Still Happy with basing!

Time to finish off the Happy Seppuku and sprue bases!

I took a nice deep burgundy color and mixed than with an umber, creating a rust like color that had lots of 'sedimentation'.  This is a watercolor expression, referring to the way a color settles into crevices when the color is watered down slightly.  The 'heavier' matter sinks down into any texture that might exist.

Using sculpey as I did, that made some very nice semi-absorbent texture for this sediment effect to cling to.

I work this color in to each base design... sometimes even wiping away some of it with my fingers or the brush.

One by one, occasionally putting some pitting effects on the wide open surfaces.

The more complex the shapes, the more areas where you can drop in this sedimentation.  

It's a lot of fun to concentrate the rust around the rivets, and in the corners of the metal plates.

I don't know if you can see it here, but I did add a few darker splotches by adding some black in that mix.

More dark splotches... places for more corrosion! :-)

While I will do more details later, I thought I would toss in some rudimentary freehand.  Can't go wrong with a few numerals.

Adding some to all of the bases to unify the set...

I added some final highlights in spots.  You can see that along the edges of the plates, and on the deck texture...

A few views of the entire set!!

The view from above!!  Stay tuned for the next set!

From 2D to 3D...another dimension!

After I showed you guys the sketches of the miniatures, and the drawings that I had hoped to turn into miniatures someday, I thought you might have fun with this.

The miniature is from Dark Sword, and it is based on the Larry Elmore Raven Stone artwork.  Both painting and miniature are very cool!

I set about with my sculpey and my landscaping rocks to create the diorama.

I pressed my rocks into the unbaked sculpey, which gave me some fantastic texture!

It was a little difficult to translate the rocks perfectly to the image... and I had to figure out what the back might look like!  Remember how I said that in 2D, I never had to worry about such matters. :-)

I loved the sloping angles of the rocks... and creating the fire as well!

I enjoyed the story of this piece very much.  A wonderful vignette.

I carved the runes into the stone, and placed all the rocks together once they were baked.

I have some close up shots of the diorama coming, as well as individual pictures of the miniature itself, so stay tuned!!!!

The first wave of color

Before we head off on the working convention, I tried to get some color on those new bases!

Starting off with some primer from Badger.

The first layers involved getting some warmer brown/gray shades on the concrete and rock sections of the bases.

While many other colors of gray will be used, I started off with a blue gray.  You could create this by mixing sky blue with black.

The reason I like to go a little cooler with that color is the rust and weathering effects that I want to add later.  Those are much warmer, so I need to establish the color opposite as soon as possible.

I am lightening this with a few different light grays.

A bit lighter now, trying to get it more towards a neutral gray.

One last layer, adding an ivory color for the final lights.

Time to glaze and shade!  I have a collection of warm colors here... some more red, some more brownish gray.  Those will be used on the non-metal sections for the most part.

Nice contrast already.  It's hard to see what I did on the bottom section in these pics... sorry!

Now I bring out some blue and black to do some shading on the metal.

Preliminary glazes in.  These are very basic, just to establish the main value pattern.  Next, I will do some basic rust and weathering, and then move on to final highlights, freehand and such.

Stay tuned!!  Much more to come.

There will be new dragons...

I believe these images are from the first time I painted the Ultraforge Dragon.  I really loved this one, since it was not only a spectacular sculpt, it was engineered quite well.

The wings were magnetized, and could be removed.  Once removed, this piece took up very little room in a case!  The pose was also very workable in a game of D & D or WFB, since the head and tail will both stay out of the way for figures making base to base contact.

As you can see, it is at once very delicate, but also solid.  It was not hard to prep and assemble at all.

The incredibly talented artist who sculpted this has since started his own company, and launched a very successful kickstarter.  Why not?  He is amazing!

The new sculpts are even more wondrous than this... so I look forward to painting those!

The personality is still there, but the concepts and the sculpting are even more advanced... if that's possible!

The armor on this was a dream to paint.  Lots of fine detail, and the shapes were very easy to render in the NMM technique.  That's amazing, given the complexity of the pose and the angles needed for coverage.

I believe this is still available from Ultraforge, and for a very reasonable price.

No need for the blues when you have sprues!

While not everyone who will read this will have the Happy Seppuku moulds that I used on the sculpey, you all have sprues!

Yes, they are everywhere... in boxes, in piles, on the floor...

The new generation of sprues (in this case by Wild West Exodus) struck me as being ideal for making pipes and conduits.

I cut up a few of them to see how they might work out.  There are a few limitations, as you don't want them to get in the way of the miniatures.  It is also somewhat difficult, to "anchor" the ends of these sprue pieces.

Here we have one more of the sci-fi patterns from Happy Seppuku moulds.  As before, I pressed a sheet of sculpey with the mould to get the texture, and baked it afterwards.

I used some cork to serve as a platform for the sculpey pieces and sprues.

I had a few chunks of the plasticard deck plating, so I put that as an accent on a few of the larger bases.

All the pieces combined.  The sprue is anchored at one end with a 'brick' of sculpey.

The next base.  This time I will use the flat end of the sprue to glue to the metal plates.

Still, it is anchored at one end.

On this base, I put in a few of my trusty small scale conduits.

On a smaller base, I used one of the sprue chunks to create a vignette, with two un-anchored points.

I followed that up with a few more bases using the sprues... I like the curved pieces, since it means I can easily keep it out of the way of the miniature's footprint.

This one had a very low to the ground sprue, so a figure could easily step over it.

An all sculpey base for the last one in the set.

The set as a whole.  Lots of fun!  I will show you some WIP images of the painting process, just like the first set.