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If you go out in the woods today... An 8112 PLOG


Mirage8112

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While I haven't been working on AoS too much after Adepticon, I have managed to get some painting time in on those Shadespire warbands. 

This post will be two warbands: Dwarves and Skellies. Despite having terribly cold dice the few games (and my arch nemesis at my FLGS having insanely hot dice) I did manage to pull second at a local Tournament with my dwarves a few weeks ago. I've been working mostly with the new Vallejo Metals (and using the glossy black primer) and the sheen on the metals are absolutely extraordinary. While the dwarfs are unarmored, their weapons/helms make great focal points thanks to the matt finish from the regular paint on their skin. 

Fjul:

IMG_0604.jpeg.2006cbda772458ca9797052368ba7850.jpeg

Vol:

IMG_0602.jpeg.6226070fb123bafdbedd28e2b5c103cd.jpeg

Tefk:

 

IMG_0603.jpeg.825cb85d0d7c777f146c850326f101a2.jpeg

And Mad Malgrim:

IMG_0605.jpeg.61ec13927f671d812111b86e948b2a89.jpeg

You can see on that two of the dwarfs also have free-hand tattoos;

IMG_0606.jpeg.c17dd8d12a18543e71f86eee0f211a21.jpeg

Originally I was planning on doing free-hand tattoos on all 4 members, but after working through some designs on Vol, I decided him and Fjul didn't really need tattoos, since the placement of their runes made any impressive design work difficult.  Sometimes the details on the model are enough on their own and adding unnecessary embellishments just complicates the process without really adding anything. 

For my Skeletons i decide to go a different route, both with my deck and painting theme. Usually I paint with a pretty standard progression, where as colors get lighter they get more intense, but they stay within the same color "family". I.e. as red gets lighter, it might get a little more orange-y, but it's still within the same family. Same with blues, they may get lighter and "bluer" but they're still blue.

Here, instead of highlighting the bones from a a browish-grey up to a creamy white ("bleached bone" as it were), I started with a grayish-green (gurgling green), and then washed with Reikland flesh shade. The green paint+red wash creates almost a warm greenish brown, which was then highlighted up through to gauss blaster green. Final highlights were then applied with florescent green paint glazed over a 50-50 mix of gauss blaster and white. The eyes/chests were also painted with pink OSL to give a ghostly glow:

Petitioners:

IMG_0598.jpeg.11028210b384f1a4f7a635732a19233c.jpegIMG_0599.jpeg.c1a6fdd4b86a99768483878daba9ef85.jpegIMG_0600.jpeg.0a1756da57f529a00dbce11db8c35ebf.jpegIMG_0607.jpeg.2eb941ae9ca7147310e007d62e666ebf.jpeg

The harvester:

IMG_0610.jpeg.3e9192d84422b549bd1bf9e23a3ea4fd.jpeg

The champion:

IMG_0608.jpeg.5dd74565621ef162993c85cbda634a9b.jpeg

Prince of dust:

IMG_0609.jpeg.50284d80a716b6b8ffea7019ba175206.jpeg

And the Warden:

IMG_0601.jpeg.8b4b3368946f5c653d5e4a6a2c26c832.jpeg

You can see the effect is an eerie green glow, almost as if being lit by a green moon. The bases were painted to enhance that effect, being lightly drybrished with, administratum grey, washed with nun oil and then given careful highlights of gauss blaster green again. While I'm nottoally happy with how the pictures came out, photographing OSL is twice as difficult as painting it. 

I've also nearly finished the farstriders in a Celestial vindicators color scheme in demi-metal. I'll get those up in a week or so.  

In the meantime, Happy painting! 

-F
 
 



 

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7 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

While I haven't been working on AoS too much after Adepticon, I have managed to get some painting time in on those Shadespire warbands. 

This post will be two warbands: Dwarves and Skellies. Despite having terribly cold dice the few games (and my arch nemesis at my FLGS having insanely hot dice) I did manage to pull second at a local Tournament with my dwarves a few weeks ago. I've been working mostly with the new Vallejo Metals (and using the glossy black primer) and the sheen on the metals are absolutely extraordinary. While the dwarfs are unarmored, their weapons/helms make great focal points thanks to the matt finish from the regular paint on their skin. 

Fjul:

IMG_0604.jpeg.2006cbda772458ca9797052368ba7850.jpeg

Vol:

IMG_0602.jpeg.6226070fb123bafdbedd28e2b5c103cd.jpeg

Tefk:

 

IMG_0603.jpeg.825cb85d0d7c777f146c850326f101a2.jpeg

And Mad Malgrim:

IMG_0605.jpeg.61ec13927f671d812111b86e948b2a89.jpeg

You can see on that two of the dwarfs also have free-hand tattoos;

IMG_0606.jpeg.c17dd8d12a18543e71f86eee0f211a21.jpeg

Originally I was planning on doing free-hand tattoos on all 4 members, but after working through some designs on Vol, I decided him and Fjul didn't really need tattoos, since the placement of their runes made any impressive design work difficult.  Sometimes the details on the model are enough on their own and adding unnecessary embellishments just complicates the process without really adding anything. 

For my Skeletons i decide to go a different route, both with my deck and painting theme. Usually I paint with a pretty standard progression, where as colors get lighter they get more intense, but they stay within the same color "family". I.e. as red gets lighter, it might get a little more orange-y, but it's still within the same family. Same with blues, they may get lighter and "bluer" but they're still blue.

Here, instead of highlighting the bones from a a browish-grey up to a creamy white ("bleached bone" as it were), I started with a grayish-green (gurgling green), and then washed with Reikland flesh shade. The green paint+red wash creates almost a warm greenish brown, which was then highlighted up through to gauss blaster green. Final highlights were then applied with florescent green paint glazed over a 50-50 mix of gauss blaster and white. The eyes/chests were also painted with pink OSL to give a ghostly glow:

Petitioners:

IMG_0598.jpeg.11028210b384f1a4f7a635732a19233c.jpegIMG_0599.jpeg.c1a6fdd4b86a99768483878daba9ef85.jpegIMG_0600.jpeg.0a1756da57f529a00dbce11db8c35ebf.jpegIMG_0607.jpeg.2eb941ae9ca7147310e007d62e666ebf.jpeg

The harvester:

IMG_0610.jpeg.3e9192d84422b549bd1bf9e23a3ea4fd.jpeg

The champion:

IMG_0608.jpeg.5dd74565621ef162993c85cbda634a9b.jpeg

Prince of dust:

IMG_0609.jpeg.50284d80a716b6b8ffea7019ba175206.jpeg

And the Warden:

IMG_0601.jpeg.8b4b3368946f5c653d5e4a6a2c26c832.jpeg

You can see the effect is an eerie green glow, almost as if being lit by a green moon. The bases were painted to enhance that effect, being lightly drybrished with, administratum grey, washed with nun oil and then given careful highlights of gauss blaster green again. While I'm nottoally happy with how the pictures came out, photographing OSL is twice as difficult as painting it. 

I've also nearly finished the farstriders in a Celestial vindicators color scheme in demi-metal. I'll get those up in a week or so.  

In the meantime, Happy painting! 

-F
 
 



 

Love the pink glow with the green highlights! Very Very cool & amazingly executed.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi All!

A new war band finished and photographed, and another finished (but unphotographed).  Most of the people I play regularly with are astounded with how much I get done. Which to me seems ridiculous, because it feels like I never get anything done. I suppose I can't complain too much, because I am completing a new war band about every 8-10 days. I guess that's pretty good considering I'm doing quite a bit more than the "threecolorsandawash" approach.

Without further adiue, here are the Farstriders:  

Almerec:

IMG_0674.jpeg.8bf13ae7247d15b7867d20d168b2d183.jpeg

Swiftblade:

IMG_0673.jpeg.0e3408c5a62399ad22c9200a4517254f.jpeg

Farstrider: 

IMG_0675.jpeg.9c9680d3ad691c9954dfd97675522b22.jpeg


As you can see, I went with a Celestial Vindicator scheme. This painting process is pretty much what I've been doing since since I opted to do the first warband (Steelheart's Champions) in demi-metal. The main difference here is that I've gone with a four-source zenith lighting, with two mains (being warm light) and two secondary lights (being cool lights). Which without technical jargon,  that just means Every piece of armor has two highlights; one that's very bright and turquoise, and second, less bright highlight that is a more balanced blue.  I've also painted the pauldrons and headpieces as white marble. Because metal isn't heavy enough to carry around on your head; it's gotta be rock. 

The other difference is that with these guys is that I went with a "flare" pattern on the armor. Usually when I paint armor, I'll go with a zenial highlight, with a "banding" pattern  where the highlights run side-to-side instead of up-and-down. This time you can see flaring on the legs and arm bracers. The effect is super cool, I'm just glad I only have to paint 3 and not an entire army. 

I'm currently cleaning the sprue for the Tzneetch war band, and I'll be taking pictures of the finished Zarbag's gits as soon as I get around to it. 

In the meantime, Happy painting all.

-F

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  • 1 month later...

Another amazing thread @Mirage8112!! Been slowing progressing through the Sylvaneth chat (on page 122 of 126......) and just found your blog. Your stuff is above and beyond! That board is incredible. 

Since you seem to be taking requests.....kinda.. if you ever have time a quick vid of the dry ice in action on that board would be a sight to behold!

 

Keep up your amazing stuff!

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On 12/11/2018 at 6:04 AM, Arnied3 said:

Another amazing thread @Mirage8112!! Been slowing progressing through the Sylvaneth chat (on page 122 of 126......) and just found your blog. Your stuff is above and beyond! That board is incredible. 


Thanks man!  Not too bad for being thrown together in 5-6 days. It ended dup winning me Armies on parade at my local GW, so I guess it didn't turn out too bad eh?

You got mad patience to trawl through that thread. Some of those debates were pages and pages long. But we got good stuff out of them. 

Here's a video of the smoke in action. the smoke is super billowy because there was some cross breeze where I was filming, but when it's still, the fog stays  bait lower to ground. On the other hand, it is right by a waterfall, so maybe the chaotic fog is appropriate? I dunno.

Stay tuned to this thread! I've got new Shadespire stuff incoming and I'm getting ready to start a KO army.  Good stuff to follow.
 

 

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15 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:


You got mad patience to trawl through that thread. Some of those debates were pages and pages long. But we got good stuff out of them. 
 

I thoroughly enjoyed the debates to be fair. Learnt alot ....especially about swords vs scythes ;) 

 

Holy ****** that video is awesome!

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8 hours ago, Arnied3 said:

I thoroughly enjoyed the debates to be fair. Learnt alot ....especially about swords vs scythes ;) 

Holy ****** that video is awesome!


Ah thanks man! i have some improvements I want to make for the next pass through. Now that I've done it before I have a much better idea for what the process is like. I'd also like to be plan it a little bit more rather than a helter-skelter 5 day mad scramble. 

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  • 5 months later...

What’s up y’all. 

I swear I’m not lazy, I just really hate photographing my minis. I prefer to spend my time painting and not fiddling about with light, a light box, F-stops and all the other necessary fiddly things that go along with getting these posts up. 

That being said, I have been painting, and have been painting a lot...  quite a lot. I’ve given up television, smoking and video games, and replaced all the time I spent doing those activities with painting. so needless to say I’ve got quite a backlog of stuff to show. 

So, this post is just a teaser really. I’m just going to throw out a couple of pics of some stuff that’s been finished, and a few WIP shots from other things that are mostly finished, and I’ll follow up with a more regular post in a couple of days. 

So, a taste of things to come: Happy painting all.

-F

 

B189EA45-61C5-49E3-97D0-35548BE3F15C.jpeg.d2269a507d48b9846572bfefafd6c3a5.jpeg

 

B5763DEB-0A19-479D-82B3-5809220289FF.jpeg.201147fa1a65ed521d061de424f0a305.jpeg

 

9FFA01C5-3570-41C3-BC70-64DC8149CFBD.jpeg.f0ed90d5ef12d1cef7e238868fe30fd7.jpeg

 

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  • 4 months later...

Hi all. 

The next few posts will be mix of hobby updates, but first some (rare for me) personal musings. I’ve not been very active in this thread for a while, and I have huge backlog of stuff I’ve been completed and it’s going to take some time to sort through it. As I said in my last post, I’d much rather be painting than fiddling with photography, but I’ve got to start sometime and somewhere. So over the next few weeks I’m going to make a concerted effort to document some of what I’ve been working on. I hope to get most everything up and current by the end of the year. 

I’ll be perfectly honest. This time of the year is rough for me. Part of it is my daughter has started public kindergarten so my schedule has been mercilessly upended. What with the constant barrage of “kindergerms”  (everyone in the house has been ill for last 3 weeks on and off) and end of the year scheduling issues, it seems everything is apt to change at a moments notice. (For example, my daughter woke up at 2 am this morning vomiting for 3 hours, before setting down and going back to sleep around 5am). Thankfully, being that I essentially work for home I have some flexibility, but I’m finding that such disruptions and changes do NOT jive well with my personality. 

What’s more than that, I’m having a real crisis of conscience when it comes to painting. 

Sometimes I question privately to myself (and other times openly to what few close friends I have) why I even bother painting. This includes both my miniature painting, and my larger oil paintings. Sometimes it seems as though I’ve spent my entire life in the studio and having nothing tangible to show for it; other than a few hundred miniatures, and maybe half as many oil paintings of various sizes.  

Every time I pick up a brush I wonder if I’m spending my time wisely; should i be working on my “serious” paintings? Should I finish some of the portraits and figure work, or should I finish my Sigmar stuff? should I be drawing more? should I be working through my Underworlds warbands? Should i just shelve all my miniatures and sell everything off and find something else to do with my time? 

I have no answers for these questions. For a long time I did, now it seems those reasons just don't seem good enough or applicable anymore. 

In real life, I really, really struggle with letting people know what I’m thinking or feeling. I prefer as a matter of course to be as opaque as possible, because I like to present solutions, not problems. My problems are mine, and mine alone. I have been told that sharing your problems or struggles makes such things easier, but that‘s not been my experience. I don‘t react well to sympathy (it tends to make me angry), I don‘t find solace in shared struggle (I don’t commiserate). So, why share here? While I dont have a solid answer, it might stem from the fact that nobody here knows me, but if your reading this thread you’re at least interested in the work I’m producing; for whatever value it possesses. I have no idea what that value is, or why it’s important to continue make this type (or any type of work.) 

I dont have any answers and it positively tortures me. But for whatever reason, every morning after dropping my kid off at a school, I finish my coffee ‘round 9:30 (sometimes earlier), and then I paint for 5 hours. I do this nearly every day, which means I paint for around 30-40 hours a week, sometimes more (depending on my energy level). Perhaps if there anything to gain from this, it’s this: I have almost 20 years of painting experience in various mediums. My work sells for thousands of dollars, and I’ve sold at galleries, shows, and museums over the years. Perhaps the only thing I’ve really learned in that time is that crippling self doubt, personal judgements of lack of skill or ability, and feelings of worthlessness never really disappear. There is no level of skill you will achieve where you wont ever have to deal with those feelings again. 

And, as such, those feelings are not a good reason to stop working. The work is independent of my feelings about it.

So, for what it’s worth, never stop painting. The struggle is real and it is hard, but struggle anyway. 

This is me struggling: 40 hours at a time. 

-F

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8 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

Hi all. 

The next few posts will be mix of hobby updates, but first some (rare for me) personal musings. I’ve not been very active in this thread for a while, and I have huge backlog of stuff I’ve been completed and it’s going to take some time to sort through it. As I said in my last post, I’d much rather be painting than fiddling with photography, but I’ve got to start sometime and somewhere. So over the next few weeks I’m going to make a concerted effort to document some of what I’ve been working on. I hope to get most everything up and current by the end of the year. 

I’ll be perfectly honest. This time of the year is rough for me. Part of it is my daughter has started public kindergarten so my schedule has been mercilessly upended. What with the constant barrage of “kindergerms”  (everyone in the house has been ill for last 3 weeks on and off) and end of the year scheduling issues, it seems everything is apt to change at a moments notice. (For example, my daughter woke up at 2 am this morning vomiting for 3 hours, before setting down and going back to sleep around 5am). Thankfully, being that I essentially work for home I have some flexibility, but I’m finding that such disruptions and changes do NOT jive well with my personality. 

What’s more than that, I’m having a real crisis of conscience when it comes to painting. 

Sometimes I question privately to myself (and other times openly to what few close friends I have) why I even bother painting. This includes both my miniature painting, and my larger oil paintings. Sometimes it seems as though I’ve spent my entire life in the studio and having nothing tangible to show for it; other than a few hundred miniatures, and maybe half as many oil paintings of various sizes.  

Every time I pick up a brush I wonder if I’m spending my time wisely; should i be working on my “serious” paintings? Should I finish some of the portraits and figure work, or should I finish my Sigmar stuff? should I be drawing more? should I be working through my Underworlds warbands? Should i just shelve all my miniatures and sell everything off and find something else to do with my time? 

I have no answers for these questions. For a long time I did, now it seems those reasons just don't seem good enough or applicable anymore. 

In real life, I really, really struggle with letting people know what I’m thinking or feeling. I prefer as a matter of course to be as opaque as possible, because I like to present solutions, not problems. My problems are mine, and mine alone. I have been told that sharing your problems or struggles makes such things easier, but that‘s not been my experience. I don‘t react well to sympathy (it tends to make me angry), I don‘t find solace in shared struggle (I don’t commiserate). So, why share here? While I dont have a solid answer, it might stem from the fact that nobody here knows me, but if your reading this thread you’re at least interested in the work I’m producing; for whatever value it possesses. I have no idea what that value is, or why it’s important to continue make this type (or any type of work.) 

I dont have any answers and it positively tortures me. But for whatever reason, every morning after dropping my kid off at a school, I finish my coffee ‘round 9:30 (sometimes earlier), and then I paint for 5 hours. I do this nearly every day, which means I paint for around 30-40 hours a week, sometimes more (depending on my energy level). Perhaps if there anything to gain from this, it’s this: I have almost 20 years of painting experience in various mediums. My work sells for thousands of dollars, and I’ve sold at galleries, shows, and museums over the years. Perhaps the only thing I’ve really learned in that time is that crippling self doubt, personal judgements of lack of skill or ability, and feelings of worthlessness never really disappear. There is no level of skill you will achieve where you wont ever have to deal with those feelings again. 

And, as such, those feelings are not a good reason to stop working. The work is independent of my feelings about it.

So, for what it’s worth, never stop painting. The struggle is real and it is hard, but struggle anyway. 

This is me struggling: 40 hours at a time. 

-F

Do you enjoy the progress of painting? 

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Hi All!

Time for new stuff!

I’ve been wondering exactly how I should go about uploading my recent work, and I’ve decided that I’ll start by upload some warbands  from Warhammer:Underworlds, because they are a good segway into talking about some of the new stuff I’ve been doing. The WH:Underworlds warbands are sort of a ”testing ground“ where I can really push things a little farther than I normally would. Some techniques or materials yield some very impressive effects, but a number of them aren’t things you’d want to commit to doing on an entire force.

So today, I’m going to post up Zarbag’s Gitz: I’ve played with this warband a half-dozen times. They’re super fun and hilarious to play. I’ll also talk a wee bit about using fluorescent paint and OSL. Something I briefly touched on when talking about my Disc. of Tzneetch army a few pages back in the thread. Firstly, the family shot:

D1F0BF4E-98AD-436C-AE48-7EE81250B7CD.jpeg.fc7412c8de267b94465ce7e776fd2186.jpeg

As you can see, lots of pointed use of fluorescent paint and localized OSL. The reason I’m highlighting my use of OSL here is a lot of what I’m using and how I’m using it changes from miniature to miniature. When I started using fluorescent paint a couple of years ago, I’ve gradually changed how I work with it.


8F0061B5-4B21-4458-BB29-E2F0B7BD5684.jpeg.b8ddd45e812cf6dc64f762969f6f790b.jpeg  

For the most part, the application is similar, in that it starts with a high-value (light) high-chroma (strongly colored) basecoat, and then the fluorescent paint is applied over the basecoat in 2-3 layers.

B971F265-3D27-4CA1-976D-626FF05DB2FB.jpeg.30d238d88acb8427348051156b694d94.jpeg 

The light source always gets the lightest basecoat and the rest is feathered out so it gradually becomes whatever the background color is. When the fluorescent paint is applied, it gets an even coat so there’s no need to worry about working it thicker or thinner, or blending it, because the underlying basecoat provides all that:

3AE38543-4858-4C4D-A8E0-7DA2967BC623.jpeg.fcf0692ed1d4c03dfab2fc829bad7edb.jpeg

This is partially because the fluorescent paint has a really heavy body (i.e. its very thick) but it’s also very transparent (it doesn’t coat well) So its very time consuming to build it up from scratch, and when you do, it very difficult to get any sort of evenness in color. Working with it this way means I get all the control of regular paint, while being able to reaalllyy turn the color up up to 11 in a very localized way. This way the mini is super eye-catching, but not overwhelming (which is a risk when using a color with a higher than average chroma):

7CFDB199-F384-4E4E-8543-F3534FA8B391.jpeg.4109556cadeaa2097e439148fdd9c78f.jpeg  



0D7048AC-AF3C-44DF-B85F-8037787CF4CB.jpeg.1014d1d2e32c1ece167f0cf76a6f355b.jpeg

0681BBA1-83AF-4EC1-ABFE-9C4C78137CF1.jpeg.e69dfd6e5370361eea6a45e65076c914.jpeg



You can see in the photos above and below, I’m actually using 3 fluorescents variously throughout the army, green, orange and magenta. The blue isn’t a true fluorescent, but it does a nice job of introducing a a lower-chroma OSL, to give some variation: you can see a bit on the mushroom near Dibz foot:

A95829EF-4747-4E98-84C3-7BA8F2651625.jpeg.22168c4fd3a8a1b9ae5fb0f6ce54311f.jpeg

6E28B5BA-767F-44F6-A25A-565459797AB9.jpeg.0477d4373a54d7478d126e06f2b86239.jpeg

B60730F9-EA3D-4895-ADA7-3FE3A3068C21.jpeg.c41817743c79aebcb4164504439c6c0b.jpeg

True metallics throughout, But shaded as if they were NMM (This is a technique I’ve called “Demi-metal”, as in not quite TMP or NMM). The metals are less exaggerated in this warband, but it will appear again later in various places. The checks around the hoods are also freehand, a nice little addition that wasn’t too terribly difficult. 

Also the ground is painted with a mix of blue-greys, which both helps the OSL stand out and also makes a rough approximation of stone in low-light a conditions (i.e. Inside a cave or cavern). This was my first attempt to use this color combination on basework, something I revisited later with my Skaven warband, (which I’ll get up as soon as I get pictures). 

More to follow in the next few days as I do the thing with the camera.

Happy painting!

-F  

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15 hours ago, Kramer said:

Do you enjoy the progress of painting? 

Believe it or not, that’s a hard question. 

Between mini-painting and oil painting, I have enough hours under my belt that the process of painting is almost automatic. Before I paint anything, I can see all the steps ahead of me (almost like a map), so I can (sort of) already see a miniature fully painted before I even pick up a brush. When I pick it up, and look at it just after it’s primed, I can see all the spots that will need to be painted first, whether or not it will need to be painted in a sub-assembly, what paints/brushes/washes/inks will be required to get there and in what order everything will need to be done. Most of that happens in about 5-10 seconds. The rest is almost... mechanical? 

For me, painting is a little bit like watching a movie you’ve already seen a dozen times or so. You don’t know every detail by heart, but the way the plot unfolds isn’t a surprise and you already know what’s going to happen at the end. It’s “pleasantly familiar”, but not quite ”enjoyable” the in same way as seeing a really good movie for the first time.

But even more so, I think of painting the same way I think of breathing. Does it feel good to breathe? Yes. It’s a pleasant sensation, but not something you really “enjoy”; unless your not doing it. Hold your breath long enough, and those first 3 breaths after are ****** ecstasy, but that fades after a minute or two. Painting satisfies some deep seated need within me to “make stuff”, and I get really unpleasant if I’m not doing it on a regular basis. “Not painting” is very much like holding my breath.

I do get a lot of satisfaction seeing my vision for a minature completed. That goes for tabletop-standard armies all the way up to top-level display painting (of which I have some pictures I’ll get get around to getting up). But I don’t think it’s enough to say “I enjoy painting”; it’s probably more accurate to say “I am consumed by it entirely”. 
 

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So.

I’ve had a few days to think about my previous post, regarding my dissatisfaction with painting, and I think I’ve arranged at a few Realizations.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed today when I ran across a a graph posted by an artist friend of mine. I’d seen it before, but seeing in a new point in time when I’m wrestling with exactly what I should be working on, it sparked something of an understanding. The graph:     

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When I first started painting, occasionally I would go through periods where my vision outpaced my actual technical skill. I’m sure we all know what that feels like; you know what you want to accomplish, but the ability to actually do that is lacking in some respect. But eventually, through growth and practice, your technical skill eventually improves and  that feeling of “fighting the paint” gradually fades. 

I think what I’m experiencing is the opposite. I really really want to get in there and do new things I’ve never done before.  In short, I think what I really want to work on is my Vision. The ability to conceive a project and do all the required things to produce some thing that is more than just a tabletop quality miniature. I wanna make ART baby! 

Midway through this year I finished painting Alarielle to the highest standard I’ve ever painted anything, canvas included. I’ll be getting pictures up eventually, but I want to do more of that. A lot more. 

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to work on getting my Sylvaneth ready for Adepticon next year, and then I’m going to start doing small dioramas, extensively converted, with scenic bases and such eventually working up to full-fledged narrative sculptures.. I’m totally flooded with ideas, and whatever angst I was experiencing a couple of days ago seems to have crystalized into some really creative determination.   

In the mean time, here’s a little sneaky peak of Allarielle.

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Watch this space.... 

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And now for something completely different...

Rats in the Dark.

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This was something I’d been thinking about doing for a while. I really wanted to do an all OSL army, but trying to paint more than 5 models like this is just too time consuming. Spiteclaws swarm was the perfect size to try this with and I’m really happy with the results.

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Basically every model is painted with two different color pallets. The “dark” side uses mainly blues and greys, and if there is color present on the model (like Skritch’s cape) it gets mixed with the base color (“The Fang” in this case) so that it seems as if everything is lit by the light of a full moon. The light side has a fairly normal color palette, favoring warms reds and browns, that mimic torch-light.    

Krrk the “almost trusted”.

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Krrk is the only model with a light source above mid-center. I imagined him lit by a spotlight, either the focused light of a lantern hanging on a wall, or perhaps the light from a window.

Festering skaven:

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This warband is very striking when being played with, because the dark pallets really blends them just enough that they looks “shadowy”. Except for their glowing yellow eyes of course 

Lurking skaven:

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The camera made the highlights on the “dark” side of the model a lot lighter than they are, but I imagine it’s because the double palette is confusing for the camera. Interestingly enough in miniature painting sometimes color and light can be used interchangeably (something that cant be done in canvas painting). It;s interesting because the lightest lights on the “dark” side are nearly as light as the lightest lights on the “light” side. The difference is that everything on the dark side is desaturated in color, and painted with cool colors, while the colors on the light size are (purposefully) overly strong. It’s a delicate balance that took some practicing to get right.

Lurking Skaven:     

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All in all a super fun little project and I’m very glad I didn’t decide to do this on a whole army. I have no idea why the pictures are all different sizes (makes no sense). It’s driving my OCD crazy so I’ll probably  come back in a day or two and try to sort that out.

I have plenty more on the way, so stay tuned. 

Edited by Mirage8112
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Updates!

So, I think I’ve finally posted all my Shadespire warbands that I’ve painted thus far. I still have Malgore’s fiends and Ironskulls Boyz yet to paint, but as I dont have any immediate intention of playing them, they will continue to sit on the back burner for a few more months while I work through some other projects. 

Right now, my painting is focused on my getting ready for Adepticon this next year. While I’m currently planning on attending, I’m not totally 100% sure I’ll actually make the trip. The main draw for me is the Golden Demon competition, as I’d really like to enter my Alarielle and possibly my Arch-rev depending on how it turns out (I’ve just finished painting her, more or less, this morning. But she is yet unbased). I’m a little apprehensive traveling with these models, as Alarielle is extremely large with some fairly extensive base work with lots of fiddle bits that could be very prone to breaking if handled anything other than gingerly. 

Do any of you have any experience with traveling with large delegate models? What do you use for transportation? I imagine that they’ll need to be carried on the plane, but even in those conditions I can just imagine hanging on to a tiny box for dear life in my seat. Might look suspicious... 😂

Anyway, lets talk new stuff shall we?

Eyes of the Nine: 

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As I mentioned before, all the WH:Underworlds warbands get a little something extra compared to my tabletop undertakings. If anything they’re all painted as individual characters, taken to what I would consider just sub-display level painting. The other interesting thing is these small warbands let me play with new materials or to try new techniques in a small controlled way. This way if something turns out awesome, but incredibly time consuming, I can still get the benefits of using such a technique, or refine it until it becomes more streamlined and manageable. 

Turosh and Narvia:

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The big difference in these models is that various sections are painted with Greenstuff worlds color change paint (fitting for a TZ warband) Turosh’s sheild and pauldrons, as well as Narvia’s sheild were painted with various color change paints (3 different ones in fact) along with some other glazes and various tricks to get the effect right. As you can also see I free handed an eye* in the center of Tz symbols on Narvia’s sheild. The Iris is green color change paint.

K’Charik:

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K’Charik’s armor is painted with color change paint, although its difficult to see in the photo. To really get the effect it helps to be able to turn the model and it also helps to have more than one light source (not great for photos), so the the color shifting is really evident.   

Blue and Brimstone Horrors:

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Pretty standard application at this point. The main difference here is the blue horror has some additional glazing with a transparent fluorescent paint (also from greenstuff world). It is very very weak stuff so it takes a number of coats for it to be visible, (something I’ve learned to work with in subsequent projects.)   

Vortemis the all-seeing:

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Again, color change paint on the armor, fluorescent paint accents in the eye embellishments and ground.  

I’ve since developed/refined my technique using the colorshift paints and it will feature in a number of projects which I will post soon. It’s very strange stuff to work with, since you can see the flakes suspended in whatever medium they use. It dries rock-hard (harder than any acrylic paint I’ve ever seen)  and require multiple layers to get the effect right.  

But when you get it, it’s super cool. If the light hits it from one direction it’s blue, but from another direction it’s purple. If your standing somewhere with multiple light sources (like ina. Room with overhead lights but a window with daylight coming in, one eye see one color and the other eye see another.  

Play-wise, I’ve had numerous games with these guys. They either blow everything off the table or blow away like leaves. It doesn’t help that every time I think I come up with a workable deck for these guys, GW updates the BR list and they become unplayable. (Why do you hate me GW why?) 

I’ll develop this in further posts. Stay tuned!

*The eye in Narvia’s shield belongs to the acolyte she replaced: Turosh’s brother Halicum. Before Narvia joined the group, Halicum and Turosh both served as apprentices to Vortemis: attempting to gain sorcerous insight and hopefully discover and steal the source of Vortemis’s power. Vortemis (being the all seeing) was always fully aware of this. In fact he encouraged it. Often he goaded the brothers into greater and greater acts of One-Upsmanship to ensure they both stayed focused on gaining thier own power at the expense of their rivals.

Turosh took to this readily, but his brother proved resistant to Vortemis’s attempts to divide the pair. Finally, during an assault on one of Sigmarite temples (long before their imprisonment in the the Nightvault), Turosh goaded by one of Vortemis’s riddles rushed a Lord Imperator and was caught off-guard by one of the Lord’s protectors. Quick as a flash, Halicum jumped the liberator and shielded Turosh from what would have certainly been a fatal strike from a very large hammer.

Vortemis was less than pleased with Halicum’s persistent selflessness. 

With a shrill, piercing voice Vortemis screeched out in anger. “SO! YOU WISH TO BE A SAVIOR NOW??!?” Vortemis hissed as his armor began to crawl with Eldritch power, “VERY WELL THEN!” He cackled, “ BE AS YOU WILL A SHEILD UNTO MY CHILDREN THEN!” With a blinding flash and an explosion that turned the defenders to ash, Halicum was nowhere to be found. Instead a golden shield with a single staring eye stood in his place. 

Now Narvia carries the enchanted sheild. Halicum, imprisoned within is forced to watch with an unblinking and unslumbering eye, as he turns aside every blow that might kill the bearer of his enchanted prison and free him once again...


 

Edited by Mirage8112
Wasn’t finished, lol.
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  • 1 month later...

Hi!

I’m back again, with new stuff, some WIP stuff, and just stuff in general. 

Firstly, I’m off all my vices for the the New Year, and I’m back to painting regularly. Generally I’m getting about 5 hours in in the morning, and generally another 2-3 hours in a night. I’m in a bit of a lull right now, between projects, and so thought this would be a good time to put some of my recent work up.

I think I’m starting to see the finish line on my Sylvaneth army. By finish line, I mean I think I’ve built and painted enough models where I can play just about all the variations I’m interested in playing. Right now I’m just finishing up a massive amount of Tree-revenants:

 

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There’s about 15 here, and added to the 10 I already have, that makes 25. A max unit size is 30, and I do love even numbers even though its unlikely I’ll play with that many in one unit. But I am tempted to write a list and see if I can make it viable. Normally I wouldn’t invest so much in a unit I’m not sure if i want to play, but I actually didn’t buy a single one of these. I had a friend give me 10, and mother friend give me 5. Most of them were already assembled, so it was a bit tricky to get them all painted to the same standard as my regular T-revs which were all painted in a sub-assembly. 

Interestingly enough, painting the fully assembled models wasn’t as hard as I expected:
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The model on the right was painted in full sub assembly ( hair, head/arm/torso, body, all separate) while the model on the was painted fully assembled. All in all a very similar finish on both, and at tabletop distance you really can’t tell the difference. I did have to pry the heads off two of the models, and cut the arms off since the banner and waypipes obscured too much of the body. Those two models were turned into spite revenants after grafting new arms on the left side (the connection point is just below the elbow) and sticking some new spite heads on: 

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 So, that means I have 13 t-revs and 2 spites. I plan on evening that number out to make minimum squad sizes, and I still have 10 on the sprue from the Looncurse box. I will probably just even out the t-revs and add 8 more spites (giving me 10 spites and 15 t-revs). That means I’ll have 30 spites total and 25 t-revs total. More than enough.

As I mentioned above, I managed to pick up a copy of Looncurse at my local FLGS. I was pretty lucky since it was the last one. I sold the goblin half on eBay, and managed to recoup a little more than half my cost, AND I got my hot little hands on the Arch-revenant model. Here’s a wip shot:

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The wings are a blend of color-shift paint and glazes of fluorescent paint over a grey base. This was a new thing as the color shift paint is normally used over a black base. You can really see the color when the model is titled so the light hits it, creating an almost stained glass window effect:


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I also decided to do the metallics in NMM, which I usually hate the look of. They make for excellent photographs but the models usually looks silly in person (not just my NMM, I feel that way about nearly every NMM metal paint job I see in person. Even from top level painters.) The only reason I went with NMM on this model was because it’s only a very small part, and you can only really see it from one angle, so it doesn’t bother me nearly as much.  

As you can also see in the background, I’ve got some new trees as well. I’ve just finished painting 9 in total. Here’s 3:

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When I finish the remnants of the revenants and get around to doing the basing, these will get leaves and grass much like my older trees.

I’ve also made a solid start on my Sylvaneth endless spells, finishing the Vengeful Skullroot, finishing the spiteswarm hive (except for basing) and nearly finishing the Gladewyrm:

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Last but not least I’m in the process of converting a Treelord.

So far its more of a reposing than a straight conversion, which somehow seems harder. 🤣. Here’s a look at the face:

 
I wasn’t really happy with the regular treelords face with its closed mouth. It seemed a little static, so I’ve taken Durthu’s jaw, modified it a little, and granted it onto the Treelords face after carefully cutting away the lower jaw. It took a fair bit of filling to get it to fit the back piece. The greenstuff looks a little lumpy here, but it’s just the fact that the colors weren’t perfectly mixed. Overall I’m pretty happy with the result so far, as his mouth is wide open, and I’ll be reposing him so He’s leaning forward with his arms out Wolverine-style :

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This time, I’ve managed to take pictures of the steps as I go along, and I’ll show the whole thing in either the next post or the post after that. I have some other finished stuff I want to show that I might put up first and show the process once I’ve finished sculpting over the gaps left after reposing him.

I’m also doing this in my spare time:

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I’m not sure how it fits in, but I’m pleased with my first attempts so far. 

See you guys soon! More to come!

-F

Edited by Mirage8112
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