Experiment: Paint a miniature just by washing...

...and one drybrush for highlights.

So jep that is exactly what I wanted to do today. "Painting" a miniature with only washes and one drybrush step. Why? Because I did read quite a lot of fast painting tutorials who exactly did that for armies like Skaven, Goblins or Tyranids. And as you might know, I still have more than 200 Skaven uncounted numbers of Orcs & Goblins and much much more flying around.
Therefore I just wanted to give it a try. Another reason was, that I hadn't painted for half a year now and just wanted to get a feeling for paints again (and find my brushes, paints etc. pp. after the pimping of our office). Excuse the shabby pictures, I just made them with my smartphone to underline the "do as fast as possible" character of this test :)

The model is a custom made one, I don't even know anymore from which models the body and the arm was, I think from a Monk and a Beasthandler. MAybe I am wrong with that, I just grabbed me something in reach.

First step was priming the model with my trusted Vallejo Primer. I saw here some mold lines but really didn't care about them. The complete thing was more a test than wanting to achive some good results. And since tis is rank & file, noone will have a too close look. At least that is what I am hoping for :)

Then I washed it with Army Painter washes (which I reviewed some time ago). Green for the robe, Soft Tone for the fur, Dark Tone for the metal and Strong Tone for the rope and grip. A bit of Red for the tongue finished that step up.
After waiting some minutes to dry the miniature, I continued with washing, exactly the same order exactly the same tones, to strengthen the colors a bit. This time I checked that I put more color into the recesses.
One thing I did see now, is that the old GW Sepia Ink had a bit more orange/redish tone to it, the Soft Tone is much more brown.

After first wash

After second wash

As you can see the second layer of washes has a quite strong effect. I was really surprised.

I then saw, that the miniature lacked highlights which I couldn't change by just washing more. Thus I did "break the rules" and gave the miniature a fast drybrush with Vallejo Elfic Flesh. After that I gave it the third and last wash.
This time I broke up the washes a bit and mixed some blue into the Dark Tone and some Red into the Browns to introduce a bit of variation, e.g. for the metals and the tail
Then I glued it to a selfmade base and was done.


Is this the best paint job ever done? Well surely not! But it was super fast and had a surprising effect. With some short investment (doing the metals with metallic paint, putting some highlights) this could be ok as a rank & file.

Have to test a bit more with this heavy washing over just a primer. Up until now I only used washes for creating shadows, not for creating base colors.

Experiment succesfull! And I painted finally something!


So long,
Paradox0n

Painted Abyssal Dwarf Mortars

There are really signs and wonders around. I finally painted up something! Seems like an eternity since I painted and thus it also feeled when I struggled with the paints and brushes again. One thing I recognized pretty fast: Next time I paint with a wet palette again. The whole time the paint just didn't feel right, especially since I paint now with longer bristle brushes (reason why, see here) which really struggle if the paint is too thick.
Nonetheless I painted and I will show you the results: An Abyssal Dwarf Angkor Heavy Mortar and an Abyssal Dwarf G’rog Light Mortar for my upcoming Kings of War army.

Nothing fancy or so, but since they got me back to painting I am really happy with them. The Heavy Mortar was quite a miscast sadly but I tried to do the best and cover that a bit with the paint. I think from a distance it is OK so far and that's what these two are about: Being painted for the battlefield :)


One thing I experienced through the process was that it seems that one of my Spray Primers got bad. It sprayed and everything but when it was dry, the paint didn't stick to it but dripped off of it. Like it had some strange Lotus Effect or something. Never had that before, but I was not happy with it before and now I think I just throw it away (12€ for the bin :( ).

Some more stuff is already on my table and I hope I find enough time and motivation to paint even more.


So long,
Paradox0n


P.S.: I think I will experience with showing WIP pictures and stuff also through Instagram and Twitter. Maybe that helps me to stay a bit more motivated. I hope that feedback turnaround is much faster there, because the comment section is mostly not used here :(

Shadows of Brimstone: Hellbat

Just a short shot from my workbench: My first Hellbat from Shadows of Brimstone. I tried out a color scheme which I may use for my Legion of Everblight if they arrive finally. And I also tried out some wetblending (the tongue) just to get a feel for paint consistency and stuff. Must be improved but at least I did some painting again :)

More to the miniatures if I painted the complete batch of them.


So long,
Paradox0n

Shadows of Brimstone: Tentacles done!

Finally I finished the first batch of Tentacles from Shadows of Brimstone. If you haven't any idea what Shadows of Brimstone is about, you can check my unboxing of the two core sets where I give a first impression of the content and style of the game.
I decided to go with a two color scheme since the game has normal and brutal monsters and by giving the tentacles different colors I can differ later in the game between the two.
After forcing myself through those miniatures (more of that later) I can give you also a first and short review of the miniatures.

Ramshackle Drill finished

My Ramshackle Drill is finally finished (or as finished as I will go at the moment). I think it still needs some weathering, but I will most likely do that when the rest of the war machines are finished. The color scheme came out pretty nicely and I think I will do the rest of my Chaos Dwarfs in the same scheme.

The picture kills some of the highlights but I am too lazy to setup the bucket or even my photo tent for this one shot :) The cam of my mobile will not capture the details anyway. But for Christmas I want to gift me with a DSLR, most likely the Nikon D3300. Or does anyone have another good option in this price range?

And after my very successful post to my 200th "anniversary" it seems that my blog now jumps back to normal, few page views and comments :)

I hope I can get to some unboxing of the Shadows of Brimstone boxes. I already risked a look and so far they look fantastic.


So long,
Paradox0n

WIP - Chaos Dwarf

Hope you all had a nice Christmas and didn't explode from all the delicious food you got :) Since here the weather is really bad (rain instead of snow and most of the time pretty windy) I couldn't prime my harpies (I have black as spray can primer) so I loaded up my airbrush and searched for a victim for my painting madness :)
But before starting to paint I had to pimp my working space since I got some really nice presents from the "Christkind" and additionally did some shopping in a big swedish furniture store. But more of that later.

Perhaps some of you remember that I had won a Scibor Chaos Dwarf some time ago. Since I have some days off at the moment I started painting this one. While basecoating two of my brushes died a miraculous death (the points just bended and the hairs feathered out) although I had always treated them well (even cleaned them with brush soap). But these where old ones so I don't have to mourn about them, I just switched to the more expensive ones

Nonetheless here are the first WIP shots from the chaos dwarf (I really have to adjust to my new painting setup especially for WIP pictures).
Everything seems a bit blotchy at the moment but the idea behind this massive brown basecoat is to give my bronze a nice base. And on black/white or pure grey the color just doesn't "shine" enough.
The fur I want do shade down a bit and give it some drybrushing and the coat should be a dark red. The washing didn't tune it down enough, so I think I will start shading it manually.

Before starting to basecoat the armor in brown, I did a short test with the shield of this chaos dwarf. And I really really liked the result. It was just a basecoat in brown, one layer of Vallejo Glorious Gold, a heavy wash of Gryphone Sepia, some highlights with a  mixture of the gold and Vallejo Gunmetal Metal, a final highlight with nearly pure Gunmetal and a final wash with sepia.

For me this gave exactly the look of a used but well-kept shield I wanted.

Stay tuned for more WIP of him. I really like the details of this miniature and are happy that I got it from Mr. Lee (even if I had some nightmares while preparing it for painting).


So long,
Paradox0n

Monsters!!!

Felt monsters are conquering my table.. .HELP ME! Nah just kidding. They are tooooo cute to be really dangerous or even a thread :)

Felt monsters attack!

If you wonder why the hell I am showing these... My wife got a crush on those and started making them herself. Two of them are permanently lingering on my working table and the cats are mischievously eyeing the other two... All of them are made out of felt, darning wool, yarn and some decorating stuff like buttons.

Descent - Journeys in the Dark | Miniatures

As promised I made today some pictures of the miniatures of the boardgame Descent - Journeys in the Dark which I reviewed not long ago. Since there are so many miniatures I didn't set up my photobucket I just arranged them on my cutting mat and did some short photo shooting. If you want any of the miniatures in close up, please state so in the comments, I will then do a in deep coverage of them.

I'll be starting with the different sets of heroes. I tried to make some closeups but my camera played me some tricks, therefore only a group photo:

All of the heroes for Descent

Rebasing some of my old models

Perhaps you have seen some of my old models in my review of the Feldherr XL and wondered: What the *** are those ugly based miniatures. And you are propably right. But before you judge them I will tell you something about those poor Skaven :-)

Old Clanrats

WIP - Plague Furnace

After some terrain making and a big motivation leak while painting my Verminlord, I switched to painting my Plague Furnace. Only bad thing about this modell: I bought it used and everything is glued together which makes it not as easy to paint as it should be.
Nonetheless I will give it a try since I want to use it in one of my next battles :)

Primed and ready to paint

Damn this thing is so big, its even too big for my photo bucket! I will try some things and will look how it will turn out in the end.

So long,
Paradox0n

[Updated] Another warped tree

I couldn't resist to buy another aquarium decoration tree. After I had some nice results with my first one, I found another one in my hardware store. And with a price of ~3 euros it was again difficult to do something wrong by buing it.
They really fit into my warped, beaten up ad dark concept for my gaming table. And I play Skaven so warpstone trees are even better!

No long chit chat, just a short shot from my photo bucket:

Tree from the front

Tree from the back

Out of the bucket

Again I did some shooting.
The first victim is a skaven clanrat I did shortly before my last warhammer game. I followed the paint scheme most of the army I bought had.

Skaven clanrat from the front

Skaven clanrat from the back

The second victim is a Cawdor Heavy from Necromunda. Yes this is a very old modell, I think I painted it somewhere in the 90's when Necromunda was a big issue here in Germany.

Cawdor Heavy from the front

Cawdor Heavy from the back

And yes I'm still experimenting with the photobucket. I'm not completely satisfied with the results. But luckily they are WAY better then the old pictures.


So long,
Paradox0n

Stuff from my working table

With my new photobucket I tried to make some new photos of the stuff lying around. Yes I do really paint! So I didn't want to keep back and show some finished miniatures even if they are somewhat older or just experiments for things to come :)

The first ones are my old reptile riders. They are unitfillers for my darkelf army since they don't really fit into my cold one regiment. I don't know from which manufacturer they are, they are made out of resin and are from the late 80's or early 90's. Some weeks ago I painted the eyes od the reptiles and finished the riders for my first match in 8th edition.

Reptile riders from the front

Reptile riders from the back

HowTo: Photobucket

Everytime I made some photos I cursed because without the right equipment the pictures often get somewhat blurry, oversatureated or shiny. Therefore I searched for an easy way to build me place where I can make my pictures. Prices for professional equipment ranges from 40€ to open end and I didn't want to spent my money on something like this (the money saved could be invested in paints/miniatures or a nice evening with my wife). The best solution for low budget I found (in different places) seems to be the photobucket:

Photo bucket at no cost