The “Blotted” vs Undead - a Halloween photoshoot!

Rasham’s Forgotten Bandits (aka “The Blotted”) could hardly refuse the purse on offer from Lord Lardars, especially for such a straightforward mission. A dark prowler in the local Cemetrary was rumoured to have scared off some kids who were playing hide and seek amongst the old tombstones and when the dads went to investigate, they easily frightened off the old, bearded codger. However one of the children is still missing and the local soldiers can find not trace of him or the old man. Rumours start spreading and soon the graveyard and church are the scene for numerous tall stories, witch hunts and unsubstantiated spooky happenings. Soon, even with no evidence to the contrary everyone is avoiding the site and this is when Rasham gets wind of the story whilst passing through the town and having an ale at the Spotted Dog. After some investigations he surmises that this will be easy money; stake out the cemetery, catch an old fella and if necessary force him into a confession into killing the kid, regardless of guilt. Get the money and the backslaps and quickly move on..

After two nights, Wilf his crossbowman (and the only one of his crew not completely smashed on ale) sees the tall, old bearded man dithering through the cemetery and calls his brothers to arms. They approach with little caution, embolden by the booze and confident in capturing the man and their reward. And then....

Helsreach - a futuristic scenic backdrop

Before I can start a project there's always another, related project that has to come first; a disorderly queue of ideas fighting to be the first to be completed. If I had painted my new 40k gang first, I realised I  wouldn't have a nice scenic, futuristic and narrative backdrop with which to photograph them in front of. I really enjoyed doing my fantasy one, so I set about doing the same sort of thing for my new adventures into sci-fi.

I wanted a sandy terrain scattered with lots of rusted junk from the past - some sort of oil refinery, some barrels and an old cargo container were the images I started researching. I then gathered some junk from the recycling bin, picked up some plumbing pipes from B&Q and rummaged through my desk drawers and started putting it all together with the liberal help of a glue gun:




Pringles cannisters, plumbing pipes, plastic washers, tip-ex lid, and paint tube lids were scavenged



Some corrugated card was glued over a foamboard rectangular box, some plasticard edges added, some dowels and metal rods for the doors and a bit of sand for texture. The barrels are simply card temporarily wrapped around a battery, superglued in place with a card lid and then a bead stuck on top. Two thin pieces of wire are wrapped around the circumference and the whole thing covered in pva and a layer of tissue.



Here you can see all the wip and the backdrop printed out onto thick cartridge paper.

Next up are the painting stages, I kept this pretty simple.

Everything was primed grey and then some orangey brown aerosol was applied over the top in patches

A selection of yellows, reds and brown acrylic paints were used for the weathering. These were all generously watered down. Some of these paints had dried out, so you can see I made use of their lids on the modelling of the refinery.

After lots of rusty colours had been washed on, I used some old chrome paint and a coarse sponge to apply some metallic areas, literally dragging the chrome across the surface to create a scratched appearance. Once dry I then washed over this again with the rust colours to dull the metallic shine down.

 



Lots more rusty washes were applied and then I added some green washes for a mossy effect and some black/brown washes for oil spillages and leaks



The final, more textured layers of rust were created using some pigment bound in some matte varnish. This was stippled on with an old brush

The final stage saw me add some crackle paint to the container in the hope it would crack and separate and leave an appearance of peeling paint. It didn't quite go to plan (in fact this is the second time this experiment has fallen short of expectations), but I needed a different colour to break up all of the orange rust colours.



At the very end of the project, I decided to add some small posters and warning signs. Quite simply some relevant images (including Fallout, Walking Dead, Mad Max images) were gathered from the internet, resized in word to tiny, cut out, crumpled up and pva'd on with a bit of final weathering.


The base is a sheet of mdf with a sand, pva and paint mixture painted on for the texture. I used a couple of testers that I had laying around for the sand colour. Egyptian Hessian or some such. I drybrushed a white over when dry for highlights.
You can see I've also added some clump foliage and bits of lichen for flora and I finally added some sand coloured weathering pigments from MIG to add a dusty feel to the whole thing.  I'll match this effect on the bases of my gang when I get there...

I'm tempted to come back and add a wire mesh fence and maybe even a railway track to add more detail to the scene, but for now this is done. I've almost finished my two first gang members and having this completed will give me extra incentive to try and finish them tonight just so I can take some photos using my new scenic backdrop.

Creating a scenic photography set-up

I've always been envious of those people who have beautifiul models, photographed beautifully against a stunning backdrop and placed within a wonderful scenic context. I'm a long way off from achieving this and realised that it needed to be rectified! So I got to work..






Initially I was incredibly inspired by James' version at the Realms of Chaos 80's; and set about making my own from some bits and pieces I had laying about at home. I found one of my sons old, unused toddler jigsaw trays, which works perfectly as a frame. It transpired that two layers of my favourite extruded polystyrene would fit inside it perfectly and then I started adding bits of old cork tile for rocky outcrops and engraved in a cobbled path with a pencil, dug out some puddles and cut out a river/bridge section. I also used an old stone to add some texture to the board before adding some old tree armatures, some Marauder goblin spider shields to the bridge and a thin covering of pva and sand to the surface to both add texture and seal the vulnerable polystyrene from the brown aerosol primer I intended to use.


Here's a step by step tutorial:






Blue, extruded polystyrene was used for the base. Here you can see some cobble stones drawn in with pencil onto a textured path and some holes dug out for puddles. It was cut to fit my son's old jigsaw tray.



A bit further in to the project here. I decided to go for a water feature and bravely cut out a section where a stream would go. Bridge sides were made with polystyrene, card squares and a couple of old Goblin Marauder Spider shields and then glue gunned to the path. I realised I could use the frame of the tray to act as a dam for when I poured in the water effects too. Some chunks of cork were added to create some rocky heights and texture was added by pressing a stone into the polystyrene and some sand glued on. Finally I added some crackle paste - seen as the white patches, But this was pretty ineffective.

My 3 year old son wanted to do some making with Dad, so he was given some off cuts and a bit of paint and he made this race track for his cars. He went into great detail about swamps and sinking sand.. He's got skills!



Finally the whole tile was coated with a thin pva and water mix to seal the polystyrene form the forthcoming aerosol primer. At the same time a final sprinkle of fine sand was added.

The whole piece was then spray primed brown (no picture of this stage) to create a muddy undercoat. Then I started drybrushing a range of pale/yellow tones into the muddy areas, greys into the stone areas and some green blues to the water areas. Some final washes of greens and browns were added in the foreground, on the rocks and along the road.

 

To prepare the tile for the pouring of the Woodlands Scenic Realistic Water, I coated the water areas with a gloss varnish. I didn't want the realistic water to burn through the polystyrene or cloud over from the cheap acylic paints I used. 

 

The next stage was to add the grass. After a bit of research and investigation, I decided to go for static grass rather than the flock I use on my Nurgle miniatures. Above you can see the three different blends of colour I used.



This was applied in mixed together and in individual patches using dilute pva glue. The excess static grass was tipped off and the remainder was made to stand upright with the aid of a balloon rubbed onto my jumper.

Here you can see it looking pretty grassy. Some scatter leaves were also applied with a little pva.

 

Finally some clump foliage was added in little clusters.



Here you can see the Woodlands Scenic water settling into the cut out stream bed.




And the finished version, with trees, backdrop and some Nurgle Champions:

Just need to get a decent camera now (these are all taken on my iphone) and an extra light as I currently have just the one daylight bulbed, anglepoise.

Frostgrave Bestiary Challenge: 10 Ghouls

I absolutely love these Heresy ghoul models, I saw them years ago painted by Mika over on the Warhamner Forum and loved how he had created a great contrast between the ghouk's skin and the dark reds of the blood and gore. They are pretty dark miniatures (I found applying the blood and gore to the baby quite upsetting) but they are wonderful characterful sculpts that are a real pleasure to paint. There's actually not much to them, they are mostly flesh with a few other details so it was imperative that I got the skin tone spot on. I realised early on that it would have to have a green tinge so that it complemented the inevitable red of the blood, but I also wanted to create a layered, transparency it the skin too. This would be offset with the neutral grey basing. I also did a bit if research into how to create such blood and gore and foinf a great recipe to make the blood quite physical, see below. I usually steer clear of too much blood, but these ghouks, being cannibals and because of the additional details of body parts being butchered and eaten, these guys did need to have a realistic blood effect added.

So after some skin experiments (I'd already decided to veer away from my Orc skin recipe) I went for this approach:

White Primer
Earthshade wash
Small amount of earthshade plus increasong amounts of white, layered on for the highlights
Glazing with purples and blues in the shadows and especially apparent in the faces
Yellow glaze over the teeth
Then final glaze with green ink (and lots of medium) over the skin to remove any chalkiness from the highlighting.
Before the physical blood and gore was added (see below) I washed a mixture of purple and red inks to the hands, feet, knees and elbows (to create a little extra contrast and to break up the large areas of green skin).
Finally I prepped the areas that would be getting the blood effect with a combination of black, purple and red inks, increasing the amount of the latter where the blood was to be most fresh.

After weathering the bases I then approached the blood and gore. Quite simply I used a mixture of Tamiya Clear Red, black ink, UHU glue and a cocktail stick to mix the mess together and to apply it to the areas of stringy, gooey gore. The cocktail stick was used to stretch he goo between two surfaces , for example from mouth to floor. I didn't want to overdo it, so I had to keep restraining myself because it's a smashing effect and easily done. I decided that several of the models would not have any of this applied at all.

With regards to the Ghoul King who is digging out a grave, I decided to use a Tamiya weathering stuck (essentially an oil pastel the colour of mud) and applied this to the grave area, the base and dollop on his shovel too.

Lots of photographs to follow, as I have a new iPhone and have used this as an opportunity to experiment with it's focus and exposure corrections during the shot and it's editing abilities after. I'm pretty damn happy with these: