New and Shiny

The new year is upon us!  We all hope for the best in 2016.

It has been a brutally hectic year for me, with work hours that are beyond insane.  Some of the things I had planned on mitigating such circumstances have taken strange and unexpected turns.

I have had the good fortune to be introduced to unbelievable amounts of incredible new sculpts from rising miniature companies far and wide.  This is keeping things very fresh, despite these long hours.  Something entirely different from the last figure rolls across the painting table!

Hopefully I will be able to continue expanding on this, and do some of the other new things in 2016 as well.  We have been working on the formats of the Google Hangout classes, which require a lot of thought.  I realized that it would be better if I sculpted larger scale sample surfaces for people to paint, for a number of reasons.

First, these bigger samples will be a lot easier to see, both in person and on camera.  Second, it will allow me to target very specific surface types and techniques in those confined time frames that plague any kind of class.

You will still be seeing lots of Reaper minis though... 2016 and well beyond :-)

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221982173527?

Sand Castle

This is one of the last remaining figures that were painted during the creation of my instructional video series.  Urban Mammoth kindly donated some Viridians, which I used in the Raging Reds and Shades of Grey videos, along with the Freehand Designs video.

I used this figure and a Viridian sniper for the Hiding in Plain Sight video.

I have a number of half hour preview videos on you tube.  There were 53 all together, covering a wide variety of painting, basing and terrain techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myke97g1D_4

You can find those painting videos here:

http://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/James-Wappel-s-The-Painting-Pyramid-s/130.htm

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221982104912?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

Orcs on the Field!!

Today we introduce the Orc team from RN Estudio.

Here's a link to the website:

http://www.rnestudio.com/apps/webstore/products/category/919130

Let's start with the biggest of the big... the baddest of the bad.  Mr Troll!

No Orc team is complete without Black Orcs!!

How about some blitzers!!

I still like to toss the ball around, even when I'm playing Orcs, so I gotta have some throwers...

And then there's those old reliable linemen... or should I say cannon fodder!  Don't let them know...

Pesky little Goblins to hop over the line, sneak through a gap with the ball, or perhaps toss a bomb!  That outta clear a space!

This team is not without some serious star power, represented by these lads.

Just like the Lizardman team from a week ago, these are extremely well sculpted and cast!  It's very easy to prep them, with minimal mould lines and minimal individual parts.  In fact, nearly all of them are one piece casts, which is ideal for blood bowl!

Things get rough out there on the field, so we don't need lots of dainty pieces!!  Give these guys a try!

Sheriff Jane

Meet Sheriff Jane from Reaper Miniatures!

Lots of fun with subtle browns, tans and even blue-greys on this one.

For the coat, I did a mix of Reaper Brown Liner paint with a light flesh color.  This created a very different sort of greyish brown.  The intensity of the pigments in the liner paints causes interesting results when you mix lighter colors with them.

You would normally expect a much warmer brown to result from that mix, but you get that nice, cool, deep grey-brown instead.

It becomes even more neutral when you surround that with more saturated colors, and warmer tones.

She's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/321962131793?

Terradon Terror

This was a fun conversion that I made many years ago for my Lizardman army.  I think I made about six of these conversions... using an I-Kore flying lizard critter and a GW skink.

It took some doing to get them to sit on these versions of Terradons, but it was a lot of fun to see them all together!  I painted each one in different colors, and this is the last one remaining.

This was also an experiment in painting plastic aquarium foliage.  Now that I have all the different paper foliage, life is getting a lot easier. While the plastic foliage is very resilient, it is not as easy to paint as the paper foliage!

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221980874305?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Zombie Celt

Some warriors never die!  Including this Zombie Celt from Reaper Miniatures.

I had fun with so many elements... but the tartan was really well sculpted, and there was enough of it to try out a new pattern, which was a series of stripes.  I have seen this a few times on very large busts and huge sculpts, so I thought it might be interesting to try out on this guy.

With all the exposed bone, I had thought of going more greenish-blue with the skin colors, but I wanted to have a more bloody appearance to compliment all of those greens and turquoise shades.

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221980395893?

Shooty Sisters

One more Sister of Battle for you, with plenty of fun gold NMM.

I think that green is my favorite color to reflect onto the gold surfaces, since it also plays off the sienna and purple that I also like to incorporate.

That lets me have the warm vs cool color interactions, plus an additional reason to be able to grey down the shades of the warmer colors.

She's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221980129834?

Owen does it!

The dwarf heroes keep coming from Siren Miniatures!

This time we have Owen, who's always ready with that handy sword.

Here's the Siren Miniatures home page, which shows off all the amazing figures they have.  I definitely want to try out many more of these!!

http://sirenminiatures.com/store

The crisp details on every Siren miniature make them a joy to paint.  I am able to do a lot of subtle little color transitions because of the clean lines of the various surfaces.

Glazing is even more fun when you have precision casting and sculpting, since I know that each glaze is going to end up exactly where I want it to go!!

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/221979371638?

They say it's Magic

Is it Magic, or Reality?

It's some more new miniatures from Magic Reality.

Meet Sophie!  Ready to steal your heart in any era. :-)

I enjoyed this concept art sketch, so I will be trying to replicate this as faithfully as possible.

I thought I might show you some other figures from Magic Reality, which are also available on their website:

http://www.magicreality.com/

This image will give you a sense of the scale on some of the figures.

I think this will also be fun to paint!  A steampunk zombie hunter!