One more big bird!

The snowy owls finally came into stock last week, so I had a few rushed here!  Time to get them put together very fast!!!  So , I started out by cutting those thick plasticard pieces to make bases.

Here are the parts...

After filing and washing, it's time to glue them together, using the "glue-green stuff-glue" technique.

This is very helpful on figures such as these, where the pieces are usually not going to line up very cleanly.

Not only does that fill the gaps automatically, meaning less work later, but it makes the joint a lot stronger!

This was very helpful on the wings!  The ring of green stuff mixed in with the glue, and make a shaky joint rock solid from the start.  Also, it means you don't have to wait for ages holding the part in place waiting for it to dry!  The green stuff does it for you.

The pieces are all in place.

Now it is time to work your way around the bird on the inevitable gaps.  I start out with the ones on the underside, so that I am way less likely to stick my fingers in those as I move to the areas on the back!

Working my way around.  The most difficult areas are the ones on the underside, since they can be hard to get to, and so are the gaps by the larger feathers.  You have to sculpt a few feathers of your own in those places to keep it from looking odd.

You can see one of those areas here...

All gaps filled, gravel added to the base, and a bit of the brown craft paint as primer!

Time for painting!!!

Something for human flesh...

While I realize this is not a 'human' figure, I needed something for the human flesh tone video.  I ended up using one of my Raging Heroes Sci-Fi Blood Vestals because I was curious to see what they would look like in a color scheme different from the one I used for my army. :-)

It was actually a lot of fun to paint them in more 'natural' colors, so I am glad I did that.

Besides, there was plenty of flesh showing, and the face is not hidden with too much hair, or feathers, or fur, which usually end up on barbarian style figures that I had considered.

So, moving ever forward!!!

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!