Fortunes of the Brush

Auberon

Auberon

New member
Nope, I'm not dead. It was just a week of not much painting. I did prep some Bones, and in honor of KruleBear I even cleaned off the mold lines. :dazed: Seriously though, the big ones aren't as bad their standard human size Bones.

I also bought another miniature book so my Figopedia wouldn't be all alone on the hobby bookshelf. Weekend reading!

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
I suppose there are worse things to dream of, though one does wonder what you might conjure if you are ever confronted by Gozer*. :tremble!:

Today included a lot of reading, but also some painting. The smaller of the two hill giants got glued together and received his requisite coat of brown liner. While I have used Reaper paints before, I've never actually used one of their "triads" so I decided to use this guy as a test subject. To start his skin was based with Olive Skin. I'd kind of forgotten how much surface area these bigger guys have. It felt like I used half the bottle just covering up the liner.

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One of the complaints that I have heard about the triads is that they need one more step in each direction. Just blocking in colors (fairly sloppily at that) I would say that is true. I've gone and grabbed a 4th paint for the shadows and I need to pick a 5th for another highlight. Paint selection aside, something I've decided to try with him is to create focus on his upper portion by leaving his legs in shadow. It's a technique I've seen used on other minis and may as well work on adding it to my repertoire.

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*It's a Ghostbusters reference for any of you that haven't seen the movie.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
This past week ended up being a video game week instead of a painting week, so I didn't make much progress on the hill giant. I did a couple of things on it and then decided to lay down some metallics. I tend to get little mica flakes where I don't want them, so I've learned my lesson about waiting until the end to paint metal. At this point any stray sparkles can be taken care of in the normal course of painting. Just for something different he will be a bronze age giant.

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I'm feeling like my video game itch has been scratched for a bit, so maybe this coming week will be more productive on the painting side of things.
 
B

bgcdazzler

New member
He's looking good - really controlled use of paint. I would suggest you increase the contrast, though - make the shadows shadowier and the highlights lighter.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
bgcdazzler said:
He's looking good - really controlled use of paint. I would suggest you increase the contrast, though - make the shadows shadowier and the highlights lighter.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I actually ended up making a luminosity chart for my new Reaper paints in order to help pick out deeper shadows and higher highlights. I'm not sure how much use I'll get out of it long term, but it was a fun little exercise.

On something of a sad note for the week though, I decided that it looks like my gaming group isn't getting back together anytime soon. It kind of took down my motivation for working on the scores of tabletop minis I've acquired. While I could be an optimist and say that I'm fleshing out options for future gaming by continuing to work on tabletop, I'm thinking about switching gears for a bit and working on improving my techniques instead. I don't want to be leaving a bunch of half-finished minis laying around though, so before I do that I'll be finishing up what's still on my table.

With that in mind but still wanting to work on something different, I took one of the KD:M hard plastic pieces that I'd already assembled down off the shelf and set to working on her. I didn't have any kind of color scheme in mind for her so I went and grabbed some paints at random. Most of the time I do this I end up saying "no, there's no way anyone would wear this" and put them back. Other times I just roll with it. Given that I've bothered to type up this explanation you can probably guess which option I chose this time.

Hey, it creates unique, one of a kind minis. This one would be perfect if Poots had been designing KD back in the '80s.

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I think she'll fit right in with the rest of the KD universe. XD
 
KruleBear

KruleBear

Active member
The colors look nice, though. Little too pastel for my taste. The pale skin really works with the other colors.

I also really like the copper rim next to the dark rim on the hill giants belt buckle.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
Too pastel!? Where's your 80's spirit? :D Believe it or not, that darker metal is labeled as "tin." While it's been awhile since I was last in a tin building, my memory is that tin is no where near that dark. I guess it gives some variety from the usual steel/gold/brass/copper.

Sometime last night I decided that I didn't really like this mini, but that's OK since she was just a bonus anyway. Rather than set her aside though I exercised discipline and powered on through. If 2016 is to be for bigger and better things then we can't have something left lying around from 2015 now can we. Since everything else was lightened by desaturation I tried the same with the brown for her hair and then undercoated the golden areas. This may be the worst face I've called done in a while, but it fulfills the goal of getting one more mini off the table.

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
One last WIP of the lady from this evening's work. She now has metallic paint and a quick tabletop job on the base. Up close it is pretty obvious that there is absolutely no blending on the stone faces, but it seems to come together nicely at arms length.

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Time to choose another off of the shelf of shame to get finished up.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
Oh Gnoll!

Yes, anime... that was my secret plan all along...

As to my posts title today, I rediscovered a group of gnolls that I had started and never finished because I hate batch painting. Finishing off 2015's leftovers will last a little longer than planned, but hopefully I can power through a few over the weekend. My quality requirement here is "better than DnD pre-paints," which should be within my reach.

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Maenas

Maenas

New member
Closing unenede projects/miniatures always gives a nice amount of satisfaction!!! Keep on!!
Sorry about your game group :(
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
I thought I left a thread lying around here somewhere. Covering the last six+ months in one sentence, didn't like the management at my old job, went job hunting, found a job, moved, started training at the new job, and not a whole lot of painting mixed in. To get myself going again I signed up for an exchange and was assigned a partner with very few wants or restrictions. Basically any genre, no particular color scheme, no nudity, and maybe try some OSL if you want.


On a completely unrelated note, I've been picking up 4E books on the cheap, and while looking through one I saw a cleric doing the now traditional turn undead pose with the glowing implement. I thought, hey that's OSL, why not do that. Inspired by gaming to paint a gaming figure. But, I've got until after Christmas to get it finished so I decided to go ahead and make a little scenic base for it too.


Here's the plan:
1: The OSL light source, on the end ofa nice long staff. I can illuminate the whole base from there. The Plan[SUP]TM[/SUP] is for the object to be my primary light, not a secondary one.

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2: The victim. My idea is to chop him up a bit like he's been completely blasted apart. The piece of scenery is there for, well, scenery, but I plan to attach the shield to the pillar. With it somewhat in front of the skeleton I think that will provide some implied motion. The sword arm I'm thinking of suspending in air and hiding the wire with a bush or something similar.

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3: More skeletons. I haven't quite decided on the placement yet, but I'm leaning towards putting the taller one next to the scenery. It would frame the base and give ita natural way to sit on someone's shelf for viewing.

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4: But maybe they won't like my base and just want the figure. The cork sheeting you can pick up at the local hobby store is about the same thickness as a gaming base, so we can use that to start creating a raised area for our main character to stand on. I think I'll add a slope as well, so all of the skeletons aren't at the same level. At first I thought I'd put the one rising from the ground on top of the rise, but as soon as I took the picture I though it might look better the other way. Now one skeleton is low and in front while the highest is in the back. Also,I think I'll throw in a crumbling wall just for fun. The place holder is a piece of Kingdom Death resin, but it kind of gives me an idea of how it might look.

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At any rate, the plan is to be dropping back by here more often now and catch up on a few things. I'm sure most of you have been happily painting away while I've been slacking off, so there's plenty of reading to do.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
Thanks guys. It's fun to be making a scenic base, since I do it so rarely. After work today, I broke out the jewelers saw and went to chopping.

Ohs nos, I has exploded!

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Assume the position!

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I think I'll have the armored skeleton be turned as well, though he might not be as exploded.
 
SaintToad

SaintToad

New member
Excellent idea and welcome back. I definitely think that using elevation to 'prioritize' the figures makes a lot of sense.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
I've made a bit of progress over the last couple of days. First off, I took apart another skeleton to be turned. This one proved to be a bit more fragile and started to break when I bent him over backwards. He went far enough that I think the effect is still OK.

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The stone portion of the base got a layer of milliput and once that had a chance to set I added a stone circle. I didn't extend it all the way since the right side will have other cover. The mini's base also got a layer of milliput. Also, but not pictured, I touched up the arm bones that I had cut off of the skeletons so the bones are rounded instead of just a flat cut.

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After that I decided to go celtic. Not sure why, but the decision has been made. Her removable base will have a pattern. From above she blocks a decent portion, but more will be visible from lower viewing angles.

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And lastly I extended the pattern onto the dais. I've currently got a beast like you would see in the old books and a bit of a border. Now I am more of a carver than a sculptor, but I haven't done any carving at this scale so I had to see what I had for bits. The pointy one is pointy, while the other is about 1mm wide. I'm not sure how either of them will handle millliput, so my base plans may change quickly. At this point though, I can just fill any disasters and have only lost a days work.

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