Breviccus Flavus

  OK, that was a really poor attempt at Latin – Breviccus is a poor Latin bastardization of Brevik and Flavus is Latin for Yellow.

No prizes for guessing what this is about, Dverning said he’d be interested in a stage-by-stage thingy on how I painted the Yellow for the Lamenter sergeant I did recently, so here goes…

It’s all yellow…

This is not the bright yellow you’ll see in White Dwarf, it’s a softer tone.  I’ve also highlighted differently – I’ve never liked the way they highlight Space Marine shoulder pads at GW, so I tend to highlight as if there is a light directly above the miniature.  I can’t stress how important it is to water down your paints, especially for the highlighting stages – go for more thin coats than one thick one

 1.  Basecoat – Thinned Tausept Ochre was applied in a series of coats to create a solid block of colour.  It might be worth trying a lighter primer than black here, as it did take a lot of thin coats to get to this point.

2. Shading Wash – One wash of pure Gryphonne Sepia – try not to use too much, as it will darken the overall colour.

  

3. First Highlight – Thinned Tausept Ochre is applied to the whole rim apart the bottom right corner (as you look at the picture) as this is effectively “in shadow” from a top-down perspective.  It’s also applied to the top 2/3 of the inner shoulder pad.

4. Second and Third Highlights – The second highlight is a thinned 50:50 mix of Tausept Ochre and Iyanden Darksun, the third highlight is just tinned Iyanden Darksun.  Hopefully the picture shows that these highlights are graduated towards the top of the inner pad and towards the top edges of the rim.

5. Final Highlight – A thinned 50:50 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Dheneb Stone is applied to the very top edges of the rim and the top 20% or so of the inner pad.

The End.

At some point I’ll do something similar about the battle damage on the sergeant.

As always, comments and criticism always welcome.

Grrr, was this worth the effort…?

So I had these grand plans to do a little “painting a Genestealer” stage-by-stage, taking pictures as I went.  Unfortunately the pictures haven’t turned out great, I really need to practice this picture taking malarkey to be honest.  As it’s my first attempt at one of these, I thought I’d throw it up here for people to criticise, comment and advise, rather than hide it and try and perfect it for some unknown time in the future.

So here’s how it went:

Intro

I’m a huge fan of the movie “Pitch Black” (the movie that gave Vin Diesel’s Riddick his first outing), and I’ve always been tempted to paint some Tyranids in something like the colour scheme of the monsters in the movie.  I’ve had these old Genestealer models hanging around for an age, and the new Tyranid Codex has got me toying with the idea of starting an army of ugly bug creatures.  As all armies start with a single soldier (this is in NO way a famous, or even a particularly good phrase…), I started with this one.

1.  Undercoated Black.  Nothing novel there – I tend to undercoat in black as it gives me a good start for shading.  My miniatures tend to be a bit more “grimdark” (love that term), than in White Dwarf, as I don’t like bright colours.  I also base miniatures before undercoating – I notice my local GW store doesn’t do this – I think it’s crazy, as it saves a lot of time in the long run.

2.  Basecoats.  Main body is Khemri Brown, Claws and feet are Charadon Granite, and the head and fleshy bits are Leviathan Purple.

Nothing particularly ground breaking here, just a good solid foundation. I wasn’t too fussy here, as the next stage would cover up any mistakes…

3.  All over wash with Devlan Mud – this ties everything up together and provides the basis of some graduated shadows.

4.  Highlighting the purple.  I did the highlighting in two stages:

• 50:50 mix of Codex Grey and Leviathan Purple
• 33:33:33 mix of Codex Grey, Leviathan Purple and Astronomican Grey

Not too bright and not too purple – the effect I was going for!

NOTE:  By this point I was reasonably happy with the way this was going – it was all going together the way I wanted and the pictures weren’t too bad.

5.  Highlighting the claws and feet.  Here a three stage highlight:

• Charadon Granite
• 50:50 mix of Charadon Granite and Dheneb Stone
• Pure Dheneb Stone

6.  Highlighting the body.  Again a three stage highlight:

• Khemri Brown
• 50:50 mix of Khemri Brown and Dheneb Stone
• 10:90 mix of Khemri Brown and Dheneb Stone
  

NOTE:  This is where it starts to go downhill a bit (in my opinion, readers may think the decline started much earlier…).  The picture’s not great and the highlights on the body look a little “slapdash”.

7.  Finishing up.  I’d already planned to throw some “Blanchitsu-style” at this ugly monster, so I gave it an all-over wash of very watered down Devlan Mud.  Once this was dry, a very, very light drybrush of skull white was added to the top edges and surfaces – this helps pick out the top parts of the model and gives a little more definition – good for standard troops, not so great for character models where a more controlled highlight works better.  Final painted bits

• The tongue was highlighted with Gretchin Green and Dheneb Stone
• The teeth were painted Bleached Bone and the the tips painted with Skull White
• The eyes were painted Snakebite Leather, shaded with a line of Chaos Black and highlighted with Iyanden Darksun
• Base done in the usual Brevik way, drybrush with a brown (Khemri Brown here) and then Skull White.  Edge of the base is Graveyard Earth

Finally the model was sprayed with Humbrol Matt Acrylic Varnish – which is a far better product than that satin stuff that GW sell, this is a proper Matt finish.  Some gloss ‘Ardcoat was painted into the mouth and on the tongue to give that slimy “Alien” look.

NOTE:  It really falls down here, the picture is bad and in no way does the miniature justice.  I’m going to sort that out.

End of “Article”

So what do people think?  Was anything good about it?  Was it useful?  What can I do to improve it?  As for all the things I’ve posted on this blog, all comments and criticism greatly received.  Feel free to be brutal (as long as it’s polite ;-) ). 

I’ve learned a hell of a lot from various sources on the internet, and I really want to start paying that back.

Why did I bother getting up this morning?

I've had one of those days.

Stupid slushy snow made the walk to work "interesting" this morning.  Work was decidedly uninspiring.  Walk back from work was cold and unpleasant.  This evening I watched the rather dull Liverpool v Tottenham game (2-0) rather than what appears to be the rather more exciting Aston Villa v Blackburn game (6-4).

So I decided to take some pictures of some of my latest work:

Huron Blackheart

These two (not great) pictures were taken before he fell off the desk and bounced off the floor, knocking off his backpack, bending the talons of his claw and chipping the paint off his head.

...and yes, I was a little upset...

He's now on the shelf awaiting me to get the motivation to repair and repaint.

Classic Skaven Sorceror

This is the only picture that came out well of this guy - I've put him in this post as it's my best attempt so far at Object Source Lighting (based loosely on the tutorial in a recent White Dwarf), and I needed a positive...

As always, comments and criticism welcome.

Trying not to be a perfectionist...

Yet again, far too long between updates...

So, I've had Huron Blackheart sat on my painting station for a while now, taunting me for my inability to paint him.  I was hating the miniature, I couldn't get the flamer/powerfist to look right and it was really starting to annoy me.

Then I bought this months White Dwarf and read "Blanchitsu", where John Blanche explained how he paints miniatures.

Suddenly something clicked, and I set about Huron with a new found enthusiasm.  I used the methods I had just read about to paint Huron, and while they're not the way I would usually do things, and they won't win me any competitions, Huron looks good.  He looks dark and evil, he looks dirty.

He looks Chaotic.

From this I realised two things:

1).  This style of painting is what drew me to the Warhammer world and WH40K universe in the first place, 20 years ago - it wasn't bright and shiny, it was dark and twisted, old and Chaotic.  Not D&D, but something European, something out of the myths and history of my continent, not sanitised and aimed at kids, but grown up and "eldritch".

2).  I've been trying too hard.  I've been layering things that would have looked just as good drybrushed.  I've made things difficult for myself by trying to paint things as well as I can, when perhaps I ought to be painting for fun.  This is my creative outlet, and I ought to be enjoying it.

I've been trying for perfection, when my "good" is still good enough to display and play with.  I will still paint some miniatures to the best of my ability, but a lot will be painted for fun, in all their dark, twisted and crazy glory.

...and for some reason that feels good to know.  There will be pictures soon, I promise, and more posts on this blog.