Sword Fighter

Next up from the Masons Guild Ball team is one more special edition character.

She was a challenge to assemble, with the sword hands being in an unusual configuration, with a small circular piece of pewter that must have been intended to fit inside an indentation on the main figure.  This didn't fit at all, so I had to fudge that.

She was based like all the others on the marble style sculpey bases.

Hammer Time

There have been a few add ons to the Masons team, including this guy.  A lot less of the "Masons blue" on him, with much more armor surfaces instead.

This meant trying to work in as many subtle color changes as I could to distinguish that surface from the marble colors of the base.

As you can see, this base was done to match the original set, with the Masons symbol included :-)  A few more to come yet, so stay tuned!

Meet the Masons

Here are some finished images of the Masons team.  I don't know what any of the players are called, but I am sure that fans of the game know far better than me. :-)

Sorry that I didn't have any WIP images of the figures being painted... I have the article on how the bases were painted:  

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2017/04/joining-guild.html

It was requested that I stay with the traditional color scheme for these guys, which turned out to be pretty nice.

Again, not sure what everything is, but it was certainly different!

The view from above to show how the figures integrated with the base designs.  I could not resist putting the Masons symbol on the marble!

I have a few more guys for the team, including the goal post.  I will post those pictures next week!  Stay tuned...

Joining the Guild

I thought that you might like to see a few images from a glazing session that was done on a Guild Ball Masons team.  Vallejo and Secret Weapon miniatures glazes are my favorites, although each has different properties.

I put a few of the washes into water jar lids, getting ready to glaze both the bases and the figures.

The colors are very simple, mostly mixing the sepia and black washes together, or keeping them separate where I needed a tint to be more sepia or or dark brown.

By adding some of the green into areas of the marble, there is a chemical reaction that 'pushes' some of these other washes aside, and creates interesting random patterns.  These can be further modified and refined into veins for the marble. 

The same makeup sponges that use for moving my oil paints around are prefect for wiping away excess wash, and also help with making those random color patterns.

Additional layers can be applied to darken the veins as well.  The lower view shows what the base looks like once the excess wash has been wiped away.

This view shows a variety of bases both before and after excess pigments have been wiped away.

Here's the team mascot, with the same sort of glazes.  Each of these had been pre shaded with some white and grey primer to set up the lights and darks beforehand.  Now I can accentuate those tones by shading and tinting them with these glazes. 

This base was made with a broken column piece from Secret Weapon miniatures, with a Dwarf hammer added for the "masons" look!

Here's a very nice view of that chemical reaction.  The Vallejo washes are much thicker, and some are almost opaque, such as the green.

It's an old watercolor trick that I used to do.  By the way, the bases are made from sheets of baked sculpey, which have been added to cork.

After the initial glazes have dried, I can start to be a little more precise, and put more definition into those veins.  

Once I get a solid idea of how I want  those veins to look, I start to mix in opaque lighter colors with my glazes.  This makes a very nice semi-opaque lighter shade that I can use to create more transitions.

More additions of these lighter colors made light veins inside the larger dark versions.

A quick look at the team gives you an idea of what the finished product looked like!