Dark Elves - Harpies WIP (color scheme)

Just a short update on my Harpies: I tested out a color scheme with just priming them gray, heavy black wash and cleaning the puddles up... Didn't work and don't like the result so I repainted the whole miniature in black, the wings purple and gave it a heavy drybrush of increasingly lighter graytones. Then glazed the wings to tone down the gray tones again to purple.
One thing I want to try after cleaning everything up is to gave it a marble look (yes my Harpies will be made of stone as I use the Gargoyle models from Mantic here). First time I try this, curious how this will turn out.

Please excuse the crappy picture but my camera goes havoc at the moment and I just didn't want to use my photo bucket for this short update (or buy a new camera :) ).


Have a good start into your weekend,
Paradox0n

Dark Elves - Harpies WIP

After pillaging through my whole Kickstarter stuff I found the Gargoyles from Mantic which could be a nice
replacement for my Harpies I used this far. So I spent the last two evenings (first time using my laptop cushion) with removing the mold lines and trying to get these thingies into a state that I can prime and paint them.

And oh boy... They have lots of mold lines. I am somewhat disappointed by the quality of these miniatures (as with the Orcs I started for Orctober and stopped painting before I threw them out of the window). But at least here the details work and you don't have to question yourself which part of the model this is you look at...

To be honest I like the sculpt pretty much, the mold quality is the problem here. But as with all the Mantic stuff: Its cheap and you get a good deal for your money.
The first miniature is already primed and awaits color getting brushed on. I want to do them in a very easy and simple color scheme: black/gray with the folds of the wings in purple. That should be just a lots of drybrushing and stuff.
So lets see what I can do here :)

Stay tuned and have a nice Sunday.

Paradox0n

Blogging update - Bug rant and moving pictures

Lately I got some serious problems with some disappearing pictures. Be it in the Followers Widget, in my Related Post Widget or even in my articles. Today this miracle is solved! I don't know why but the appropriate Picasa folder changed the displaying rights and therefore all links to the pictures in it where broken... I hope know this will now be solved and not happen again (had to correct  five posts, my widgets and some other stuff here). So be careful with your Picasa stuff, you never know what can happen :)

Another thing is, that I want to do some videos some while now. Perhaps you remember my posts from April where I started thinking about this topic and showed my camcorder and stuff. This weekend I played a bit with some stuff I found (and a trial license of an editing software) and don't want to keep this experiment from you. It nothing fancy but hey you have to start somewhere!

And I have two new adventurers on board! Welcome Remco and Old Fogey. Enjoy the travel and I hope you find your fortune on it.


So long,
Paradox0n

Hobby Basics - Cleaning your stuff

Today I had a very frustrating moment (to be honest moments): Since the wheather here is REALLY bad I loaded my wet palette, got my miniatures I wanted to paint and switched some nice music on. Then I wanted to do the first brush strokes and BÄMM! One brush stuck together nearly to the point and the other brush divided itself into two nice halves... And worse to that, my airbrush completely stopped working and I had to disassemble it completely. And oh boy... it was nearly completely glued together (although I cleaned it after every usage like I described earlier). After calmly counting to 10 and taking some deep breathes I gritted my teeth and set to the task of cleaning my stuff. The brushes are my everyday brushes and its not really a loss if I can't rescue them but with the airbrush it is somehting completely different.

Lesson learned Number 1:  Keep your brushes in safety from your cats. Seems they found a new toy to play with on my desk and made things even worse...
Lesson learned Number 2: The Vallejo Primer I reviewed some time ago is a bit more sticky than normal paint and a normal blow out and cleaning isn't enough.

To see the positive in this disaster I thought on doing another Hobby Basic post on cleaning your stuff the advanced way :)

Impressions from Majorca - Part I: Attractions

As promised I will start with some impressions of our Majorca trip a week ago. It is not easy to sort and select all those pictures (we did ~370 pictures in one week) so I decided to separate the pictures into two categories: sight seeing and landscape. With the sight seeing I will start today and dive directly into the pictures of the cathedral of Majorca, the town's landmark. So watch out: Picture heavy and wall of text ahead!

The "Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma" or just "La Seu"is a gothic roman catholic cathedral build on the site of an earlier existing mosque (Majorca has a pretty turbulent history with lots of captures and stuff). The construction began ~1230 but was finished in 1601 when the main portal was sanctified. Around 1850 the main facade was reconstructed and was only finished in the early 20th century.

The cathedral now is on of the main attractions in Palma and you have to pay to visit it (~6€ pP). We did that and spend some time there. As I know many Gothic churches/cathedrals here in Germany (especially the Freiburger Münster) I wasn't that impressed by La Seu. It is beautiful and especially the altar is quite impressive.

Dark Elves - New miniature videos from Games Workshop

With the new Release of the Dark Elves it seems I have to rethink my complete army and stop my projects like my own Cauldron of Blood and the like. And I finally have to go to do the Harpies/Gargoyles I got from the Mantic Kickstarter and all the other stuff lying arround. Too many things to attend to, don't know where to start first...
But first some look at the new miniatures after the break.

Papercut - Small house

Since my Photobucket is too small I just had to shoot this one on my cutting mat. Therefore the green background. As the posted Shack a while ago, this is the papercut house from the 5th edition starterbox from Warhammer Fantasy.

As the shack this was just glued on a cardboard base, flocked with static grass and the folding lines where painted in the corresponding colors. Again nothing fancy but it does its job pretty good (and this since the late 90ies). This is why the base is slightly warped, I think this thingy was based in the late 90ies and saw lots of games in this time :)

So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Again a new passenger on board! Welcome Peter, your blog already is in my blogroll and thanks for commenting :)