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

Chop Chop!!

This rather large beastie is from Mierce Miniatures, and is one of the first  monster sized figures that I attempted to paint with oils.  On this figure, I went even further with the oil paints than previous sessions, where I had only painted 40-50% with oils.

I typically finish off the detail areas with standard acrylic paints once the oils have dried. 

Here is a link to the live session where I used the oils:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10211515280171740/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

As you can see, I have gone in with some refinements with the acrylics, such as adding the purple tones, a few spots and markings, as well as blood effects on the weapon and chopped up torso (from Secret Weapon Miniatures, BTW!).

The added touch of the lighter purples is meant to break up the larger areas of blueish gray/green, and make those bigger expanses more visually interesting.

I also have a link to the facebook live session where I created this base:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10209658916083798/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

I am hoping to do many more facebook live sessions along these lines.  People have been able to get a lot of valuable information out of these two to three hour sessions!

If you can support this process with a donation to my patreon page, that would be most helpful.  Anyone who pledges is also eligible for the monthly raffle figure, with the first raffle already taken place.  

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Shining Bright

As most of you know, I love Object Source Lighting, Basing and NMM... so why not combine them all in one place!  This figure is rather large, and so is the base at about 60mm.  This gave me a great opportunity to create a lava base with some nice dark marble.

The key to this kind of lighting is all about contrast, and that means light vs dark, warm vs cool, saturated vs unsaturated tones, and more.  Each piece helps to work with another to create the effect.  The cooler colors of the marble make the firey base seem that much hotter, while the armor can also reflect those cooler tones.

By making those cooler reflections on the armor, it in turn creates a better opportunity for enhancing the reflections of the lava, which are much warmer and more saturated.

This figure was painted during another Facebook live session, which goes into much further detail.  Each of these are between 2-3 hours long, and I try to pack as much instruction as I can in that time, covering the materials and the techniques.

It takes a lot of effort to do this on top of the usual painting work and the blog posts, especially once or twice a week.  This is why I established the Pateron page last month.  This figure is the monthly raffle figure for December:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10211709390984389/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

Any pledge to the Patreon page makes you eligible to win the monthly raffle figure.  I am working on new possibilities for videos and even some special packages with 'kits' that would be available.  These would include patron only content, which would likely start up in January.

In the meantime, here's the link:

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Not Cutting Corners

This is one of the last follow up tutorials on making your terrain mesh more readily with your battle mats.  For thos who have seen this series of articles, I started with a forest mat from TableWar, and constructed a hilly forest set of scatter terrain.  There are 4-5 articles on how all that was done, with a link below.

When I created my painted backdrops (also shown a series of how to posts), I noticed that I needed to create a few more "corner pieces" which would hide the seams of my painted backdrops.  These would not necessarily be occupied pieces of terrain, but something that could support some foliage.

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-green-man.html

As you can see, I took a few left over pieces of pink foam and formed it in a small hill, where I could place a tree or two..  I tried to make it so that these pieces could be used in two directions, covering more than one corner joint.

Even the flat sections of the backdrop could use some "forced perspective" as it is called.  In a way, I am forcing the viewer to see the backdrop as more distant by placing these small bits of terrain in front of it.

I made the trees in the usual fashion, which has been shown in many previous posts.  I sharpened the ends like a pencil, and stabbed that into the foam with some wood glue.

To create additional branches (and more support for the subsequent foliage) I used a bit of green stuff and some super glue to attach smaller branches to the main trunk.

To make a wider piece that might be occupied by troops or a mortar, etc., I took two pieces of the thin pink underlayment foam and glued those together in a stair step.

Here are are those sections with trees attached.

To give them a little more texture and strength, I have a few materials... wood glue, spackle, parsley flakes along with a sand/gravel mix.

Wood glue is mixed into the spackle to give it more holding power on the pink foam and the gravel/leaf cover which will be added.

Once those are mixed together, I use a palette knife to spread it around the pink foam pieces.

IN the image on the left, you can see what that look like when a larger brush dampened with water is brushed over the top.  It smooths it down a little, creating a gentle slope instead of a noticeable stair step.

While the glue/spackle is still dry, I scatter the parsley flakes along with the sand and gravel to get that ground texture.

When that dries, it is very hard and solid.  I used the Badger Airbrush paints and the Stynlrez primers to get some brownish grey colors.  These were then covered with foliage, using the same techniques as the rest of the scatter terrain!

Stay tuned for the final post in the how to series showing all these elements together. Now I will finally be able to do those battle reports!

I am hoping to do lots of those, and any support that can be provided to the Patreon page will go a long way towards making those happen:

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Blasting away!

Counterblast strikes again with another member of the Nieran faction.  This is a very fun set of miniatures from Bombshell Babes.

This was started with oils, as the previous Counterblast figure.  I did about 40% of the figure with oils, using them as a Shaded Basecoat.  Long after that was dry, I went back in with my usual acrylic paints, adding details and so on.

These were some of the first figures that I used oils to paint.  Now I tend to do far more of the figure with oil paints, well over 85%.  In fact, even more that that!

She's also here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/322938353660?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Hobby Madness!

Hey folks!  It is time to explore the Mansions of Madness with a new texture roller from Green Stuff World.  I also wanted to show you a few new leaf cutters and the rolling pin guides.

As usual, I brought out the sculpey to make some new texture sheets.  This will be a lot easier with the roller guides, as there are 3 thicknesses.  I prefer the extra firm grey sculpey for this task, especially with more detailed texture rollers.

It takes a little more effort to get the grey sculpey in a more pliable form, but that is what also makes it much stronger than the regular white sculpey.

The plain rolling pin makes it a snap to get a general flat shape to the big blob of sculpey, as you make sure to roll in both directions to extend out the shape into more of a rectangle.

Once you get a shape like this, you are ready to roll!  I have the thinnest guide ring on at this point.  I use the thicker rings for the white sculpey.

Here's the freshly rolled out sheet.  You can see all the Cthulhu-esque textures!  Quite blasphemous!

Next up we have the leaf punches.  You have seen me using these on more and more of my bases and vehicles.  I really love these!  Heck, I may even start using them on my terrain pieces as well.

I start by collecting leaves of all colors.  I used to focus on fall leaves for obvious reasons, until I really started to need green leaves!  So, I try to grab those in summer too.

You will have to press them in a heavy book, or something similar,  I suggest that you punch the leaves sooner rather than later, as the more crispy the leaves get, the more likely they are to break up as you stuff them in the roller.

These will be very handy, especially the smaller leaves.  We have a good collection of the larger shapes, and these smaller ones will be great for Dark Sword miniatures, which are more "true scale" with realistic sized hands and feet!

Leaves punched!  I have lots of figures now that are based on the texture rollers with scattered leaves!  Again, they are very handy for putting on my vehicles, and I will try to work them into my terrain as well.

I am hoping to do more basing style videos for the patreon page.  Also, I may include some hand made bases in new pledge levels!

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

The Carpetbagger

Next up from Knuckleduster Miniatures is The Carptebagger, a nasty, sneaky snake... so there's one slithering right next to him.

The base is a sheet of baked sculpey that was carved to look like weathered boardwalk, and a green stuff snake at his heels.

I was able to find some interesting references of carpet bags, so it was really fun to paint this design on the bag!  The kickstarter for Gunfighter's Ball is well under way... so here's a link!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1985631043/gunfighters-ball-wild-west-miniatures-game