One last post for June

This will be just a quickie.  I've had these two..... not sure if I'd call them models or tokens, but regardless, I've had these two guys sitting on my desk for a long time.  Well, I got tired of looking at them in black primer so I painted them up on Monday.  I basically followed the steps from Tale of Painters tutorials.

The way the skin was done with the Lahmian Medium glaze was a bit different than what I'm used to.  It really didn't start to take shape until I added the Sepia wash.  I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I think they turned out pretty good, minus a little frosting from the purity seal.  All in all pretty good.

Bolg, Castellan of Mount Gundabad

And now here's another update.  My nephew came over not this past weekend, but the weekend before that and had a model I hadn't gotten my greedy hands on yet.  Good ole' Castellan Bolg that was recently released last month.  He asked if I would paint it for him, and it looked like a fun model, so I gave it a go.  Here are the results....

I think they turned out pretty good.  Painting pale orcs is something new to me, so I experimented with the skin tones for about a day, trying to find a color palette that looked good to me.  I eventually went with the Vampiric Skin triad from reaper as it had that purplish undertone that looks really good with a diluted Reikland Fleshshade.  I actually prefer the reddish eyes on the feral wargs as I think it gives them a more sinister tone.  I also spent some time on the rocky bases (and an entire tube of cheap superglue).

One thing you might notice if you look closely, is his left eye has no pupil.  I didn't realize this until I looked at a few pictures of the movie version of Bolg.  I had actually already painted the eyes on the foot model and had to go back after I had finished the model.

Hopefully you guys enjoy the pics.  Now I need to get cracking on my Adepticon monster army which I haven't even started.... Yikes!

Beeeeeoooooorn!

I actually got something accomplished all in one weekend that didn't spill over into Monday thru Friday.  It's also actually been a few weeks since I painted any miniatures exclusively for myself.

So I picked this little kit up last weekend and cracked it open last Thursday night.  For a finecast set, I was actually impressed with the quality.  The resin itself felt like something from Forgeworld instead of that brittle shit I've gotten used to with Games Workshop Finecast.  Minimal greenstuff was needed and cleaning it up took less than an hour.  As far as the newer Finecasts go, I can honestly say the QA department is actually doing they're jobs.  Kudos to you GW QA guys.....  though your price-points still suck.

That being said, lets take a look at Beorn in man form and bear form...

These two models were a joy to paint.  I experimented with the skin tones on Beorn the Man, using a darker skin palette then I'm used to.  I wanted his flesh to be a bit more tanned and bronzed than when I usually paint flesh.  I ended up using some glazing techniques to tie it all together towards the end as my brush strokes were a bit too visible for my tastes.  My goal was to get him looking as close to the box cover as I could with a little bit of a dark tone.  I think I succeeded in this.

As for the bear, well I though his base was a bit too plain, so I sculpted the stone from the cork and covered my seams with some fine sand giving it a very realistic texture.  The bear mainly consisted of a little dry brushing and very minimal layering on the face, tongue, claws, and teeth.  It's a very easy model to paint and even a beginner could get fantastic results with little effort.  I put the flower on the base to add a little color to the piece and I think he turned out pretty good.

That's it for now....

The adepticon 2014 display board

Some of you may have noticed a lack of updates lately (over a month).  No, I haven't died or been indisposed.  After painting a large army to the highest standard you are capable of, sometimes you need to put the brushes down and go do something else for awhile.  Sadly, I don't half ass much in my life when it comes to entertainment or enjoyment, so when I picked up my game pad, I have a hard time putting it down.  For those curious, I completed the following games....

Lord of the Rings: War of the North
Of Orcs and Men
Dragon Age Origins
Dragon Age Awakening
Dragon Age II
Mass Effect
and I'm two chapters into Mass Effect II and itching to complete

alas, with Adepticon being less than 2 weeks away, I needed to complete my display board and hopefully finish my Freeblades Band.  The display board is finished.  Not the prettiest looking thing, but never the less, not bad.  Anyhew, here are some pictures I took during the process.

 

So to start off, I bought a small 12"x18" cork board from Office Depot for the base of my board.  I didn't feel like making the wood siding out of wood as I lack the tools, motivation, and skill to do so.  So, I let office depot do the work and buy it for dirt cheap.

We need material to make the rock out of, and I don't know any material better than insulation foam.  This particular piece was 1" thick.

After a few minutes of chopping, we got it to a rocky looking.... well.... rock.  It covered most of the board which was the original goal.

Kids, I don't recommend doing this someplace you don't want to get foam shards all over the place.  Anytime you mess with foam, things turn into a mess.

Everyone seems to have they're own formula for adding texture and coating.  I've found that I'm a fan of these materials.  PVA glue, hydrocal, general purpose caulk, water, and generic sand.  It adds a nice texture and seals the foam quite nicely.

 

After coating it, it should look something like this.  Reminds me of my mom pumpkin slices, minus the granny texture look.  I basically just slop that shit all over it and spread the bigger pieces of sand out, trying to give it a more natural look.

 

After letting it sit overnight, I undercoated it with generic black paint I got at the local craft store.  I basically do the same thing with any type of terrain piece I'm doing.  You could use black spray paint, but it's like 20 degrees outside, plus I'd rather use it for figures rather than large terrain pieces.

 

 

I spent a little time trying to get it to look like the bases of my army.  After failing over and over again, I decided to just base it dark brown, then paint it with shades of gray.  Yeah, I could do better, but this piece isn't going to get alot of use, and its just something the army is going to sit ontop of during Adepticon.

So now onto what some people have been asking for.  Full army pictures.  Note, every figure here has been on the blog before, so there isn't anything new in terms of models....

 

 

Take note that this is just my collection of finished dwarves, which total count is almost 70 which is why they appear to be kind of crowded.  My adepticon army is only like 41 models, so they'll be plenty of space.  I hope you enjoyed what you saw.

O Captain! My Captain!

I'm back again with another rapid fire update.  This one will be a quick one as well.  Had some time last night after dinner and got the second captain of erebor painted up rather quickly.  Usually I'm distracted by 20 different things, but I cranked this dude out rather fast (faster than I normally go anyway).

For that last photo, I had to include the other captain I painted a few weeks ago.  If anything, I wanted to see how different each looked from one another.  All in all, not a bad piece of work if I must say.  Now time to break out my last box of Dwarves of Erebor and get busy.

Grim Hammers Part Duex

We're back again with some more dwarves.  Today I'll be showing off the newly painted 2nd box of Grim Hammers.  That puts the count at 66 dwarves total, with 14 more to go.  That's alot of dwarves for SBG and I'm well over my 750 point set goal I had.  Anyways, enough of the babbling, here are the dwarves.

 

 

 

 

 

So that's the latest from my Dwarf Army.  One more box of Dwarves of Erebor and three heroes and this army will be finished (until Dain and his dwarves come out).  Until next time.....