2014-02-13: Attempt on the Banner

The banners have been bugging me for a while, but yesterday I decided to try to paint a purple rose on one to see how it looked.  So I practiced painting roses on a piece of paper a few times before I took brush to banner.  After getting a so-so rose, I added a trailing fine down the length of the banner.  I then added a black border to help make the banner pop and to tie it back into the overall miniature.

I then spent the rest of the hour mostly doing some touch up work on this and another bear rider.  I think I enjoy focusing in on one model at a time rather than a whole troop since I can invest more TLC and in the course of one sitting see much more progress.  This is something I should consider for my next project.  I would like to finish the bear knights and the knights of Moor.  But, I might hold off on the halberdiers for a while and instead do something fun.  Maybe a dragon!  Or a Hellpit Abomination!

I also picked up some of the fancy alcohol based metallic paints at the local game store yesterday.  I may try my hand at them sometime.  I had bought some silver primer to try to use on the high elf army, but its performance on my steam tank was less than ideal.  The steam tank was okay with a slightly bumpy finish but that would not do with the higher detailed elves.  Also, I found that thinned paint did not actually like to stick to it.  So, hopefully the alcohol based paint will give me a nice silver to launch into painting the elves.  The gold might be good for the Tomb Kings that I started to collect recently.

So, what army to tackle next?  Hmmm….

-Skaven, I would like to make one or two Hellpit Abominations for this army and paint a unit of Storm Vermin.  Also, I would like to add newer versions of the clan rats to its hordes and there are several models that are 90% finished that I should just wrap up.  But, ugh… so many rats…

-Empire, should I finish enough stuff to make an army?  I think I need to walk away for a while.  Ugh… so many halberdiers…

-High Elves, they are mostly really nice models and a low model count army!  If I do the all cavalry list with a dragon and some other monsters I could have a solid army with just a few dozen models.  And as as a reward for painting it I could buy the Cool Mini Or Not Giant Owl to use as the Frost Phoenix (its only sightly more than the GW model and much cooler with no giant snow flakes on it… really giant snow flakes?) Tempting…

https://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/elf-sorceress-on-giant-owl.html

-Ogres, I want to do the asian themed force, but the bits I bought are just too small for the most part.  If I could find 54mm scale samurai bits I would be a happy camper, but no luck.  But again, a very low model count army that I could bang out very fast, especially if I got the air brush running.

-Tomb Kings, I like the look and gold and bone could be painted quickly in theory.   

2014-02-02: Hobby Forward!

I have been chipping away at my bear riding Knights of Morr off and on over the last few weeks.  This has been made possible by my 3-year old sleeping longer at night due to no longer having day naps and just forcing myself to not fritter time away on the web in the morning.

One obstacle to doing photo posts has been the extra steps of taking the photos on a camera, removing the drive, loading them onto my computer, labeling, and then posting.  I decided last night to take photos on my Droid and then rely on Dropbox to handle the photo-schlepping (alas, I thought I might have coined a new term but it looks like there is somebody on the interwebs with photoschlep as their handle, oh well).

This morning, grabbed by 2nd tea of the morning and sat down in front of my computer.  Low and behold!  The Dropbox fairies have visited in the middle of the night and I have hobby photos on my computer.  So now I will update you on what I have been doing.

	All six knights.  The three on the left were made using standard empire knights while the three on the right used DG riders.
	Here is a lose up of one knight.  Most of the base coating is done and I am actively working on highlighting and shading.  I will have to decide what to do with the banners, but something simple would be best since I will have to replicate it several times.  I also am thinking of how to give the bears more definition.  Perhaps some careful washes.
	When I assembled this knight originally, I had used an arm that had the lance straight forward.  I noticed later that all the other knights had theirs held up and this one rider looked odd as a result.  So I am in the process of reattaching the arm so it will held up as well.

All six knights.  The three on the left were made using standard empire knights while the three on the right used DG riders.

2014-01-08: New Year, Old Problems

Yesterday morning I actually managed to put some paint on a few models (the Knights of Morr).  I actually think they are turning the corner and now are increasingly looking more ‘done-ish’ rather than half painted lumps of plastic.  I now need to push a little and I may finally get them off of my painting desk.  That still leaves the horde of halberdiers to finish painting.  I am beginning to think that I might be better off just now pulling 5 or so out at a time and finishing them before picking up the next 5 in hopes that each small moment of accomplishment will spur me along to start the next.  They are all half painted so they should keep that unified look to them. 

Also in the hobby news, I will be getting a dual action air brush for my birthday from my lovely and long suffering wife!  While there are some things I may want to do with Warhammer miniatures with it (specifically, I think it might be ace for doing the skin on ogres and I have a pile of Japanese miniature bits to convert my ogres to a Japanese theme so that might be a project this year), I think that Firestorm Armada mini’s might be a better fit for this tool.  They are larger, which will be helpful as I learn how to use it, and the air brush will allow some effects to be done very quickly on them so that I can get some more fleets into action sooner with the new V2.0 version of the rules.

2014-01-08: New Year, Old Problems

Yesterday morning I actually managed to put some paint on a few models (the Knights of Morr).  I actually think they are turning the corner and now are increasingly looking more ‘done-ish’ rather than half painted lumps of plastic.  I now need to push a little and I may finally get them off of my painting desk.  That still leaves the horde of halberdiers to finish painting.  I am beginning to think that I might be better off just now pulling 5 or so out at a time and finishing them before picking up the next 5 in hopes that each small moment of accomplishment will spur me along to start the next.  They are all half painted so they should keep that unified look to them. 

Also in the hobby news, I will be getting a dual action air brush for my birthday from my lovely and long suffering wife!  While there are some things I may want to do with Warhammer miniatures with it (specifically, I think it might be ace for doing the skin on ogres and I have a pile of Japanese miniature bits to convert my ogres to a Japanese theme so that might be a project this year), I think that Firestorm Armada mini’s might be a better fit for this tool.  They are larger, which will be helpful as I learn how to use it, and the air brush will allow some effects to be done very quickly on them so that I can get some more fleets into action sooner with the new V2.0 version of the rules.