DVD Review - Painting Secrets with Natalya

Lucky me had the chance to get my hands on some painting DVDs for this weekend and spend some hours watching and enduring some of the stuff I saw there :)  I will start with the "Painting Secrets with Natalya" DVD set from CMON. The set was published 2011 contains of 4 DVDs and says about itself that it contains over 13-15 hours of instruction depending if you believe the printed cover or the product description. You can divide the set into roughly 5 chapters where Natalya tells you how she paints her miniatures. If you wonder who she is, maybe you know her from her artists name Alexi-Z or go visit her page now. Since Natalya speaks russian, the DVD is either in russian or in english (with voice over on the portrait parts). The painting footage is dubbed with music.

I like her work and after seeing the trailer of this set I was really curious how this set would turn out.

Friday Finding of the Week - Epic battle report

Battle of Hel Fenn from Hoodling

This week just passed by in flight and therefore its time for another Friday Finding of the Week (FFotW). This time I have found some really epic battle reports I want to share with you. Ever wondered how the Battle of Hel Fenn, where Mannfred Von Carstein was cornered by an alliance of men of the Empire and Dwarfs could have looked on the battlefield? Then jump over to Hoodling's Hole and read this epic and unbelievable insane battlereport with 20.000 points (each side) of warhammer madness.

But if this wouldn't be enough, he also has some very nice summarization of the different magic lores, some tournament battlereports, insights into his Warhammer thinking and even more epic battlereports. I think I lost some hours there with only reading these fantastic narrated battles. Big thanks for putting this much effort into this!

And since Hoodling also joined the journey a hearty: Welcome aboard!


So long,
Paradox0n

WIP - Base for the Cauldron of Blood

And another WIP for my Cauldron of Blood today. At the moment I am trying to build me a base for the Cauldron. Since it should be a bit more scenic I thought of a small "hill" where the cauldron stands, two witches behind it and the standard bearer in front of it.
Since I have lots of bark in my box I used some of it to get a rough layout (which will be painted like rock). Too bad my Fimo dried out, so I couldn't finish the other parts of the hill. Any suggestions how I could do it without Greenstuff or Fimo? aybe just sanding the whole thing could work too...
For a better understanding how this should look like in the end, I placed some models on the base (sneaky skaven-ratlings are everywhere!).

What do you think of it?

So long,
Paradox0n

Sunday Afternoon WIP - Dark Elves: Witch Elves

2K primed Witch Elves

A day off, a delicious asparagus menu and a painting afternoon with a friend, what a wonderful and quite ending of a long weekend. And since I really managed to paint something I can show you some WIP shots of my Witch Elves for my Cauldron of Blood.

First I did a two component priming for a better definition of the lighting of the miniatures. You don't believe how tricky this is when it is a stormy weather like today. But after seeing of some pictures from Mr. Lee I know now that I can achieve this with my airbrush too. Therefore as soon as my aerosol cans are empty I will buy me a black primer from Vallejo since I am really pleased with their primers.

Saturday Night WIP - Dark Elves: Cauldron of Blood

After a rather restless night, I can show you some WIP shots for my version of the Cauldron of Blood for the Dark Elves.
The Cauldron is not the one from Games Workshop it is the Spawning Vessel from the Legion of Everblight. The acolythes will be used later as beastmasters for my hydra :)
Since I am a rather classical RPG player the thought of a statue carried by three wicked witches was not really appealing to me. It is too heavy, too clumsy and doesn't fit to my imagination of the Cauldron. And I was not willing to pay ~40€ for a modell I don't like and where I had to cut off half of it... The old model (more a chariot than anything else) is also not the best one (but fitted to the old rules) and only buyable via the Bay or similar places. So I bought myself a witch commando, the spawn vessel and a battle standard (more of her in a future article) and started thinking.

Friday Finding of the Week - Wargaming rooms

H.G. Wells playing a wargame

Friday Finding of the Week (FFotW) will be my new weekly column where I will show you some of the stuff I stumbled upon while browsing the web. This can be miniatures, videos, tutorials or other stuff all around our cool hobby.
Even H.G. Wells was playing wargames so I thought of starting with a small collection of fascinating wargaming rooms I found while browsing for ideas for my own gaming table and stumbled upon whole rooms of which most of us gamers can only dream of.

Hobby Magazines - Portal Magazine Issue #31

The new Issue of Portal Magazine has arrived:

Portal Magazine Issue #31

This issue contains following stuff:

• Guide To Painting the Stonehorn with We7
• Grular Invader,Alkemy and Reaper reviews
• Golden Thrall Report
• Painting Avatars of War Orc Shaman
• News, new releases and gallery