Happy Holidays!

Part two of the Holiday Series will show the process of making the icing for those Christmas cookies.

As you saw in part one, we decided to make regular cookie shapes out of the nutmeg dough, which was normally turned into log shapes.  Since it tended to keep it shape much better than the gingerbread version, we gave it a try.

Sugar and butter whipped together with vigor and a fork created the base.  Into this mix would go the food coloring.

We set up some containers for the mixing process.  Amazingly enough, we are still using the containers of food coloring which we used on our wedding cake frosting 16 years ago!

Depending on how much of the coloring you place in the mix, you will get a more or less intense result.  I went pretty heavy with this forest green, since we had a lot of Christmas tree shapes!

Since we felt like there was a little more time this year, and there were two of us, a few new colors were added.  The Cyan blue and the forest green were added, and we would be surprised at how many fun options that would provide.

We also set up more of an assembly line.  It's not just for miniatures!

As we had in the past, we used baggies with a small hole cut in one side.

Cathy would do a bunch of cookies with one color, leaving space for me to place a color that I might have in my hand, such as the lighter green or yellow.

The forest green provided an unexpected bonus... we could make Christmas Goblins!

It can take a little while to get used to painting with a baggy of frosting, but it does work.  Having lots of little candy pieces and flakey bits was very helpful.  I tend to use those a little more each year.

Sometimes as you are plowing through all those cookies, you forget about those little stars and tiny candies.

The D20 shape was not easy to do, but with the frosting warmed up from lots of handling, it "thinned" it down like a glaze on a series 7 brush.

Having multiples of the same shapes meant that you could try out more color combos.  I also like to cover more of the cookie, instead of just doing outlines.

Here's another peek at the growing stack!  I will try to post as many pictures as I can, although they were kinda packed away before we took pictures of the overall batches on the sheets.

Lots of happy Holiday cheer!  These should keep Santa happy...

Tis The Season

Hey folks!  It's that time of year, and it means that I can finally post the Holiday Series!

These are not quite miniatures, and it's not quite painting, but it is still quite fun.

Yes, Christmas Cookies!  Gingerbread and Nutmeg cookies to be more precise.

Of course it all starts with a good dough.  Using the ancient mixer to stir away at that batter...

The Nutmeg dough is much easier to shape than the gingerbread dough, and it does not fluff up quite as much.  This means the shape you cut should be guaranteed to look like what you intended!

Now for the really messy part.  Or one of the messy parts.  Spreading out the flour on the table to make sure those freshly cut shapes don't stick!  This is a two person job, and a rotation of fresh chilled dough from the refrigerator and back to the table.

Uppy is very interested in the cookies, as all of the Ugly Dolls are.  We had to watch them closely...

As each sheet baked, we got a chance to try out the new stackable drying racks.  These were a huge boon, and made the process a lot easier than past years, as space is always at a premium.

Cleaning all the dough and flour out of these is not gonna be easy, but they are many of our favorite shapes.

This image gives you an idea of the difference, as you can clearly see the expansion of the gingerbread vs the lighter nutmeg dough.

This was Cathy's new experiment!  She saw this online, and had to try it.  We did some research, and gathered some materials.  It was decided that the nutmeg dough would be better, since it would keep the impressions much better without that expansion.

The weathering process!  Cathy brushed on some of the cocoa powder, wiping away the excess.  Sounds a little familiar, eh?

In tomorrow's episode, we get to see some "painting", including the creation of the paints !!

Stay tuned as Santa's Workshop kicks into full Holiday gear!!

Cornered!

At long last, the board is complete!  I built the foliage up on all the corner pieces, done with the same methods as the rest of the board.  I have many other articles here on the blog showing how that is done.

These are designed to make the corners where the two backdrops meet much less noticeable, and give the board as a whole a little more depth.

While I don't really intend on having actual units hiding out in these corner pieces, the option is there.  The most likely units would be along the lines of mortar teams, which should fit.

Here's another interesting element that has been added.  I wanted to test some blue LED bulbs for a few purposes... one to make the regular lighting seem more like daylight, but also to create a "nightfighting" appearance!  

This may require a few more of the blue bulbs to provide enough light for pictures, but I am very happy with the extra touch they provide.

While it may be hard to see the difference, it is significant enough for me to notice it right away.  It also made the painted backdrops that much more atmospheric.

For the first time, I moved the short corner backdrop to the opposite side of the table, which allowed me to take a few shots looking into that corner.  I was really happy with the results!

Here's another low angle view of that same corner, sitting on top of the very large corner hill.  This should be a fun view for any squads of infantry which are set up there!

The view from above lets you see a little more of the actual battle mat.  This is from TableWar, and it is one of several which I will be using for our Bolt Action games.  As I have mentioned several times that one of my goals in these articles is to demonstrate how to build your terrain around the designs of your battle mat.

You can see that I am trying to take advantage of the dirt track on the left side of the hill.

Looking into the far corner, there is a real sense of distance.  I have tried to observed for myself in some of our long distance drives similar types of terrain.  This is actually modeled on what I saw.

The open areas of the mat start to have more impact when you get down to ground level!

I made 3 different corner pieces so that the could be oriented in different ways and switched out.  This is the alternate 3rd piece.

Once these were finished, I shot a few test videos of the board to see what it looked like 'live'.  I wanted to see what the lighting looked like, and if it could focus well both close up and far away.

My goal is to create video battle reports as well as my previous style of still image format.  Those video versions will require a lot of editing and upload times, so I may have them be patreon initially.

Anyway, look for a Facebook live video test on this soon!

The patreon link:

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Secrets of the Past

Continuing the finishing stages of the Black Heart Models bust means briefly switching to acrylic paints.  I will be using a few of the Secret Weapon Miniatures weathering paints, such as this Verdigris color.

The vast majority of the bust was painted in a Facebook live session here:

I darkened it with a bit of Emerald from Vallejo.  While I don't want to emphasize the copper too much, I thought that it would tie in nicely with the bust, the design that I will paint on the plinth and make the name plate on the back more integrated.

Speaking of the nameplate, you can see what I am talking about.  I thought that making it part of the weathering would make it interesting and less noticeable.

I tried to build up a bit of the verdigris on the upper surface as well.  This will continue up into the bust itself.

Once again, the company logo is worked into the weathering as I begin to do a few streaks.

I did some more streaks on the front of the plinth, and then did some research to look for Mongolian designs...

I tried to stick with something simple, and that would lead up to the face, and work with the medallion on the chest.  I thought I could get away with one burnt sienna tone and the verdigris colors in combination.

The design is hashed out a bit more, checking to see how much attention it might draw away from the bust itself.

Instead of doing a series of outlines as I saw in the reference image, I thought I would do some shading of it instead.  This way I could tone down the design a little if it became too much.

Just about done!  There will be another post coming up with the final images of the whole piece.

I have a few more of these fantastic busts from Black Heart Models that I will be painting in Facebook Live sessions, and also in special Patreon videos.  They might even be one of the monthly figure raffles as some point.  If you would like to join in on the fun, the Patron page is here:

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

It Ain't Easy Being Blue...

Some folks might remember the Army of the Dead figures that I painted years ago that used the Vallejo fluorescent paints... in that case it was the green color.

The idea was to make them ethereal, semi glowing but also rusted and corroded.  You can see those in the Army of the dead section of the blog:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2016/04/army-of-dead.html

For this unit, the colors were required to be blueish in nature.  So, after an initial primer painting with the Stynlrez primers, I did a few washes of the blue fluorescent paint over that pre shading.

It is important to note that the paint is very very thick, but it is also extremely transparent.  Such is the nature of the paint.  You will have to thin it a lot.

I then started to mix in some lighter colors with that fluorescent blue, creating more lighter areas.

Once I had that worked up to the lightest level, I would be able to start making the glazes of corroded colors over the top.  It is a much easier approach.

Much of this will be darkened down and tinted with darker blues, greys and especially the weathering paints.  This is why I went lighter than the final result... giving me more 'space' to work with

Using a few of the Secret Weapon weathering paints, I started to make random glazes into mostly recessed areas, but not exclusively.  The idea is to leave some parts of the glowing areas come through.

Shield surfaces, hair and boots are not a bad spot to have more of the corrosion and earth tones.

For the areas of rust, a handy rust color was glazed into crevices...

Brown liner was used to glaze in some of the deepest warm darks.  Once again, I had to remember not to get too crazy with all the warm colors, since shading things a darker blue is also part of the plan!

You can see that gradually more details emerge as I define the deepest darks.

By creating the middle tone and deeper bluish glazes, things like the cloaks take on more shape.

I will post more images of the finished versions so you can see how this all worked out!   Painting groups of figures like this is something that I have been trying to do in hangouts, so that people can get a better idea of how all that is approached.

I'm hoping to be able to do more of that in the Facebook live sessions, and possibly in the future Patreon videos, once I get those worked out.

Any contributions to the Patreon page definitely help to make that a bit easier!

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel