUTTY & PAINT ^_^

With her complete, I had a completely clear desk for the first time in absolute months! Then just like that, Kingdom Death release some models that I was sent a preview copy of a couple of months ago.
I bought a piece of resin scenery from Origen Art at Euro Militaire, and with the counter posed Male and Female Visionary models, I formed good idea for a vignette which I started to put together...

Expect progress on this soon.

Of course, I get one idea in my head and another slips out at the same time, and so I decided to start building another Kingdom Death monster, the Lion God.

This is definitely a model that people will either love or hate. Personally, I don't know where I am with it. The sculpting is absolutely amazing, the subject matter is controversial to say the least, but I think that I will probably try to bring focus to the model through colour rather than controversy, if possible...

 

I have decided to alter the posing of the face a little, but other wise I'll paint it much as the sculpt comes. In these shots there is a fair amount of filling and fixing to do, plus the hands along his back need 6 lanterns to be attached, speaking of which, the entire base is composed of lanterns and rock. That will be a challenge to paint!

The next post should be interesting!

See you then! ^_^

Clear out...

It's been a little longer than hoped to get around to this post, but work life has been so busy that there's been almost no time or inclination to collect my thoughts.
However, in a bid to somehow take control of things while so many things - like the weather affecting work - are beyond my direct control, I've had a bit of a clear out/up of the desk and man cave. Much of this is just putting stuff away that I got out to use and just shoved to the back of the desk rather than put it away, or shredding old credit card statements. That said, moving the stack of boxes and packaging from mini related purchases to the garage required quite a large box! lol

I might get a photo of my work space and cave in general up at some point, but I am probably regarded as a little too tidy for most people's liking! ^_^

Part of the clear up though was to get some models finished off before I could make a start on the next, and with that in mind, I've finished (start and finished in a couple of cases) a few pieces off and placed them in the cabinet.

First of all, I finally, finally finished the Painting Buddha vignette. I reworked the visor on the alien girl, and that was about it....

 

On the whole I am quite pleased with several aspects of this piece and, via the accompanying DVDs, I've tried out a few little tweaks to my technique that I may well using with future pieces.

In particular, I'm pleased that I got an expression into the guy's face that makes him look a little unsure as to what the girl is up to. I'm also pleased with the simple effect of the graffiti. It is only a simple design, but a combination of airbrush and hand brush created a nice realistic look.

I decided to "name" the piece "Yolo ^_^ " as a bit fun. There's no huge message, other than I'd rather paint minis than watch the kind of reality TV that "yolo" pertains to, despite how solitary the hobby may be at times. Perhaps the girl in the scene is watching that kind of TV? Who knows? ^o^

The piece can also be seen/voted on in my coolminiornot gallery - LINKY - and/or my Putty & Paint gallery - LINKY 2

All votes and comments in the galleries are always most welcome, especially the comments. :)

Moving onto the next one, this was done as a bit of a challenge during a conversation on the Kingdom Death kickstarter boards. The challenge was to create a pinup space marine. GW have done Sisters of Battle, which are pretty much female space marines to the uninitiated, for a long time now, but they're not particularly convertible as they're made out of big lumps of metal. Plus, I don't own any in my grey pile that I can recall!

So, instead I set about constructing a model out of a combination of Kingdom Death female parts and GW space marine parts that I still have a few bits of. The result was a piece that I've nicknamed "Lady Grimdark" in homage to the "grim darkness of the far future" that Warhammer 40k is set in.

Colours-wise I wanted something reasonably feminine but not bright pink with flowers, with contrasting details, hence the purple/green scheme. Then the skin was done in my usual style.

I tried to imagine to an extent what Lokman Lam (the artist that does most of the KD pinup concepts) might do, maybe not the colours that he may use, but the posing and atmosphere. The whole piece didn't take too long, and it was a bit of a shock going back to painting the big shoulder pads, shin guards and back packs that are synonymous with space marines. I haven't put together or painted a marine in over 4 years!

Anyway, here she is...

She was quite a lot of fun, but I don't think that I'll be returning to space marines anytime soon! ;)

Lady G can also be found in my galleries - CMON LINK or PUTTY & PAINT LINK

Third was a super fast piece that I just did because of the clear out. I doubt I spent more than about 3 or 4 hours on him, and was more a case of seeing what I could do with a gaming piece, as a gaming piece. I sort of did it with a view to the horde of KD models that will arrive sometime soon(ish), but also as a little exercise in painting black quickly and to a certain effect with different textures.
I can't even remember what the official name for him is, but he's Zombicide's (not) version of Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction...

There are obviously a few loose brush strokes (like the tile), but as a limited palette speed paint he is quite effective.

I nearly forgot, but a couple of days after the last blog post my latest Kingdom Death Pinup article was published. The latest girl was the Survivor Pinup, and she was great fun to do just like the others.

Here is the article link - SURVIVOR PINUP ARTICLE

And here are some pics...

Once again, you can find her in my galleries - COOLMINI LINK and PUTTY & PAINT LINK

If you do happen to be a Putty and Paint member that is reading this, I would particularly appreciate it if you would stop by a drop a vote on the pieces in this update, as getting 10 votes to qualify for a "score" on the site can sometimes be really hard to come by, and I currently have 3 or 4 pieces which are 1 or 2 votes short of the magic "10", including this piece - LINK - that I posted on there several months ago...

 

If you do drop me a vote, I'll be sure to return the favour ^_^

OK, well this has turned into a rather bumper sized edition. So, what am I doing now? Well, I have one last old piece on the desk (strictly speaking I have a second one, but that may never get finished!), and that is  the Kingdom Death Lioness which is as yet unreleased (from the Kickstarter), but I got her at the same time as the Phoenix Dancer, as an early casting. She has been primed and had some skin tone airbrushed on for months, so I will definitely get her done now.

The only other piece that I have on the desk is a big one that I assembled and primed last night, and that is the Knight Models sculpt of Gandalf the Grey. He is essentially a big textured cloak with a head on the top, so I doubt that he will take all that long to paint, but that said, I want to try out some texturing and a bit of lighting, plus of course, the face is a good likeness of Ian McKellen, so I would like to at least try and get that fairly recognisable.

So, that should be what to expect in the next update. I hope that you stuck with it to the end of this giant wall of text and pictures. Enjoy the article and please do stop by the galleries.

All the best!

Scott ^_^

End of season roundup...

First of all, people will be thinking "what the hell is he going on about with this End of Season stuff?"

Well, in terms of competitions and such, this is probably true, as the likes of Monte San Savino and the UK Golden Demons, or whatever they are calling them now, are still to come before the end of the year. However, I'm personally done with my quota of shows for the year.
Admittedly, I've not exactly scoured the globe for every show to attend - I've only actually visited Salute and Euro Militaire this year - but work commitments and having a lovely two year old who enjoys spending every waking moment with me at weekends, along with a lot of significant "milestone" birthdays personally and around the family this year means that I've been less "visible" in 2014. I don't know at this stage whether I will attend more shows next year, but I hope to have a few more new pieces of a "level" to be able to take with me wherever I do go. :)

So, typically, now I retreat to my cave, stock up on tea (and beer), and see out the winter while tinkering away on pieces here and there until inspiration strikes for competition pieces. This year though, I have a solid pile of models and ideas that I really do want to work on. There are a few cherries that I want to pop too - like painting a bust and creating an historical vignette. But I also would like to try using oils on a model for the first time too, as I found myself frustrated with the limitations of brush-on acrylics on the drapery of larger models recently - so I'm going to get the last few bits off of my desk, and get building.

I mentioned Euro above, and this year was a really enjoyable year for me on a sociable note. But it was also a much more satisfying year for me as a judge for the competition. Last year was my first year and I ran around like an excitable puppy, missing some of the important stuff around the show where I was so focused on "my" category, and then found that the actual judging process was quite intense because I was fearful of getting it "wrong". This year, I deliberately went nowhere near my category until time for judging. Instead I chose to wander round and get to say hello to as many people as I could. Then, when time for judging came, I looked at my class with fresh eyes and last year's experience under my belt. The standard of entries in the class overall were excellent, with very few not making the cut and getting some kind of merit award - Euro holds a Gold, Silver, Bronze, Highly Commended and Commended merit scale. I was then also more confident this year that I could come back to the hall on the Sunday and chat to any of the entrants that wanted to speak to me about why their pieces scored what they did. This is an enlightening process as much for me as it is the entrants, and will be something that I shall do my best to maintain in years to come.
Honest feedback as much about what we are doing right as doing wrong is invaluable as far as I'm concerned. From it we can gain a different perspective from others who haven't invested the hours and efforts that we have, so it stops us doing too much of the "yeah, but..." stuff if we fall short of the grade.

In this way, I was a lot more philosophical about my own performance in the Fantasy class this year. I was more aware of the standards, and what the judges would consider. The devil in me made me try out two completely different models to test my theory, but I got the result that I expected.

Ainariel picked up a Commended badge, which in the circumstances was about right. I knew that there were certain aspects - like the skin - which would really need more contrast to pull the judges' eyes. I was extremely mindful of NOT going too heavy with the skin contrast, as this often makes female sculpts look "old" and a bit weather beaten, but the hall at Folkestone can be very bright indeed, and so bleach out the shade tones. The other main issue was a mistake repeated by many acrylic painters at the show, and this was a problem of "specularity" - basically things that were too shiny where they should have been more matt, and vice versa.
Essentially, I should have got a bit more matt medium into my paint and a bit more matt varnish onto the parts of the model that needed it - mostly her cloak. I'd taken the time to paint texture and patterning, but not enough time making sure that it would be seen! Photography of the model doesn't "lie", but polarised lenses and a static lamp position make this less of an issue compared to when a model is in hand.
So, in reflection (pun intended), Ainariel got what she deserved on the day. That said, I do consider her finished, and I am pleased with her as a first real go at a Fantasy model at this scale. She was also my first attempt at painting a Joaquin Palacios sculpt. I very much doubt that she will be my last.

These are the final shots that I took of Ainariel though, and you can see her in my Putty & Paint gallery along with my Coolminiornot gallery (links below)

 

Here are the gallery/voting links - CMON and PUTTY & PAINT

The other piece that I entered for Euro was Cassandra, the Greek-esque cyborg girl that I painted several months ago. She didn't really get a look in. I wasn't surprised as she's mostly naked, which doesn't sit with the judging rules at Euro, and the coloured non-metallic metal style is often not favoured by the judge of this category.

This was Cassandra...

CMON and P&P links

Moving on and not wishing for the grass to grow under me, I've popped out a quickie and I'm nearly finished with an oldie that has been hanging around for too long!

The quickie...

I had the Rihanna song "Diamonds" as an earworm going round my head lately. Dunno why, but it was there. I then had an idea for a mini that I knew was in the pile. Half a dozen hours later, this was the result...

She is Hasslefree's harem dancer, and she is tiny, at around 22mm high to the top of her pole! The stand she is on is a lid to a Paul Smith perfume bottle too. :)

She was a great fun piece to do pretty much while I waited for some paint and varnish to dry, with the actual painting part taking around 5 hours.

She can also be found in my Coolmini gallery - HERE 

The oldie is the Painting Buddha vignette. I've pretty much done this except for possibly adding a little greenery to the scene, and maybe either glossing the visor of the girl, or repainting it in a reflective style. To be honest, I want to draw a line under the piece, so it may well be a gloss and go situation, but the overall scene feels about right now and the scene might end up being called " ^_^ " seeing as there are actually 3 of them in the scene - the visor, graffiti and also, barely visibly, inscribed to her gun...

So, this brings a quite a long episode to an end. Currently I have 3 pieces primed that will get painted before I move onto the next batch of ideas. They will all be "fun" pieces too (although all pieces should be classed as fun, really!), and then it will be time for some "bigger" ideas again.

Until next time.

Scott ^_^