Not a complete wash out...

Well, on a night where just about every electronic device was shut down and unplugged with all the crazy impending storms of doom, I had to wait to get this posted.

Kind of like waiting through 3 OT's for the Hawks to get that winning goal!  Most of the guys on the ice looked a lot like me at 5am :-)

Anyway, these images show the complete set of Secret Weapon washes.  You have been seeing me work these into my techniques more and more.

I tired to break them down into 'families' here... or are they line shifts?

From what I have tried of this batch, you have some very intense, or 'staining' colors.  Cathy sorta found that out when she had a little fumble getting some of the drying blood on her palette.

This group is very interesting, in that you have some opaque washes included.  You have seen me use the armor wash a lot in recent posts.  I certainly look forward to the parchment wash.  That will go right in with concrete for some fun opaque light glazes!

I have not tried any of these, which will be very helpful on my terrain and basing.  

This batch has seen a lot of action for me.  You know all about the concrete, and how I like to use both the hard and soft body blacks.  Now I get a chance to see what Storm Cloud can do.

I have used the Algae and blue black on my metal surfaces, mixing them in with the hard and soft body black.  I am very eager to try the cool grey mixed with concrete for some metal surfaces...

Get your sunglasses ready, because here are the bright washes.  Obviously very highly saturated.  These will probably take the most testing to figure out the best use.  Right off the bat, I can see them being helpful to get some washes on colors that you want to remain high chroma, or saturated, even after a wash.

I will have to see if any of these have that same opaque quality.  I hope so, since that could mean some very fun effects!

Once again, many thanks to the folks at Secret Weapon for coming up with some very nifty products!!!!!!

You might even say it glows... Object Source Lighting

This Alastriel figure from Reaper Miniatures was an ideal candidate for the Object Source lighting video.  I needed one that had two very clearly defined 'objects' to create glowing effects and reflected light.

This way, I could show a few different colors.

Also, as you can see, the sword actually hangs down below the line of the base.  This gave me one more opportunity to create additional light reflections!

We emphasized the effects more than I normally would, so that they would show up better in the video.  Ordinarily, they would be more subtle...

Next in the queue is the "Standard NMM" figure, also from Reaper Miniatures.  Stay tuned!

Painting your big bases

With a basing version of the shaded basecoat complete, it is time to break out the washes and glazes!

You can see some washes laid out for use...concrete, sepia, blue black, armor wash and soft body black, from Secret Weapon.

This image shows that you don't have to be bashful when applying them.  I do a lot of mixing.

The concrete wash is especially helpful on the bases, since it is an opaque wash.  I frequently mix that with the other washes to tint it various shades.

When I am working on bases, I try to have paper towels or tissues handy, to remove excess wash from some of the surfaces.  This is essentially a watercolor technique!

I was using the concrete wash to create some lighter green 'mossy' areas on the rocks by mixing it with green wash.

The bases for Syl-Iriah almost complete!  You know how they turned out... :-)

Big bases for big birds...

These next few posts will show a combination of a few different materials.  Super thick plasticard, Apoxy sculpt, and some skulls from Secret Weapon.  Since most of us don't usually have a ton of 50mm bases hanging around, it may be necessary to create our own.

For the large creature videos (such as those using the Cool Mini or Not birds of prey), I had to cut up some thick platicard from Back 2 Base-ix.

I used a razorsaw to cut them.  The edges and burrs were scraped and filed down later.

I filled out the rest of the rock textures with apoxy sculpt, and then added some skulls and garvel to complete the look!

I even added magnet sheets on the bottom of the bases.

The razor saw in action... you will want to clean the semi-melted plastic bits out of the teeh of the blade.

Here are some bases for the Snowy Owls!  Tomorrow I will be creating the preparation post for them.

Now those bases need to be painted!  As I mentioned the other day, I will be trying to work in more and more of the Badger airbrush paints.  For the heck of it, I picked out some from the set, and painted my base coats on all the bases at once.

You might recognize these from Syl-Iriah. :-)

Here we see the basic layers on the griffons and eagles...

Next up, the glazing and shading, using a combination of the new Secret Weapon washes!

Show me the green! Syl-Iriah finished!

Tonight we introduce the Heroic version of Syl-Iriah, a very spectacular figure from Raging Heroes.  This is the miniature I used for the "Painting Greens" video.  It certainly allowed me to explore a huge range of that color.

Here is a glimpse of the palette.

The concept was not just to show how many different greens we could make (which is still kinda neat!), but to explore the light and dark shades, and even high vs low saturation. 

There are 3 main areas of exploration as a result.  Color range, value range, and saturation.  All of these things help to keep a rather complex mini such as this under control.

To get an idea of size, the base is 50mm.  The base insert is a design that I sculpted for CoolMiniorNot as part of their Groundwerks line.  I have a post coming up soon that shows me painting the base. 

I also have another post that shows how this was prepped and assembled.  As you find out in that post, this was very easy to assemble.  Very surprising, given all the wings and such!!

I had a lot of fun creating the "center of interest".  That was done by having the brightest and richest colors juxtaposed near some of the darkest and lowest saturated colors.

Hopefully you will also have more fun working with green after seeing the video!

One more Flesh tone!

Once more... another flesh tone.  This time it's the Ruddy/tanned look.  I meant to take a comparison shot next to the African tones, but I forgot... Anyway, this gives you an idea at least :-)

I have been using those Badger air brush paints more and more.  Not excessive, but in key situations.  I am using them with regular brushes, taking advantage of how thinned down they are right out of the bottle!

So, you will be seeing them here and there in the videos.  As time goes on, and I make post kickstarter videos, you will probably see more of them introduced.  I am pretty sure that I will be making a stand alone video just for using those paints with "airbrushes on sticks".

Here's a shot of the base.  The reddish brown that I used for the base coat was one of the Badger air brush paints.

More spaced armor for the RAV 6 x 6

All right!  Time to keep building that extra armor for the Secret Weapon tank!

At this stage, I am building up the armor plating by placing slightly thinner layers of plasticard on the original piece.

Also, it is time to magnetize this, which I do by gluing some rare earth magnets to my polystyrene tubes (they just happened to be the same diameter!)  On the tank hull, I have small pieces of sheet metal.

The magnetized rods are attached so that I can see where to glue the main plates...

I put a few details on the opposite side of the main plate which will be facing the tank hull.

Most of you have seen me crate rivets by cutting very tiny polystyrene tubing with a very sharp exacto knife.  It can be a very tedious process, and many of the rivets will hop right off the table as you cut them.  You have to work through the aggravation :-)

I have a dab of glue handy, which I apply to the plasticard with a pin.  I use the knife to pick up the rivets and put them in place.

With the rivets and extra plate finished, it is time to glue them onto the magnetized rods.  This was a very tricky process, as my reference points got a little fragged, to say the least.

But, I think I got them just about exactly where I wanted them.

They were going to look a little odd so far out from the top of the tank, so I was glad that I had chosen to create a 'top piece' for the spaced armor.  Besides, it will give it a real resemblance to a Chimera :-)

Strips of plasticard were cut to nearly fill the gap entirely.  They are basically flush with the top edge of the vertical plate.

This was my favorite detail!  I cut two thin strips of plasticard and then used polystyrene tubing for the rungs of the ladder.  I wanted to mirror the ladder detail on the vehicle itself.

I added more details to the top plates as well, trying to carry the original vehicle details onto the spaced armor.  If I can find my Jerry cans, I will put those on as well!

So, the main plates are finished.  I am adding a few more touches, including some actual battle damage for the painting videos.

I am also creating some magnetized heavy bolter sponson weapons, so that this could be a Leman Russ.

Stay tuned!!!