Nice doggy! Aargh, my hand!

Hi folks, in between sessions of experimental painting trying to get an Eldar colour scheme right I was able to bash out this pack of fearsome beasts:

These are Fell Wargs from Games Workshop's Hobbit range (a range of models so evidently and patiently awaiting a certain dragon and five armies to get going that it is almost funny). I decided that simple would be better for these lads, less is more and all that, and so based the whole scheme around Mournfang Brown. I drybrushed up highlights from the Mournfang base with increasingly lighter shades for the main body. Drybrushing, by the way, is often rather maligned in our hobby as a "noob" technique. Nonsense. It isn't for everything but especially with animals that have been sculpted "smooth" rather than furry it imparts a delicious texture that helps to sell the paint scheme. The underbellys got a lighter tone and the muzzle and furs got some Agrax Earthshade to help the differentiation of regions and textures. All that is a rather long winded way of saying 5 drybrush stages and a thin wash!

I'm rather taken with the range of motion GW have gotten with this kit. There's a nice flow to the unit that gives a dynamic appearance on the table. I think these might make lovely mounts for goblin wolf riders, if that plan wouldn't add £18 to the cost of every six wolf riders...

With such simple models, I felt that a slight upgrade in the basing department was called for. Cue cork piece rocks and pools of muddy water. I used some of the AK Fresh Mud more normally used on tank tracks to stain the legs of the wargs as though they were splashing through freshly rained-on earth. One quick point on the groundwork on the bases. The rocks fit in with the soil don't they? That's because I mixed 'soil' colour in with the greyish rock tone and the last highlight for both the rocks and the soil is the same. It's important to do this. I constantly see deep brown soil with bright grey rocks in paint schemes. Sadly that isn't how soil works. A lot of soil is actually the weathered down remnants of the local rocks mixed with organic matter. Thus the soil has a similar - but darker - hue to the local stone. It's made of it! With that, I am getting back to tanks, I think I've got it sorted now!

TTFN

RPG Rogue

Eyup folks! After a morning of fiddling around with Eldar infantry assembly I needed a therapeutic paint job for the afternoon, cue:

Another RPG character commission. I have to say, while I adore army building - it's my favourite part of the hobby - it is these single character commissions, especially for RPGs, that are my favoured commissions. I just love 'em. You can lavish attention and bring someone to life. This one has a slightly "Resident Evil" vibe for some reason. Maybe Ms. Jovovich wore something similar one time. Who knows.

The brief was a hired hand, leathers and black leather boots. I used an array of different leather tones - Doombull brown being the dress - and shaded everything with Agrax Earthshade to help the colours hang together. The client had asked that she be wearing leather leggings so as to avoid the usual fantasy female 6 inch heels 3 inches of fabric look that so many fall in to. The black is highlighted with Val Leather Brown in order to give the appearance of black leather. Because the pale leather colour of the undersuit is technically a skin tone I needed to clearly emphasise which areas on her were skin. For that I went very pale on the flesh. Paler than it appears on the camera. This helps her hands stand out from the sleeves and also gives a lovely contrast with the dark hood.

I did feel the need to talk about the sculpting a little. I think this is a Rackham piece and has a couple of common crimes nicely illustrated. The first is Continuity of Sculpting. This is when, because of the nature of the beast, you have to sculpt in many many small stages to avoid messing up what has gone before. Trouble is you really, really have to watch that new details follow logically from the old. It's like a watch switching wrists in a movie, continuity fail. In this case it is the bag. From the back it is clear that the strap goes over the shoulder and is pulled taut by the weight of her arm pressing on it. From the front, suddenly that weight has gone, she is actually pulling it up, while gravity ignores the strap as otherwise the strap would move between the breasts or would partially flatten the one it is pulled over. It is a small thing but it makes it seem like two different moments in time on the same figure.

The second is Single Aspect Sculpting. All models have their best angle. It is inevitable as the molds are in two parts so there will be a front-back plane on which the sculpting looks it's best and from side to side there are compromises made. Lots of sculptors work to a 3/4 turn casting angle rather than head on to allow some movement and animation in the sculpt (very complicated, I'll either talk about it later or find links to more professional knowledge!). HOWEVER. You cannot sculpt with only this front-back aspect in mind otherwise weird stuff happens at the sides. Go back and look at the shots above - taken from flattering angles. Looks fine right? Now look at the one above of the profile. She just isn't there. The girl could hide behind a sapling. The sculptor has clearly spent a lot of time worrying about the front and the back and forgotten to add any depth.

Both of these don't detract totally from the fact that she is a nice figure. I like the overall effect. But it did have the best examples of those two minor sculpting crimes I'd seen in a while so I thought I'd share. Until next time folks.

TTFN

RPG Elf Adventurer

Greetings one and all! Slight change of pace today:

This lovely lady is the Privateer Press Lady Aiyana model. I painted her as a commission for an RPG character. The brief was white and light blues, black hair and gold accents. I quite like the sculpt, nice to have a character in a pose other than mid combat sometimes. Couple of things to note though, there is a weird sculpt of the right leg, seems to be sculpted as fabric under the stockings. No reason I can think of of this so went with painting it skin coloured. The texture of the model is also surprisingly rough. I was using very thin layers of paint and the camera has picked up the strange, almost gritty cast texture. I'd recommend sanding the larger areas of privateer press stuff if this is a consistant problem.

The banded layers of the dress suggested a graduated scheme to me. Starting with the edge paint Blue Horror, I added increasing amounts of Caledor Sky to the mix moving down the skirt. Pale leather and gold provide a nice contrast to the blue as does the black hair with the white cloak. You can hardly see them, but I decided to paint the tiny, tiny gemstones as amber to further contrast the blue.

There's another of these RPG adventurers in the queue but the focus is definately shifting to pointy ears of another time. The Eldar Corsairs are next on my table...

TTFN

Pathfinder Commission (Part Three)

Greetings from a very cold, snowy Cardiff! Just a quickee here as the pathfinder commission is all finished, boxed up and off to London and so here is the final piece:

This chap is supposed to be an Elven Prince so slightly fancier armour. The requested tone was green and red and with the armour being the major area I decided that the best course of action was to have the armour painted green with the steel edging showing through. Initially he had more red on him (I'd gone for a deep russet orange on the trousers and inner sleeves) but it was just too much. On clothing a linen white works as a neutral shade so I threw that in on the trousers and inner sleeves and that worked nicely.

And so here is the whole gang. I've enjoyed this group, don't have many opportunities to play with Reaper stuff (the markup from the UK retailers is a crime) and you need $35 in one hit to get free shipping from the states. Taking this tiny sample of 5 out of their range I would say that I like most of the sculpting, a few odd choices - the paladins face for example and the swords are a bit thick. But the general style of the pathfinder figures is pragmatic and well, adventurer-like, I approve. Anyway, this little gang are crated up and shipped out (I schlepped through the snow to the post office) and just as soon as this ice lets up on the roads I'll be able to restock the hobby supplies and get back on with the titan. Until then, I'll be doing some assembly work on future projects and cursing the weather.

TTFN

Pathfinder Commission (Part Two)

Well, still no Nuln Oil and with Cardiff set for Snowmageddon tomorrow (that's about 2-3 inches for any Canadian readers who want to laugh at us) it looks like I'm on "stuff other than titan" duty until next week, so....

More Pathfinder RPG models! This time we have a nature warden for starters. These two models are again Reaper Pathfinder figures. The brief for this lovely lady was an earthy elemental caster with a pet crow. Trouble is, there was a hawk on that arm, not a crow. I couldn't completely replace the bird so I decided to just adjust it a little. Chopping the tail thinner and shorter, straightening the beak and tilting the bird forward to give it that corvid pose. The pelt around the waist had me scratching my head for a while, too small to be anything but an infant bear but definately a bear. Then I remembered this:

It's a red panda. Bear enough for the sculpting, badger sizef for the scale! Hurrah! If anyone is curious the colour scheme starts at Jokero Orange. Two successive washes, first Fuegan Orange, second Seraphim Sepia gave it the right orangey brown tone. The black-brown areas start at Rhinox Hide and then darken down with increasing amounts of Abaddon Black. The pale areas can't be pure white as that doesn't really exist in nature. Instead I added some Karak Stone with White Scar to give the right shade.

The second model on the bench today is a paladin (Andoran Steel from the Pathfinder range). Lighter blues and shinier armour was the order of the day here. I decided to give him subtle livery colours to emphasise the "knight" element of a paladin. I have to say, the face is the wierdest sculpt I have seen in years! Long face, Bruce Forsythe chin and tiny sculpted eyebrows! It was actually tough to paint the face to look normal. I'm of two minds whether to dirty him up a little to help him fit in with his other adventuring pals.

Now doubtless I will be finishing the last of the Pathfinder commissions tomorrow so I'll put up a group shot when everything is done! Until then...

TTFN

Pathfinder RPG commission (Part 1)

One of the genuinely awesome parts of my job is the variety. On Sunday I was painting some of my Dwarfs, Monday, a pair of titan legs, Tuesday, oriental zombies and today... Pathfinder RPG miniatures.

Both of the models I am featuring today are from Reaper Miniatures' excellent Pathfinder range. The briefs for the entire project just came down to a "feel" and a basic colour pallete so I had fairly free rein! This chap is representing a half-elf fighter. The ears were already pretty much the right shape and I emphasised this with the highlighting. "Well used" has been the brief for most of the models in the project so I made sure that the armour had a slightly more weather-beaten look than usual. A quick tip is that using Agrax Earthshade as a wash over steel gives it that ever-so-slightly rusty look.

Annoyingly shadows have muddied the waist detail on this one although if you zoom in you can still see what's going on! This chap was a ranger and as such, plenty of warm leather and forest-y greens. The hilt of the sword is worth a look, I decided there wasn't quite enough detail in that area and so freehanded on a spiraling pattern on the handle:

There's a simple formula to attempting to fool the eye into thinking there is sculpted detail where there is none. First, deliniate the pattern with the base colour plus a little black for shading. Then apply highlights predominantly to the "upper" surfaces (the top of each band in this case) but also a very thin strip to the bottom of the strip too, helps the 3d look. I've also left a bit at the base of the hilt near the quillions to make it look like a thin skim of leather over the metal that is wearing away.

The backpack on this guy also confirms something I've often said, solve a painting problem on one model and you'll find a use for it on the next one too. In this case it was figuring out a recipie for the light tan suede-y leather on the Dwarf's apron that I was then able to use to break up the unrelenting dark brown and green on this model. It's why, even before I blogged, I used to keep a painting journal with useful colour combinations or mixes in. These days the journal is electronic and called a blog! I regularly pull old posts up as refererence for previous jobs or ideas. Anyhow, hopefully, there should be some Nuln Oil in stock tommorrow (otherwise it's the weekend before I can get into town proper) and the titan can recommence! Until next time.

TTFN