Risen from the Dust

Here's a collection of chariots which I made for the Tzeentch tainted Tomb Kings army a few years ago for an Adepticon tournament.  I had a lot of fun converting and painting these!  I also learned a great deal about a number of new techniques and materials.

I had never used the Vallejo fluorescent paints until this point, so each figure was a new learning experience.  As you will see in these images, no two skeleton warriors, horses or chariots were painted in the same colors.  In fact, the colors vary greatly on one single element, which created a monstrous challenge!

I ended up making several painting videos as a result of this project, and all of those new techniques that I discovered and developed.  One of those was "Painting Demon Marble", on which this entire army was based.  The design you see in the smaller inset was the icon of the army, and it was painted on a few key bases.

Once all the bases in the unit were placed side by side, the overall image was revealed.

Even the placement of the horses, chariots and crews was complex, to ensure that everything would fit and "rank up" on the movement trays.  To make that task even more difficult, the command figures of standard bearer, champion and musician had to go in very specific locations.  Many shifts in this placement had to be made before I drilled any holes into the sculpey!

This image gives you an idea of how the armored blankets were done on the skeletal horses.  I made one original, cast it in a press mould, and then used green stuff to replicate the texture over and over.  A sheet of tin foil gave the blanket the added strength to keep its shape during the whole process.

I have never taken any pictures of the individual chariots, so these images are very special to me.  They also showed me how much work I had put into every figure!!

All the subtle color changes and shifts had to be as random as possible to match with the story of the army, but still follow certain rules of color placement and theory.

As you look at each image from these various angles, you will see that even the wildest colors are balanced by more muted, darker shades.  Also, colors are not "isolated", meaning that they are repeated over and over again on the horses, crews and the chariot itself.

Every so often, there is a tiny hint of the "untainted" original color... a little bit of wood or even a hint of gold.

You can read all about the story of this army, the creation of the huge display board, and much more in the Tomb Kings army section of the blog...

The Colonel

I have a handful of Artizan Designs Wild West minis, and each one has plenty of character.  This one reminded me so much of Colonel Sanders, I could not resist this particular color scheme.

As with all limited palette exercises, maximizing mid tones is very important.  This is where you can tint colors the most, such as a grey that is more tan, or more greenish, etc.  Mixing a light flesh tone with a dark grey or even a black will get you a far different tone than mixing black with a sky blue, for instance.

I attempted to get some yellows into the mix as well, especially on the hat.  You can see even more of the blueish grey on the pants, although there is also some greenish grey.  A similar set of light and dark shades were done on the base.

One of the five "color theory" videos I did as part of the kickstarter focused on grey, showing how 'grey' can be more purple, blueish, yellowish, and so on.  And yes, it was called Shades of Grey.  I will have that at Reapercon along with the rest of the video collection.

He's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/222276630707?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

The Queen of Reapercon

I thought you might like to see the final result of the leaf punch experiment, so here's a few images.  The leaves were sealed with layers of glue, and also the oil washes used to tint the leaves and bring out more texture.

This is a BONES mini, and I will be using this in the class where the Reaper clear paints are profiled.

You have seen me use those clear paints on a number of different projects and effects, from glows, to blood, and cloth.  I first introduced this idea at Reapercon last year, and it was decided then that I should do a class in that for Reapercon 2016!

The clear paints do amazing things as a glaze of tint when thinned with simple water, while they also make very nice semi-opaque colors when lightened with an opaque lighter color.  I have done this several times with cloth, etc., just like this lady.

These views from above show the nice contrast that those oil glazes provided to the leaves.  They would have looked nice as they were, but now there is a lot more depth, and mesh with the rest of the sculpted base quite well.

I realize that BONES minis don't have the sort of detail that the pewter versions might have, but perhaps the reduced cost encourages experimentation and the trying of new techniques and color schemes.  You don't feel like you are going to ruin a $30 figure or bust... so why not go nuts?

These figures will be prepped in advance of the classes, so that 100% of the time can be devoted to the experimentation with the clear paints.  If there was more time, I would like to do the shaded basecoat part as well.

So, not much time left!  As a reminder, I will be bringing along plenty of USB drives for all the painting videos.  I first brought those down least year, and it made life much easier... I could load whatever video people wanted as we painted and talked.  That was really cool!!

See me in the main hall at Fort Wappel, where all kinds of fun will be had.  Here's a quick sample video, one of 12 YouTube samples.  Each of the actual videos is 100 minutes long, and there are 53 different topics to choose from!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXqIo-UMSr8

Fall has arrived!

Today we have a quick set of images showing the new Green Stuff World leaf punches! 

I did an article a few months ago about the first leaf punch.  In that test, I used painted paper instead of regular leaves.

Since it's fall now, and an increasing amount of leaves are on tge ground waiting to be picked up... why not give them a try?

I tried to select a nice variety in color, texture and so on, in order to see how each leaf would react in the punches. 

These were pressed flat right away, as you don't want them to be dried out and wrinkled. 

Each color punch is a different shaped leaf set.  It will take a while to get the hang of how to place the punch on the leaf to take advantage of natural textures likethe veins in the leaf. 

I used a pin to place a few leaves on a base... making sure to vary the colors enough so that a "pile" of leaves would be more natural. 

Having a nice range of colors from green to brown also compliments the colors of the marble! 

This view shows all the different leaves and punches...

Once the leaves were settled in place, I  used a little bit of oil washes from Ammo to magnify the textures in the leaves, and to get more shading.

The oils were less likelyto crinkle the leaves,  and the capillary action would get into all the deep cracks and crevices which water based products would not.  Something I have learned experimenting with the Ammo paints.  I will be bringing these along to Reapercon as well, so stay tuned!!

The Deadly Glow...

This next Isorian trooper from Gates of Antares has as much to do with the texture of the base as anything else today.  I was very curious to see what a hex style pattern might look like!

I also thought that I could use the color scheme to offset the warmer red tones on the figure.

The darker greens seemed to do the trick, and that allowed me to put an indication of a glow between those hex tiles as well.

I will be experimenting with this a bit more with this army, so let's see what happens!

The Great Beast

This Oboros champion figure was a bit tricky to paint.  Aside from all the different pieces protruding in the way of potential brush strokes, I had to do some major shifting of the colors on the fly.

As I have mentioned many times about the Shaded Basecoat technique, one of it's many advantages is that changing the entire color scheme in "mid flight" is no trouble at all.  To keep in harmony with the other figures in the project, the armor really needed to be more of a grey.  However, the wolf also had to be black/grey, which resulted in way to many things being the same color!

Right off the bat, I knew this wasn't going to work, so I tried a bit of gold for the armor, which made an instant difference.  By using some grey mixed with the golds, I was able to shift that more towards green, and that meant it would not be too jarring.  Also, there were a few other instances on other figures where a gold had been used as an accent on certain champion figures.

I have demonstrated many times in front of a live audience how completely changing around a color scheme as you are painting it can be a lot of fun, and very liberating!  You know that you are never "locked in" or trapped by what you have already done, as you are not investing vast amounts of time on any one area.

Working "globally" as you do with the Shaded Basecoat also reveals these color theme issues right away, instead of remaining hidden because you are only working on small portions of the figure at a time!  As you alter your color scheme, you can even use what's already been painted as an underpainting, as was done here.

Snap to it!

Time for the next review of the amazing Rubicon Miniatures vehicles!  Here we have a mid war Panzer III.  As always, the packaging is beautiful, doing justice to the wonderful kit that it contains.

For all the detail and options, there are just three sprues.  Just like previous kits, the pieces were very well placed on the sprue, which made everything really easy to reach.

When pieces are jammed together on a sprue, it creates more tension on each section, making smaller more narrow pieces more prone to breaking as you remove them.  With the great distances between pieces here, you never run into that situation!

Just like every other instruction set, this one is very easy to read, and sets out the entire project in simple steps.  There are also guides along the way as to which type of PZ 3 you want to create.

Let's not forget the decal sheets, which have an incredible array of options too!  Just like the sprues, the placement allows you to actually get at them.

I quickly started off with the turret, choosing the long barreled option.

As an aside, these emery sticks are excellent to all kinds of mould line and sprue burr removal (not that there's lots of it to worry about on Rubicon kits!).  Each stick has two different gauges of roughness, as you can see in the picture.

You can leave the barrel in a moveable position if you want.  Also, notice the pins on the lower ring of the turret.  This thing just snaps together, like nearly all of the pieces on this vehicle.  I could swear that half of this could be built using no glue whatsoever!!

The completed turret with cupola.

I really loved the detail of the tracks and running wheels.  While the details is fantastic, the complexity is reduced.  It's the easiest set of tracks to put together.

The individual spring for each drive wheel is there, even though most of it is covered by the subsequent pieces.  However, you can still see a hint of them, offering some very nice depth for a vehicle intended for gaming use!

This is the neatest thing about the track assemblies. So easy to put together, minimal mould lines, but super detail!

And yes, this just snapped on.  The value in that comes in the painting phase.  If I wanted to, I could leave this entire assembly off, and paint it separately.  Should this be for a diorama or painting contest, that would mean ease of access and higher quality results as well.

As I mentioned with the Opel Blitz post, the concept behind Rubicon kits is to walk the line between gaming kit and diorama subject matter for competition pieces.  The price is great, as is the detail... but without hundreds of tiny pieces as you would have to deal with on 1/35th scale models, for instance.

The upper section of the hull also snapped together.  The smaller bits and extras were also added at this time.

Just when you thought it could not get better, I realized that the Shurizen armor snaps into place too!  Yes, this means that you could paint the armor first with ease, and simply pop it back on.

Talk about options!  If you don't want the extra armor (or you want it to be an earlier war vehicle), it can be taken away before you start the game.  Of everything else I love about this kit, I believe this gem is my favorite.  Once again, it shows that balance of painting detail and gaming playability.

Some images of the finished assembly.  Boy, I can't wait to get at this with the paints!!! Stay tuned...