Jay's weekly painting report

Okay, here's a look at the first of my Guard Veterans with Shotguns. I'll have more to see next week.

Click the image to go to the Flickr page and see a larger version.

You'll note the non-standard backpacks. I bought those way back when the Battlewagon would still come out and visit us. Those are metal bits for old Necromunda minis. I've been saving them for just the right project. This is that project. The idea here is that these guys are not only Veterans but they're a LRRP unit (long-range reconnaissance patrol). That means that they're going to be in the field for a while... so they need to bring a lot of stuff with them.

Last week wasn't as visibly productive as the previous week. I only got three minis to completion. Still, three is more than none and that's really the point here.

All three are for my Imperial Guard army. Have a look:

 Here we have the Sergeant for my veteran squad. He's been converted with a shotgun from Maxmini.eu, a head from Mordheim (now found as the Empire Free Company set), and a backpack from Necromunda (apparently, no longer available in any form). Overall I'm happy with this guy. Altuough you can't really tell from this photo, the shotgun didn't get centered properly on his hand and I didn't want to break it in order to reposition it. You can only tell from certain angles so I left it.

 Next up is the Astropath. Although he's one of the two Imperial Advisers that I'm unlikely to use (except when I want to fill out some extra points) he was the simplest of the three to paint. And I was looking for a mini that I knew that I could knock out quickly. I kept it simple. No weird extra designs on his robe. I thought about it, but decided he looked good as is.

 Lastly, I have this Bodyguard. He's going to be protecting my Imperial Advisers. He's a promo mini that, to my knowledge, you can't get anymore. Since he's standing at attention I thought that he'd work better as a bodyguard than as part of my veteran squad. Oh, and compared to the plastic Cadians, this guy kinda sucks. I never noticed it until I started painting him. He's kinda chunky, his face sort of fills the helmet oddly and the hands are huge. This struck me as the first mini of a new guy on the team or something. Still, it came out okay.

Aside from all of this I got started on a couple of my vets for my veteran squad, three more minis for my WWII Germans, and the other two Imperial Advisers. GW sent me my replacement for the one that was badly cast. So expect to some several of those guys next week.

Oh, and if you go to my Flickr page directly you can see a bunch of photos that I took of some of my old stuff.

A side benefit to doing these weekly updates is that I'm taking more pictures now in addition to painting more minis. It's killing two birds with one stone since I've wanted to find more excuses to use my camera. I think that my pics are improving as well.

VERY nice, I especially like the Astropath, well done, I wish I could have painted my Tau as well as you paint.

Thanks!

You know, it really takes a little knowledge and a little practice. My first 5 years of painting I really didn't have a clue as to what I was really doing. It wasn't until I started working at a hobby store and met some modelers who were able to impart to me their knowledge of basic painting techniques that I really started to improve.

Some basic things that anybody can do to improve their painting are:

Make sure the mini is COMPLETELY painted. This is one of the more basic things I see. People are in a hurry and leave areas of the mini unpainted. Regardless of how good the paintjob is if you don't have the thing completely coated you're mini will seem unfinished (because it is).

Try thinning the paint - just a bit. Nothing makes a minis look a nice as a good smooth coat of paint. A lot of times the paint right out of the jar is going to be a bit thick to achieve this kind of finish. What I usually do is dab a little paint onto a palette (which can be almost anything - I'm using a plastic lid from a terrain grass container at the moment), then dip my brush into some water, then add that to the paint and then mix. If it gets runny then add more paint. The goal is to make your paint smooth, not watery. The downside is that this can then mean that it takes a couple of coats to cover properly (and you absolutely can't do light coats over black primer). If you can master just completely covering your minis with a nice smooth coat of paint your minis will already be ahead of the curve in terms of overall quality.

Speaking of light colors... If you're using black primer you need to do a light undercoat in any area that's going to be light colored. A quick and dirty method that I use to prep a black-primed mini is to give it a series of gray/white drybushes (and if you don't know how to do that I can explain it in the future). It's okay if the recesses of the minis stay black. The difference between the light and the dark areas will help create depth and texture to the colors. But if you just leave it black and you want a portion of your mini to be... let's say yellow... you're going to find yourself frustrated with how long it takes to actually get the yellow to look right. BTW - The GW foundation paints are a good way around this problem. They were created to cover over black with one or two coats and they do a fantastic job of it.

"It's okay if the recesses of the minis stay black. The difference between the light and the dark areas will help create depth and texture to the colors."

This is what I've been trying to do lately, it just makes the minis look that much better. Of course, I started painting my first army(my Tau) when i was 16 or 17, I'm 21 now. So my up and coming Chaos Space Marines army will hopefully show my progression of painting skills...but please, keep the pictures flowing, they're very inspiring. I also just picked up the Imperial Guard codex so I'm showing a tad more interest in them.

Well, I'm glad this is helping. Half of the reason I'm doing this is for me - to keep my own inspiration and production levels up. For example, this week I've been really busy (sort of) so I haven't touched minis at all yet. But I'm still thinking about it so I know I'll get into the shop and get some work done by tomorrow at the latest. But the other reason is that I really want to be able to help those people, like yourselves, who are interested in ramping up their own abilities.

Technically I could still get some painting done today, but I feel like I've been pretty productive this week already considering I didn't start painting until Wednesday.

So this week I have 5 minis done.

Remember, you can click the images to go to the Flickr page and see larger versions.

I never photographed my first batch of WWII Germans, but here's the second batch. The painting style is a little chunkier than I normally do, but the mini detail is a little chunkier than I normally do as well. The minis are from Crusader Miniatures. Not bad for historicals actually, but the quality level keeps going up for historicals so these are really only fair minis. Paint colors are pretty much all from the Vallejo Flames of War German Uniform set.

This is one of my regular Imperial Guard Veterans. Only a slight conversion here adding a shotgun from Maxmini.eu and he backpack from one of the heavy weapon sprues (I never quite understood why only the heavy weapon teams got this accessory.

Another slight conversion. This has a Space Wolf head. I wanted the flamer guy to be a little outrageous so I thought that flaming red hair would do the trick.

That's it for this week. Next week I expect to have another Imperial Advisor done (may the last two), more germans and... I'm not sure what else.

So in preparation for another week of painting I dug out an old dragon miniature that I've had kicking around for a number of years. I didn't realize how many years until I looked at the newspaper it was wrapped in. The newpaper was from May or 1989. Which means I've had the thing for more than 20 years without ever painting it.

The miniature itself is pretty cool and, I think, a bit collectible. It was an official D&D anniversary edition miniature based on artwork by Jeff Easley. When it was released it went for about $50. Now... I can't even find an example of it anywhere on the web so it's anybody's guess what the thing is worth.

I had to scrape out some old epoxy that I had used to assemble the thing, then I re-epoxied part of the tail. I was going to give it a day before I did anything else with it. In fact, I'm considering breaking it off again and pinning it this time (should have thought of that in the first place).

That wouldn't happen to be "The ultimate dragon" would it?  I'm fairly certain I remember that one...

Here's the funny thing...

When I first read your assertion (that it was Teronus the Ultimate Dragon from Grenadier Models) my first reaction was "no, it's not that one because I have one of those and it's not the same one... but it sure is similar." But then I started wondering about HOW similar it was, so I dug out my Teronus and.. sure enough, it's the same one. So it turns out that I have TWO of those dragons now.

Score!

It was a pretty productive week! I hot my ideal of 1 mini painted per day and then some. I actually completed 7 minis and painted some terrain. It's good to be ahead of the game because I think that this week I'm going to be focused on prepping my workshop for paint and that means putting away all of my mini-painting supplies.

So, here's the first batch. Another group of 28mm WWII German infantry. Remember, you can click on any of the pics to go to a larger version.

I'm happier with this batch than I was with the last. I'm not entirely sure why. I added some "leaf litter" to the two-man crew on the right. Took me more than an hour to find the right seed pods in the forest to make that stuff. Now I see why people just buy it. When it's all said and done I think that I'm going to be really happy with this little army.

Next up is my Master of Ordinance from the Regimental Advisors collection for the Imperial Guard. He's the primary reason I got the set and I'm reasonably happy with him. I added the brass diamond-plate base piece from the terrain set to his base. Looks pretty good - not that you can see it here. Oh, and there's a little preview of the terrain in the background.

And here we have the terrain. More specifically, the terrain pieces from the Battle for Maccragge set. I was planning to paint those when the set came out. They sat in the basement ever since. Until now. I love painting scenery. It's always so satisfying. I actually noodled on this set all week. The base paint went down really quickly. Then I did an oil-wash for the aging effect. Then a little airbrush to make it dusty. Then picked out some details with the brush... about three or four times. Over all it didn't add up to all that much work. It was what I worked on when I wanted a break from the other stuff.

So, that's it for the week. Not sure what, if anything, I'll have for next week.

This has been an interesting week. On the one hand, it was the least productive week in terms of miniature painting that I've had since I started this update thread. On the other hand, I'm REALLY happy with what I did. So, have a look:

i haven't done faux marble in years and the last time I tried it I wasn't a project that was as ambitous as this one. Not counting assembly and primer this project actually only took about three hours total. Not too bad for something that was essentially completely experimental.

I started with black primer. Then, I took a little P3 Troll Base color mixed with Liquitex Gloss Medium and a bit of water at about 1:2 - making it a little transparent. This was applied directly to the black with a small sea sponge. I dabbed the whole thing once, let it dry a bit, dabbed in again, let it dry, and on and one until the color built up. The trick seems to be to keep the paint from smearing too much. Once the base was where I wanted it then the fun part started. That is, painting the cracks. I added a lot of the troll belly color to the existing color to lighten it up. Then, I painted the cracks in with a feather rather than a brush. Why? Because the feather will naturally move around as you paint with it keeping the cracks much more natural in appearance. I had done a google image search to get a sense for how the cracks should look so I tended to keep them flowing in the same direction - but obviously they don't all go the same way. If any of the cracks looked too promouned then I would either dab them with my figure to blend out the line or I would do it with a brush. When that was done, I went back over a few of the cracks with a brush to add a bit more emphasis ti them. At that point I was pretty much done... with the statue anyway. The base is pretty straight forward.

So, the reason that I didn't get more miniature painting done was because I was priming the walls to my workshop. So, since that was the case, here's a look at the shop:

I'm a day late on my weekly report...

So last week I wasn't as productive as I might have liked. I did manage to finish to minis. Two of the new Morgul Knights for Lord of the Rings. I have a total of six of them to paint and I did build, prime and base coat all of them. I also started work on a couple more of the German infantry that I've been doing - but those won't be compelted until this week (in fact, they're almost done now).

This week I'll be finishing up more of the knights, those Germans, and I've already started building the rest of my Guard Veteran squad. Also, I've had this odd compulsion to work on my Space Hulk minis. I dug them out of the attic but I don't know if that mean they will actually get done. On top of that I'm still hoping to get some inspiration to work on the Valkyrie.

Pics later.

Here's what I got done last week:

A bit late getting my report in again.

Okay, last week I got two german infantry painted (not pictured) and one Space Hulk Broodlord (below). The Broodlord sort of jumped out at me and forced me to paint him. I spent a lot of time trying to decide on an approach as well as a couple of false starts. In the end I was pretty happy with the results. The carapace blue is Necron Abyss (Foundation series) mixed with various amounts of Mithril Silver as a highlight. The fleshy parts are Lich Purple mixed with Tallarn Flesh (Foundation) as a highlight color. The claws are silver washed down with black, as are the teeth. He actually took a while to complete.

I also finished converting my last 5 veteran guard..

Next week: More Morgul Knights, more vets... not sure what else. Maybe a genestealer.

I got a lot done this week... which is strange because I'm doing more work work as well.

Anyway...

I got another veteran done for my vet squad. 4 more to go and this squad is essentially done - not counting special weapons guys that I might add in the future. I obviously did a little Photoshop on this pic.

I also got my first two Genestealers done for Space Hulk. Two done... eleventy billion to go. I think that there's actually something like 25 of them.

Normally I'd be pretty happy with these two pics, but I like the first two so much better that I find myself undewhelmed with these. So that makes four of these guys done, two more to go.

On top of all of the above work I also got some real progress done on the Valkyrie. I painted the crew, assembled the cockpit and assembled more of the needed sub-assemblies before doing the full paint job. Now I have a little magnetizing to do and then painting the interior. I also started another one of my veterans. My work for next week will probably look very similar to my work this week.

Not too much to report for last week. I spent a lot of time working on things that didn't get finished... like the Valkyrie and the dead space marine from the Space Hulk. When each of things are done they'll be awesome. In the meantime it just makes it seem like I'm not being productive.

What did I finish? Another veteran guard (which I forgot to photograph), another genestealer from Space Hulk, and  the little relic cup from Space Hulk. Unfortunately, I only have some of it photographed. So, have a look:

Here's the Genestealer:

And the progress that I've made on the Valkyrie:

And here's the same vet that I photographed the previous week and accidentally shot again instead of shooting the new one:

Not too much to show for the week this week.

I got more work done on the Valkyrie, but mostly right at the end of the week. I need to pick up some paint for it. I'm planning to do it in Seahawk colors and I don't have the stuff to do that at the moment. Still, I did manage to finish up painting the interior of the rear compartment and assemble it. That includes putting in the door gunners.

I also finished up my dead space marine from Space Hulk. See below:

And I might as well show you the guy that I finished last week but didn't shoot until today:

Next week I'll be working on more vets (still three to go, but at least one of those is started), the Valk and... possible a dragon. I assembled one of my two ultimate dragons today. We'll see if the enthusiasm is there to tackle a project like that.

A little late posting this week...

Things started out pretty well. Early in the week I really started moving on things, then it seemed to stall out. Then on the weekend I pushed to get some stuff done. The final result for the week was four minis completed - two guard vets and two genestealers. Have a look:

I actually painted two of these guys but I'm only showing you one (because they're nearly identical). I went a little lighter on the "skin" tones with these guys. I wanted to show a little variation. I also used these pieces to experiment with a process called RUSTALL which you can read more about on my website. This makes 5 of these minis down only about 20 more before the set is complete.

These are numbers 8 and 9 of my 10 man Imperial Guard Veteran squad. One more to go and this unit is playable. These two continue with the conversions that I've done with the rest of the squad. The lower one has an head from an Empire soldier of some sort along with a Necromunda backpack and maxminis.eu shotgun. The upper guy is a little closer to stock. I can't recall where his pointing arm comes from (though I think it's a guard arm). That shoulder pad came from the Valkyrie set. The shotgun is from, as usual, maxmini.eu.

For next week I MAY have one or two Traveller robots (one is coming along). I also just got the paints that I needed to finish my Valkyrie, so maybe, just maybe, I'll have that ready to go.

No new minis this week. I did put a lot of time in on the Valk and a little time on a few other things but work intruded into my painting time too much to get anything finished.

The Valk is very close to done now. Detail paint, decals and weathering are all that are left...

I do have an update from last week, though not too much of one. I'm hoping to have time to post that this evening.

July's going to turn out to be a wash as far as painting goes. I haven't had much time to get anything siginificant done. Sucks...

In any case, here's one of the reasons I haven't had a chance to paint this month - Connecticon.

Okay, this is sort of a delayed update from two weeks ago.

This is the last (kinda) mini from my Imperial Guard Veteran squad. This means that I now have a 10 man vet squad. Of course, I still plan to add a couple of special weapon guys to this squad which means that technically it isn't done. But since it's playable, I'm calling it done. For now.

Here's the radioman:

I really like the way he came out. This is, to date, the first time I've painted one of these radio sets and been happy with the results. Also, I think that his blue shades provide a really nice point of interest on him. Doing camo is tough because you run the risk of just making the guys look "blah" since the whole point of camo is to make somebody hard to see.

With this mini the only converted bits are the shotgun (again, from the fabulous maxminis.eu). The head comes from an Imperial Guard heavy weapon team sprue.

So, now that this guy is done you can see the entire squad:

 Okay, July craziness should be able done now and I should be able to get back into the swing of the painting thing. With that in mind, I finally finished the Valkyrie! Have a look:

Holy Jumping Jeesus, Jay! 

You're choice & control of colors continues to surprise & impress me with it's awesomeness & believability!

Thanks! I haven't been this happy with a model in a long time. I took the weathering a lot further than I normally do (always a scary thing) and I sort of treated this more like a historical kit rather than a 40k kit. 

What's really kind of funny is that when I got the base coat of paint on I just sort of stared at like "well, what now?" I mean, I had a real moment of panic that I just didn't know where to go next. I never intended for this to get the level of chipping and rust that it got - it just seemed like that's what it wanted. Don't ask me why.

 I thought that you might like to see it operational and in flight:

 Well, this past week wasn't particularly productive but I did get something finished. The first of my Space Hulk Terminators.

I also worked on a couple of Genestealers that will easily be finished in time for next week's update. I'm also back to working on some woodland Indians that I had started months ago. I had been trying to do them all as a group, but now I'm looking at doing the individually. They all have some paint already so perhaps they will go quickly. The real hold up was trying to find decent reference for the colors. I have that covered pretty well now.