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.

2013-11-25: Who’s This Guy?

When last I posted I was scraping the crotches of 4 dozen Empire halberdiers while on vacation.  As that task neared completion, I had to dedicate more of my vacation time to amusing my daughter so that my wife could enjoy her vacation and not decide to divorce me.  Marital Bliss and Epic Hobbying rarely coincide.

When we got back from vacation I had to dedicate time to my bees and other chores.  Then there was the small house fire, no one was hurt and almost all the property damage limited to one bathroom in the tenant’s unit, but arranging the repair took a long time though the end is in sight and the tenant should be moving back in this week.

Excuses.. excuses…. I have to say that a large part of my lack of painting was Empire fatigue.  I got tired of the little buggers… probably due to the intense focus on them this year and also getting many figures sorta done but not many slam dunk done (I am thinking of my swordsmen).  The Knights of Moor (both horse and bear flavors) would sit on my desk radiating “unfinishedness” at me while I assembled the halberdiers and got them primed.  Fear of them not ranking slowed me down for a while, but I did work out how to angle the arms and position the feet so that they would actually rank.  What worked for me was to assemble the halberd heads on the arms first, and let that that set.  Then, after working out the right angle on a test figure, glue the arms onto the torso, let that set, then glue to the bases already ranked up behind another unit… this allowed me them to rank.  Alternatively, I did some where I glued the feet down then put in the arms… but sometimes that way they would have gaps under their arms or impinge on the area for the head.  Speaking of which, the heads were glued on last as I think head positioning is more forgiving than arms.  This allowed me to get the faces all pointing the right direction to be where they had to be in relation to the arms which had to be where they had to be to get them to rank etc.. etc… Some feathers were snipped to get thinks to work.   I did one rank at a time and let each set (often for a day, partially to make sure that they didn’t get knocked out of place by my efforts to assemble the following rank and partially because of time) before assembling the next rank behind them.  All in all I did get a shot of enthusiasm when they were done.

For October I would pick up a base coat color and splash some on some halberdiers for an hour before going off to do something.  They would be easier to do if I just painted them all predominately in one solid color and added the secondary color, green and yellow as this is Stirland, but since Stirland is poor and known for its hodge podge armies, I went with the much more time consuming method of using several different greens and yellows as well as a lot of white and various browns to give each model an individual look.  Much more time consuming and very painful later in the process when I keep finding bits that I missed have to go back repeatedly.  The base coating is probably not halfway done as I write this but I have been pulled back to working on the bear and pony show. 

I spent my thunder months ago getting an okay black on most of them… but then lost steam on all the other bits.  Recently I have picked them up and decided that I did not like the green hoods and capes I had on them and have started painting the outside black while keeping the interior bone white to make sure there is contrast between the cape and armor.  I also went and gave the flesh a wash which had the desired effect of changing the washed out color I had painted the flesh to looking like FLESH!  and mostly finished flesh at that.  That little thing suddenly makes them much more compelling to me as figures approaching completion rather than half painted miniatures in half painted limbo.

I don’t have time to do any photos now as I have to go take a shower and then empty a storage closet so that the builders can install the new stairs to the tenant’s unit.

2013-08-20: A Bit Late

  Currently mid August and I have not gotten around to mentioning my pledge before but it is to put together 45 or so Empire halberdiers and start on the painting.  Since as of writing this (while on vacation on the Coast of The Frozen North) I have cut out all of the pieces and cleaned up all of the mold lines (I have scrapped many many empire crotches) this should be doable.  I also have 10 Spiffyswords (aka greatswords) with me that I can also build, but I didn't bring the rest of the unit so I probably wont prime it, just clean them up (and scrape even more empire crotches).

I have pictures of the troops, but I have to get the sd card reader drivers fixed before I can load them.

*edited to add* Here are the pictures of the halberdiers bits (5 of which I had previously cleaned and hot glued to a piece of molding) and the box of Greatswords.

  

The black tray is an insert to a small toolbox that I have been keeping my halberdier trays and bits in as I have been working on them.  Its been very handy to be ale to stop what I am working on and put everything (including sharp X-acto knives) back into the tool box and lock it up when my biggest miniature (my 2.75 year old daughter) needs attention).  Next year I may also plan on bring miniatures to clean up and assemble rather than paint when we go on vacation as this has gone rather well.

Oh, and I sorta kinda still have to finish the K-Nig-Its of Morr and the Bear Riders.  As usual the base coats are on, just the darn fiddly bits to do.

2013-07-24: K-Nig-Hts of Morr Work in Progress

The base coating is plodding along.  I think, think I tell yah, I have found a way to get a decent looking black armor without taking too much time.  Base coat of black with a little blue grey mixed in, and then take a wide flat brush to apply dryish blue grey paint with the side of the brush.  I have yet to take the next step and apply washes or white highlights.  I might not try to do too much with it and rely on a gloss varnish to make it look shiny.


The besides black, I plan on making use of white, muted green and either purple or red.  I was going with the red but then I thought that it would be hard to make the purple not look garish or too muted.  Especially on the lances.  But, a red with purple shading might pull it off OK and give some pop.
Unless I get much more hobby time then I expect (I have a guest visiting this weekend, bees may need some love, the garden is actually in ok shape but there is that toddler thing that demands attention) I don’t think I will get them done-done by the start of August.
I think August’s goal will be to assemble the halberdiers and great swords and perhaps paint a small batch of one or both.  I definitely have to scale down my painting level expectations on the halberdiers.  I just can’t pour in the level of detail into all of them and hope to get them done anytime soon.