Trophy Wights

As a Henchman for Wyrd Miniatures it is my solemn duty to spread the joy and love of Malifaux.  To do this I run demos mainly, as well as leagues.  Every now and then though, I run a tournament!  My first tournament for Wyrd is going to be called The Fetid Cup, so named for my good friend who took a job in another state.  I miss him a lot, and haven't gotten to play as much Malifaux since he left.  Fetid Strumpet is his username, and the tournament is obviously dedicated to him.  In addition to other prize support for this tournament I wanted to make up three very special trophies.




I thought it would be appropriate to use his three favorite miniatures from his faction, Resurrectionists.  Topping the list is his favorite character from the setting, and favored miniature, Molly Squidpiddge.



To say that Fetid Strumpet adores Molly would be an understatement.  He even goes so far as to throw a game in order to destroy any fake (not his) Molly that should be placed upon the board.  In second place is the well done sculpt of an undead showgirl, the Dead Doxy.



The Dead Doxies are a normal minion, but the sculpt is very well done.  It takes a lot more than what you'd think to make a good zombie miniature.  Undead showgirls aren't the only attraction, and one of the main minions used by the Resurrectionist master Seamus are the Rotten Belles.



I was very surprised at how well the models turned out.  It was a very simple paint job, and it had a nice effect.  I used six colors in all to paint the above models (not counting the black I used for the ring around the base).  So let's dig in!

I started off with a basecoat of Glorious Gold (Vallejo72056) for first/Molly, Chainmail Silver (Vallejo72053) for second/Dead Doxy, and Bright Bronze (Vallejo72057) for third/Rotten Belle.  For a little while I though that the base colors themselves did a fine job, but I wanted to do something a little more (this is a tribute to my friend after all!) so I added a wash of Sepia Ink (Vallejo72091). 

 

At first I had thought about using a black ink for the shading, but then it struck me that a medium to dark brown ink would be much better.  Glad I went with my instinct on this one as the effect was wonderful!  I was really surprised at how the sepia interacted with the chainmail, giving it a really rusty tin man effect!  Once the ink had dried I went over them again with a heavy drybrush of their base color.



Doesn't look like that much progress does it?  Just stay with me a while.  I've noticed over the years that when you use a wash and drybrush over it with the basecoat that you almost seem to lose the effect.  It is there though, I assure you of that.  You notice it as you add on more and more.  The final step was to drybrush over again, but this time use a brighter coat.  I used Polished Gold (Vallejo 72055) for first, and also for third.  I was able to use it normally on first place since I wanted it to look very gold, but on the third place model I used it very lightly.  Third place was supposed to be bronze so I wanted to make sure it had just a little extra luster to help distinguish it from the gold, and I'm quite pleased with the results as you can see.  For second place I used Silver (Vallejo 72052) in the same manner as gold.

These trophies will be given away as prizes for my very first Malifaux tournament!  Come on out and play if you want a shot at one of these beautiful pieces!

I haven't neglected my commission though.  Painted another two wights for the growing hoard.




I may have mentioned before that the Wights are supposed to have black armor, but painting black so that it looks good is a bit tricky.  Either you use a dark grey for a highlight or a dark blue depending on how you want the shade to show up.  For the wights I've been using an Imperial/dark blue, drybrushing it with chainmail, and then washing it with a black ink.



If the black has too much blue showing up I just wash over it with another thin coat of black ink and that usually does the trick.  If these wights look like they're standing funny then give yourself a prize!  Both wights had problems with the ankles, and I had to re-glue and pin both of them to some extent.  The pins fit in with the bone though so that worked out nicely.

Coming up on Friday I plan to do a large amount of painting.  Or hope to anyways.  With luck I'll have a nice pile of freshly painted miniatures to talk about Friday night!

Building Better Scenery

Last time I showed off the beginnings of my Breech Portal, and I figured it's long past due for an updated look.




The final look isn't as awesome as I'd hoped it would be, but it's a far cry from being ordinary too!  You'll notice that the ground around the base is nicely done, and that's because I decided to hit it with a wash.  When I painted all the scenery pieces up the ground looked exactly the same as the piece. 

 

Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but it seemed so flat and boring that it kept bugging me.  Well I spent a few hours going over the gravely bits with some Sewer Water (Secret Weapon Paints), and the final result is well worth it.




When I put the first bit of wash down I wasn't sure if the ground would be brown enough.  I wanted the ground to be distinct enough to contrast the scenery in order to get the whole thing to, "Pop."  So I tried out my Sepia Wash (Vallejo 72091).

 

While the two shades (Sewer water on the left, Vallejo on the right) are pretty close in the picture, the brown from the Sepia wash was a lot darker.  For some reason this didn't feel right to me, so I decided to forgo it in favor of the sewer water for the rest of the pieces.

 

I recently talked about making sure you have a good seal when working with the Envirotex Lite polymer, and it goes to show that no matter how good you think your seal is it will find a way.



It didn't show up right away.  It took about 5-10 minutes before I noticed it seeping through.  Since this stuff is slower than molasses I whipped up some 5-min epoxy to cover the opening after I soaked up what had leaked out.  I ended up overdoing it a bit, and had a grandiose idea of making a slime monster to paint as another part to the scenery.



So maybe that idea wasn't the greatest thing to do on the fly.  I'll wait till the polymer is fully set and then see if I can't chip away at it, and instead cover the area up with some foliage (which happens to be the next, and possibly last step, for these scenery pieces).

The results of a busy week

It's that time of year!  The time of year when I find myself out in the field and driving all over the place repairing satellite networks.  I did manage to find some time earlier this evening to get some painting done.  I started the squadron of Narn Frazi fighters.  I put down a base of Chainmail Silver (Vallejo 72053) and then hit it with the black ink (Vallejo 72094) and let it dry.



Adding an ink or a wash to a metal is a good way to bring out the highlights while giving definition to the recesses.  An ink or wash will naturally flow into and pool in any recesses.  This is perfect for an easy job of doing shadows, but it leaves something lacking.  Usually what I do is to go over the inked areas again with the base color, this way I have a clearer definition of the color I intend that spot to be while keeping the shadows.



A little bit more brighter and vibrant.  While I don't normally do this with metal I usually add another brighter layer on top of the 2nd base layer.

One of my little secrets that I use with painting is that if I don't know how the shading will fall exactly I'll use a wash and let it dry.  This leaves a good impression for where all the ridges and raised areas are, and in turn makes it easier to add layers of highlighting.

Something new: Tan Flesh

Flesh is a key detail in any miniature.  Whether milky white and smooth or ghoulishly rotted and falling off the bone a good flesh tone can enhance or distract from the rest of your paint job.  While I normally favor pale skinned ladies



I recently took on a commission for a Lady Justice box set from Wyrd's Malifaux line.  My patron asked that I paint Lady Justice with a tanned shade of flesh.  Being outside of my comfort zone I made sure to put a little extra effort into it.  I started with a base of Bronze Fleshtone (Vallejo 72036) mixed with a bit of Parasite Brown (Vallejo 72042), and then picked over it with straight Bronze Fleshtone.  To smooth the blending I hit it with GW's Gryphonne Sepia wash.



As I tend to do with my paints I followed up the wash with a layer of straight Bronze Fleshtone and another layer on top of that with Bronze Fleshtone mixed with Elf Skintone (Vallejo 72004), and then topped it off with another sepia wash.



I normally don't do more than four of five layers, but I take commissions seriously and wanted to make sure I really captured the tanned look.  So far there didn't appear to be enough variation, so I added another two layers consisting of a mix of Bronze and Elf fleshtones, picked out details with Elf Fleshtone, and then counted on the Sepia wash to give it a good bronze tint.



I liked how things were starting to look, but I felt like the flesh wasn't smooth enough.  Once the wash was dry I went over it again with the same layers as before but with a little more water in the paint to get a smoother coat.



According to the Patron the job is acceptable.  The difficult thing with doing fleshtones first on a miniature is that you don't get a good sense of how they will work overall.  Quite often I find that a fleshtone I don't think will work ends up turning out fantastic once the rest of the miniature is painted.  So if you're uncertain that you've hit the tone just right, get some more paint on the model before you redo your hard work.

The First Wave

The first circle is nearing completion.  What started as an attempt to see if I could do camo is just about done.  The first grouping of OGRE miniatures painted in Russian Arctic Camo is just about done.  Six Heavy Tanks and Nine Light Tanks are all done and sealed



I managed to perfect my recipe just enough to replicate it.  The base color I used was Cayman Green (Vallejo 72067), and it turned out better than Camouflage Green.  The next layer was just straight Dead White (Vallejo 72001) applied in a wavy stripe pattern.  One thing to note is that with each layer after the base I tried to add more blobs to it.  Essentially you want to keep your lines from being clean and straight. 

Next layer is the brown layer.  It took me a little mixing to get a good brown that was neither too dark or too light.  I mixed Charred Brown (Vallejo 72045) with Beasty Brown (72043) in a close to 50-50 mix; though it was probably closer to 60-40.  For the brown pattern I kept to more large groupings/blobs connecting and crossing over the white.  Very simple and straightforward.

The top layer was black (Vallejo 72051).  A simple smattering of squiggles, small elongated blobs, and twisted V's applied over the rest helped to blend it all together.  When I look at them on my table it's easy for the eyes to glide right over them.  You have to be careful when applying the black.  Too much and you're covering up your previous layers, too little and the effect is jarring.  I would apply squiggles and V's, then touch up the in-between areas with elongated blobs.  This would be the overall effect:



One thing I like to do is pay attention to all the details.  I ended up putting a lot of effort and thought into the treads even though they'd hardly be seen at all.  I mixed Beasty Brown with Cold Grey (Vallejo 72050) to get a nice smooth and dull brown (approaching beige).  Once the treads had been painted with it I hit them with a black ink, and drybrushed the base color back over once they were dry.  Simple but effective.



While this setup is nearly complete, I have a bunch of infantry waiting to be assembled and painted in a similar manner.

 

Pretty soon this force will be ready to roll over its enemies in glorious conquest!

OGRE Coffee

I've replaced my friend's morning coffee with an OGRE blog post; let's see if he notices

Following the successful OGRE: Designer's Edition Kickstarter I offered to paint some of my friends OGRE miniatures.  There were some rough draft attempts at camo, but here is the first actual run of Heavy Tanks.






In my last attempt I used just regular camo green (Vallejo 72031), but my buddy wanted darker on the green and brown.  I used Cayman Green (Vallejo 72067), and for the brown I mixed Beasty Brown (Vallejo 72043) in with Charred Brown (Vallejo 72045).  The overall effect was successful :-)

I also tried a suggestion for the treads.  Instead of using metal I mixed Beasty Brown with Cold Grey (Vallejo 72050), hit it with black ink, and then did a light drybrush of the base mixture to pick out edges and highlights.  I'm actually pleased with the overall outcome.



It may only seem like a minor detail, but when you're painting the stuff it's hard to not pay attention to it.  At least that's the way it is for me.

OGRE Afrika Korps Camo

Had a busy weekend.  I managed to pick up the OGRE miniatures and show off my skills with what I done so far.  They were well received.  One of those was the Afrika Korps camo that's slated to adorn the mighty OGRE's once they're done being stripped of their old paint.

So lets start off with the inspiration pic...
 

This pattern is a lot simpler to pull off.  Muted colors with wavy stripes.  For a base color I really wracked my brain on this one.  It's tan but a khaki color would be too creamy, but other tans would be too dark.  I ended up settling on a surprising choice, Bonewhite (Vallejo 72034). 



At first I didn't think that bone would work, but after I put it on and started looking at it I was surprised at how close it got.  I have some washes that are pretty close to that color and decided to try them out.  I tried out Secret Weapon Washes Parchment color and GW's Sepia Wash.



The Parchment is on the left tread covering while the Sepia is on the right tread cover.  The result is that the Parchment has no effect while the Sepia is a bit too dark.  I could go over the plating with bone again, but as these are intended to be covered in camo I figured it'd be better to forgo it this time.

Next up is the stripes.  Again an off color.  Not quite brown but lighter than leather.  I dug through my paints and decided to try out Parasite Brown (Vallejo 72042).  This color seems to have some orange and a light touch of red mixed in.



The color worked out perfectly!  When I showed it to my friend he was pretty happy about it, but noted that the stripes across the top should go all the way across.  Other than that it looks the way it should.  The treads got painted with Chainmail Silver (Vallejo 72053) and hit with the parchment wash.  Can you notice it in the above picture?  Neither could I.  Not sure when/where I'll find a use for the parchment wash.

All I have to do now is wait for the OGRE's to be cleaned off.

OGRE Part 2: Russian camoflauge

With the Avatar of Decay finally being complete I'm free to explore some other areas of painting.  This time I decided to try out some Russian Arctic cam, again using a tank from Reaper's C.A.V. line.  Here's my inspiration pic:




So taking a look at it I see an Olive Green, White, A fresh mud kind of brown, and black.  Layered in that order.  Looking at it I tend to see more stripes than blobs, so that's what I decided to try out.  First though I had to get my base coat on using Camouflage Green (Vallejo 72031).



This particular shade has a property that I encounter from time to time which is the opacity of the color.  Some colors look more opaque before you apply them, resulting in a mess of wavy brush lines/strokes



The best way to overcome this is to make sure your paint isn't too thinned out (which can cause this) as well as multiple coats.  Just give your first coat a chance to dry and then layer it again, repeat as needed.

Moving on to my next layer I mentioned stripes.



The stripes ended up being a bit thicker than I would have liked, and you can see that I probably used too much white towards the front.  As I was painting this layer I began to realize something about painting camo: the second layer is a pain in the ass.  It's not difficult to per say, it's just that looking at it all I can see is a bunch of squiggly lines that look NOTHING what they're supposed to look like.  I had the same issue when I painted the Aussie Cam Tank.  My advice would be to finish all the layers before making a call one way or the other as the layers build on and cover each other giving it the camouflage look.



Splotchy brown stripes.  Going off of my inspiration pic it's hard to tell if the brown spots are supposed to be more blob like or line like, and the more you look at it the more you begin to see how things vary.  I decided that mine would be more blob like with tentacles sticking forth.  I can slowly begin to see the final product, and each successive layer helps me to feel better about that 2nd layer.  The last layer of cam to put on was the black.



When I put the dark green on the Aussie cam I found it to be stark and contrasting, and rather than blend the whole thing together it seemed to draw more attention to it.  That's not a good thing when you don't want to be noticed.  For the Russian cam though it was different.  The darker brown acted as a good medium in the blend, and as I started painting the black on it seemed to be more natural.  This made me feel better about using darker colors for future camo spreads.  All in all it turned out nice.  I put some metal down on the treads and hit it with a watered down black ink to help add some depth.  The final product looks pretty decent IMO.



As I'm practicing camo in order to paint a friends models I asked his opinion.  While appreciated he felt that more bloby and splotchy while less stripy would be better.  Time to try again I suppose.

Busted thumbs and Malifaux treats

My real life job managed to give me a bit of a setback on my painting earlier this week.  My thumb got caught between a wrench and the mounting of the equipment I was working on.  I was worried that it might've been broken, but the following morning the pain was starting to subside.  The result of that though is that no painting got done on Wed, and Thur night was Malifaux night at my FLGS.  Even though my painting has been set back a bit I plan to catch up this weekend; especially considering my order finally came in.

 

However I have made some progress on my Nicodem Avatar.  I managed to get the zombies finished, and started work on the chair.  These first two zombies are the ones that I used the RMS Undead Flesh triad that I talked about here.

 


 These other three I used a combination of Vallejo paints and GW Sepia wash. 





As you can see I've applied copious amounts of blood.  In the past I've used varying shades of red paint, but I decided to try something else this time.  I went with a Red Ink from Privateer Press' P3 line, and it worked out rather well.  Like most washes I had to water it down, otherwise it's just too strong and rather than adding shading it just blots out everything it covers.  Before applying it I used some Scarlett Red (Vallejo 72012) on the open wounds and exposed muscles.  That way the red ink would give a more natural sense of blood flow when I applied it.

In the end I'm not sure how I feel about one set over the other.  They both have their ups and downs, and I'm not sure that either one could be considered a better go aside from opinion.  The RMS ones have a bit more of a rotted look, but the ones I used Vallejo paints on look a bit more fleshy/fresh.  Maybe it's good to mix things up a little every now and then.