Man o' Man....

Ok so here's the skinny. I pretty much put painting on the backburner for the last month or so as soon as I realized that I needed to spend more time prepping for the GRE than I had originally anticipated. So, now that that is done, I still have Grad School apps and a writing sample to beef up, but I will have time to paint again :D

I started back on my sorcerer model and I hopt to have the initial phase of the model done in the next week or so, though don't hold me to the timeline these days lol. The first phase, incidentally is simply to complete the complete normally, with normal lighting, including useing metallic paints instead of the NMM method. After that I am going to look out for a couple of articles and how-to's regarding secondary light sources and give that a shot....


Till Then

28mm Painter

On deck for this week...

After enjoying a wonderful long weekend with the wife in Wine country visiting friends and breweries ( I know, right?) I am back and about ready to tackle my next model, Reaper's Lamann Sorcerer. Until I get my lighting rigs back from my friend, I wont be able to do any WIP shots until then to prove it, but I think I have decided on the color scheme for this guy as well as the effects and techniques I want to try to apply to this guy.



As for the color palate, I think I am going to go with a nice combination of Yellow, Purple and Green. For the Robes, I think I am going to lay out a nice pale and mellow yellow color and complement that with a strong and muted purple (probably GW's Liche Purple as a base) and then hit the orb in his left hand hard with a bright and lively green.

Obviously, this is just my plan going in, but the idea I am eye-balling here is 4-fold. 1) Expand my usage of the color palate by shifting from a 2 tone palate on a model to a 3 tone palate. 2) Because this model is almost exclusively robes and cloth, I wanted to get some more practice at using and exploring the blending and glazing technique I have come across in articles. 3) In beginning my hand at NMM techniques with the previous weeks Hospitallers, I have decided to take some extra effort to learn how to make my metallic metals better and look less out of place and 'novice-y'. the little bits of small armor that show will be a good way to begin that. 4) This one is the real trick here. I am going to try my hand at secondary source lighting. That is to say, portraying glowing lights from sources other than the 'sun' on the model. Ideally, I will be able take a bright and glowing green orb, and show the green light from the orb on the appropriate portions of the rest of the model. whew!

I know I over-analyze a lot of things in my life, and this is no different. But if the ultimate goal is to simply improve my quality of my end product and increase my ability and artfulness, then the only way I know is through over analyzation. Due to the completely 'out of my own depth' nature of my goals, and other things, I think I am going to push the deadline on this model back and take 2 weeks rather than a single week. I will however be posting thoughts, progress, setbacks and frustrations along the way.

wick, wick

28mm Painter

Well, its just the beginning and I have already failed my predetermined schedule. bleh.In ym defense I was out of the house all last week helping a friend of mine shoot his small film and catching up on some studying this week.

In the mean time I DID manabge to hit my 1 model/ per week quota I established. Last week I finished the 2nd of 3 Reaper Hospitaller models and this week I finished the final of the 3 models. I just pinned the base of next weeks model, Reaper's Lamann Sorcerer, as well as primed him and inked him with Brown ink to start visualizing the recesses for shadows a bit more easily.





Just from working on these last 3 models I have figured out a few things while I continue to try to knock the rust off my brushes so to speak.

1) I have started to thin glazes when I am building up my highlights on larger-ish areas to help hide stark and harsh highlights and it definiely has helped, so I think I will continue to experiement with glazes.
2) I REALLY need to keep working on my skin tones.
3)I REALLY need to work on my hair techniques.
4) As much as I look a good NMM, when its not done well it looksclumsy at best. Although I feel like Ihave a better handle on it in the since Ihave started painting, I feel I may be better off really working the Metallic paints angle for a while, until I get everything else under control, especially when it comes to the gray-ish steel colors.
5) I HAVE to get a better handle on decent basing. I already have some sand and small rock flocking, but I need to order some grass flocking from my LFGS in the next couple of weeks. I have also looked into the idea of perhaps clipping the slot tabs off of the bottom of the models and mounting them directly to the bases, but for that I also need to buy or order a bag of just bases to mount several of these models to. Im not sure I want to keep struggling with a model to keep it on a base though.. hrmmmmm

I don't know if I can get this next sorcerer doen in just a week becuase the model has sooo many cloth folds and robes that It may take a while once you consider the glazes.

I will be posting some other articles next week I will be writing discussing information from other websites and how valuable or valueless less I find them to be as I research potential techniques to use to spruce up my skills. Until then.


Almost forgot, I won't get to post any progress pictures for a couple of weeks because Ive loaned my clamp lamps out the aforementioned friend to help light scenes better. Once I get them back I can take a bunch of follow up pictures of everything Ive done. Now Im done.
28mm Painter

Week 1 update

I will follow up in a couple of days with some notes on these models, but here it is, saturday afternoon and I have finished pretty much everything I set out to do for the week. The Crupt Bat and Hospitaller #1 are complete, and I finished basing my Reaper Blacksmith and the Privateer Press Ordic Pistoleer. I also started on Hospitaller #2 out of 3 as well as finally finishing the coins on Capt Razig's basing. Here are the pics.

28mm Painter

Just a few more things this week

So there are just a couple of more things that I want to try to accomplish this week, in addition to finishing the Crypt Bat and the Hospitaller. The first is that I want to finish off, finally 2 models that I have completed painting many, many moon cycles ago but have never truly finished off because I never based them. The first is a Reaper Miniatures Blacksmith that I painted in a quasi undead manner, but glued to a normal slotted round base. This unfortunately leaves a disparity between the integrated Reaper base and the slotta base that needs to be dealt with accordingly.




The second model I need to finish basing is more like I need to finish painting the base. Another Reaper Miniature, Captain Razig came with a bit of basing included with the base, a bit of mast presumably from his pirate ship for him to Captain Morgan on. Similar to the problem I ran into with the Crypt Bat, if I left this base the way it was, the slot would be visible and simply be plain as hell and entirely uninteresting, IMO. So I rolled up some green stuff, let it cure and then cut it up into a bunch of little coins, which I then glued to the base instead of flocking of some sort. The only problem is, I based them with snakebite leather so I could NMM them into gold. ( I know, I know I mixed NMM and metallics like I just lambasted, but I didnt have much choice because the Shinging Gold metallic paint was so thin it wasn't applying properly.) So all I really need to do to finish this model, is to finish paiting the basing. Hopefully I can finish this project this week.
In another lifetime when I worked as a Reset Merchandiser, we used to grade the difficulty of a project, not on the logistical difficulty of finishing the project, but on the length of time it would take to finish it. More often than not, the longer a project took to complete was directly related to the number of pieces of merchandise you had to actually touch. In this case, the basing for Capt. Razig is an incredible pain in the ass because there are SOOO many individual coins to paint. Stupid coins. Do those, touch up the sides and then it will be done completely.




Finally, the last mini-project I would like to complete this week, or at least make progress on is Rasha the Blade Dancer, also from Reaper Miniatures. I haven't mounted her on a slotta base, and I have pretty much just completed the fleshtones and the scarf, but I also will need to touch-up the both of these as I move forward because at some point in the past I was sloppy with a wash and couldnt clean it out of the crevices it seeped into beforeit dried. Why don't I just strip it and start new? I like the scarf actually and I am pretty happy with the skin tones I have already set down. Now, if I could just remember which colors I used fo rit. heh.




Alright, here's hoping Iget this all done. I will report back with the finished projects and whether or not I have been able to complete all these projects, in addition to finishing the Crypt Bat and the Hospitaller.

Keeping my head down and trudging through...



-28mm Painter

Current WIP's

So, here are some pics of a few things that I have either left in lurch, half complete and just collecting dust for the last few years or I have JUST started on in the last couple of weeks since digging out my paints and brushes. I thought I would include some pictures of the figures that I want to work on first.

The red Crypt Bat is the very fist model that I have started after my little sojourn. I originally got this model during a visit to my friend's place up near Napa valley when I came across it at a card, comic and game shop that used to be called 'Outer Planes'. Following the old adage of 'Pay where you Play', or conversely 'Don't crap where you eat', I never liked to visit without spending at least a few dollars. Luckily, along with all of the other mainstream tabletop games, they also carried a fairly extensive collection of Reaper mini's. I particualrly like this figure on the rack because it was a good sculpt with an interesting base already included and good musculature.

Regarding my painting and modeling decisions, I decided to go with red instead a more natural brown, gray or black because the 'Werebat' look appeared a little more demonic to me, which of course always deserves a shot at red. Maybe its just me. The basing wasn't complete so instead of trying to do anything crazy with it and wishing I hadnt, I just added some green stuff and worked it over with an exacto blade to try to finish out the the grass that was already at the base of the headstone with the hopes that it would look like a snapshot of a headstone in a larger field/graveyard instead of the more claustrophobic feel an overly busy base sometimes gives off. The only thing I really have left on this model is to paint the wings and to touch up the sides of the base.




The second model I have started freshly is one of a pack of 3 Reaper Miniature Crusader Hospitaller's, I believe from their Dark Heaven game. This set was also purchased on a roadtrip to visist my Napa friend, except this time, I was bored from trying to work on my WH40k and Warmachine forces and I was looking for any excuse to buy random, Reaper-style miniatures so I could paint just meaningless models and work on some of my skills without fretting over whether or not I pooched some aspect of the model and now it looks like crap on the gaming table. So, in an effort to get my money's worth, I fond this pack of 3 quasi-knight looking guys with tunics and whatnot, but without the plate armor and sundry helmetry that so many Reaper 'knights' wear.

With this guy, I had already actually finished one of them completely, with a similar color scheme, just before I stopped painting years ago, so when I started painting baldy here, I decided to keep the same green cape and and white-ish field for the tunic, changing mainly the color choice on the fleur de lis and on the trim of the tunic from the previous blood red to a chocolatey brown with an attempt to NMM some gold along the edges as its own trim. I even tried to NMM the chainmail beneath the tunic mainly becuase I have always thought that mixing NMM and metallic paints looks godawful and rarely fits together well. I am almost done with this model, but I still have to base it, paint a scroll case on his waist that is underneath the open scroll and touch up a few spots, including a mysterious scrape that took all the paint off a small spot on the cape.

I am hoping to definitely finish these 2 models this week, as well as doing some fundamental basing with green stuff on 3 other models that are older and complete but not based as of yet. I am planning on doing another post that includes the figures that are are already more or less complete but simply need some form of tedious work to complete them that I have been too disintered to focus on in the last several years.


-28mm Painter

First Introductions

This is the inaugural posting for my new blog. I figure I will outline the purpose behind it and the method I'll be using to post new pieces as well as use it to outline a little bit of background about myself.

I have been painting miniatures for tabletop wargames for about 12 years. Of the last 12 years, I have taken off the last 4-5 years to focus on finishing college and marrying my wife. Now, age 30, I have a lot more time available, having completed both of these goals, to game. As I began to think about what I wanted to play ( because I have a metric tonne of WarHammer 40k Eldar and what used to be arespectable force of Warmachine Khador) I remembered that what I REALLY enjoyed about the hobby was the painting and modeling aspects and not as much the gaming and competing aspects. Certainly, I have a FLGS (Friendly Local Game Shop) in my town and a very genial group of gamers that are both friendly AND quality competition (a combination that is difficult to find), but I haven't really located anyone that shares a similar enough interest to my own regarding painting and modeling that I can communicate with regularly. Even in the vast and hegemonic expanse of the internet, I have dipped my toes into a couple of decently well-known forums that are 'craft'-centric and found the waters cold and virtually non-responsive. This leads me to the impetus of this blog.

The purpose of this blog is two-fold:
1) To chronicle my earnest attempt to advance my own painting skills using whatever information I can find. I don't aim to win a Golden Demon or other such high acclaims, instead, I simply wish to advance my skills in order to produce a painted miniature that I can look at and be happy about the work I've done. Self-Improvement.
2) To search out and locate other gamers and mini-painters with a similar interest advancing our own skills to a level that we are happy with. As a craft-centric community, we can lift each other up and improve ourselves through actual interactive contact with one another rather than being forced to compete with everyone else in trying to scramble for the threads on the coattails of those hobbyists that are pre-emininatly looked up to for their skills and ability. We should be a community that helps each other to grow and succeed, rather than one that must compete for scraps of information that is generalized for the masses because those fortunate and skilled few cannot possibly responds to all the demands on their time by those that wish to learn.

I will be posting WIP (Works In Progress) pictures of whatever I am working on. Ultimately, I hope to be able to start and finish one minature per week , roughly Tuesday to Tuesday depending on my schedule, or if its a solo or hero model, or 4-5 miniatures a week if I am working on a squad for an army. In this way, there will be a chronicled record of the work Ihave done that I can use to track my own progress. I will be posting my current WIP's very soon and plan on posting a blank, un-primered model everytime, before I begin to paint.

I don't know that many people will be reading this at all, or ever and that is fine with me. I do hope that anyone who does choose to read this blog, is just as willing to share with me their own progress, as I am willing to share with them my own progress and together we can take are skills where we want them to be.

28mm Painter