Northern Son

I'll be honest, I lost a little steam after the bank holiday on Monday.  I'm not sure the pre-shading has worked on Hyperion if I'm honest, and it looks like I will have a fair amount of work to do once it's base-coated.
I was also a bit dejected when I started work on my witch doctor conversion. The piece I had bought as a skull mask for him doesn't have a chance of fitting over his face without a lot of Dremmel work to remove the mass inside it, whichj i struggled to do with hobby knife/files.
I managed to salvage the skull into a Wrastler looking one which I will use on the base, and try to add some runes/OSL glow to the eyes maybe. Back at the drawing board for this one, and maybe I will try a different type of headdress.

So tomorrow and Sunday I will be pushing on with Hyperion when I get chance, and hope to at least get the grey base coat and metallics sorted so I can think about how to approach highlighting.  At the moment, I'm leaning towards using standard brushes to shade and highlight, which I'm disappointed about, but there may hopefully be chance to airbrush at least the white on the shoulders, if not some kind of stencil work to make it stand out as a centre piece.

Based on recent experience however, my current airbrush set-up really makes me feel like it will just be a tool for priming and base coating.

I've been looking at some of the convergence of Cyriss photos to come out of Lock n Load as well and I really like the aesthetic, and have been juggling potential colours schemes around in my mind this morning.  I have been pondering about a second Warmachine faction for a while, but I can never really justify it to be honest. I still haven't picked up any of the new 'jacks for Retribution, and I pretty much prefer playing Hordes anyway if I'm honest (I'd love to pick up some Trollbloods).

My first thought is that I can magnetise a Vyre 'jack kit or two (learning from my mistakes with the first Shyeel kit I tried to magnetise...), and grab the last 'caster is missing along with a solo or two I'd like and call it done, unless the next book or two drag me back into the faction.

For Skorne, there is very little I'd like to add to my forces, save perhaps a second unit of Cetrati at some point, but I have pretty much everything I like the look of etc. so I'm happy with painting them up for now.

It's a similar story with Gatormen, I have Rask now to put together, and with the exception of the witch doctor/shamblers unit in the new book there isn't anything I'm after greatly so, again I'm happy painting up what I have.

As far as Cyriss/Trollbloods go, I think I'll wait until at least the end of July (after my birthday) and see how I feel then. I don't play at all hardly any more due to various reasons, so it's difficult justifying any large layouts at the moment, so we will have to see where the future lies

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Sleep on it

Managed to get Hyperion pre-shaded & Zenithal highlighted yesterday with the airbrush, and the mask works perfectly, so I will be doing plenty more airbrushing in the future.

At first, I was a little scared that I had 'ruined' the areas I was trying to shade, with a steady hand and not great control of the airbrush requiring me to go back in with a brush and tidy up some areas with the grey primer colour, and the white which I was spraying down from the top didn't really seem to have coated too well. This was assuaged a little this morning though once I opened my drawer to inspect my handy work. I feel a lot more confident now that it will look ok once I have painted on the mid-layer. Hopeful it will pick out the shades and highlights too. If not, I have  a plan to re-shade with a mix of the darker colour and the mid-layer through the airbrush.

I'm reluctant to show any WIP of this process to be honest as it really doesn't look great so I'd rather show the finished item, if I need to fix a load of stuff, or even start again if the methods used haven't worked.  Once the armour is painted though, I'm going to add battle damage with a sponge, paint the metallics, and then try to OSL the power channels and orbs with the airbrush.

I think this may be a little ambitious for my first real use of the airbrush, but I'm pretty sure I'll love to tell the tale :p

Ravyn and the Arcanist are being added to whenever I get a moment between Hyperion layers, and I also finished Calabans base, and eVyros' base as well. Calaban shown below.

I'd like to add in a link here to a forum I found recently which is an amazing resource of guides and tutorials for painting miniatures and bases.  I spent an entire evening/night pouring through these well-written articles, and I really felt like I learned something. Despite the focus on Warhammer fantasy, there is a lot to be learnt here, so I suggest you go and at least have a look even if you feel you don't need any help :P

Hopefully some progress with Hyperion mid-week

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Committed

As I mentioned in previous posts, I have things coming up which I've committed to with the amateur theatre group that I stage mange for, and of course I have literally zero time at the moment for hobbyisms.  It's all hands on deck until Sunday morning, including not getting home at all after work & rehearsals 'til gone 10/11pm.

It's not all bleak news though my friends, fear not!
I've two 'missed delivery' slips from the postman, so I'm hoping that my copy of Gargantuans is waiting at the post office, along with my respirator.
Which leads me nicely on to the fact that I will be airbrushing like a man possessed in order to get Hyperion painted. I learned recently (Tuesday) that there is a Colossals release event at my LGS in two weeks on Sunday. Pretty short notice if you ask me, but no-one did. Of course, me being me, I went into panic mode and started trying to cram on the new rules, and on casters and tactics etc... Where as what I think I'll be concentrating on is painting.

All I need to complete is Ravyn, an Arcanist who are both at around 80% and of course Hyperion.
I do have a plan of attack on how to approach the big man, involving pre-shading and weathering/battle damage, so we shall see how he turns out.  I suppose I can always go back and add to the model if I feel like it needs it at a later date.

The only thing I have literally no idea about is lists. I will be using pVyross and Ravyn, but other than that I've no real clue what to field.  I won't have time to get my Destors assembled for Ravyn unfortunately, but I've never really played her before so I'm stuck for other options.

Can you guys help suggest anything for these two casters at 50 points? The only Ret models I DO NOT OWN are;
Vyre 'jacks
Houseguard uints
eEiyriss
Sylys

Radio silence for now then, but hopefully I'll be back to it on Sunday with something to show on Monday late on.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Gravewalker

In a flurry of productivity (the likes of which hasn't been seen for over a year:/) I got Calaban finished, and a base prepped.

I'm pleased with the way he has come out. For some reason, the albino skin tone isn't quite the same as the witch doctor. I think maybe I got confused between two similar looking paints for the base coat  I'm happy though  and definitely can't complain about knocking him out as quick as I managed   I'll never be dropping quality minis in the kind of time scales Griffin does, but I'm happy.

I would guess that this is the last entry for a while, depending when my orders arrive, as I may be able to get some quick WIP shots of my planned witch doctor conversion.  Other than that I would hope to be able to get at least some hobby work done a week on Monday which is a bank holiday.

Until then I will be chipping away at the tyrant I mentioned, Maelok if I get distracted, and I hope that I can add the finishing stages to my Bronzeback titan. Maybe even get my Cetrati finished. Ambitious maybe but at least I'm in the zone :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Sugar Rush

Late night/early morning productivity is what's on at the moment. I'm hopped up on energy drinks and combating fatigue from today's lunchtime run along the canal (Long story, but basically I'm training for a 10k later this year).

This seems to be a good state to be in though, as I've managed to get Calaban from primed to pretty much finished except for the many and varied skulls on the model, and the details like his glowing skull and face mask.  There are some really good colour contrast areas on this model, from warm to cold and light to dark so I'm looking forward to seeing how he turns out. 








I've also made some progress on the Skorne Tyrant (standard bearer not started yet). I've used red as the colour for his robes, which is one of the ideas I had surrounding changing my colour scheme for my Skorne, and the theory here is that Whilst Xerxis' house colours are blue, Makeda will use red, so any tyrants other than Xerxis will use the Baalesh house colours.  Hopefully the armour colours and blue accents will still tie it all together visually.

It's payday on Monday, so I can place my monthly hobby order. I'm going to pick up Gargantuans, Rask, a couple of paints and I'll also be getting hold of some airbrush friendly varnish to save my poor warbeasts from chips/abrasion from any case foam (I'm not convinced that this is what has happened, but I'd rather be sure), as well as a respirator to enable me to use the airbrush more often and more safely.

I'm also ordering a single gatorman in order to convert it into a second witch doctor.  I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm not a  fan of the current sculpt (despite how quickly/well it painted up).

I've been inspired a great deal by some posts on the PP forums, namely these few.  Specifically these ones posted by PG_Gift.  I've got my eye on a few games workshop pieces to bits order to help with this conversion so hopefully I'll be able to progress with this this month also.

I've got some commitments next week with the Drama group I'm involved with (as stage manager, I don't act) so perhaps Bank Holiday Monday will see some hobby time. I'll try and update where possible, but hopefully Mr Gravewalker above will suffice for now.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Loss of picture

Hi all

Just looking through some historic posts, and the pictures that were loaded to blogspot now no longer appear in the posts, any idea why this might have happened/how to remedy?

Thanks

Weekend Warrior

I managed to get the witch doctor finished :)

I like the albino style colour so much that I will use this method for all my witch doctors (Currently only Calaban) when I manage to convert up some more.

I also played around with my new colour ideas for my Skorne, but I couldn't get any of them to look as good as Xerxis currently does in what was the final iteration of my bone + blue scheme, so I will be continuing with that :)

This week will be working on Maelok I reckon, and then seeing what takes my fancy after that.  I didn't manage to get a respirator over the weekend, so I will try and get one on payday this month a long with some bits and bobs like varnish, as some of my beasts have chipped at some point, or have paint rubbed off by foam, which is less likely.  This of course means that I will need to finally add water effects to those that need it, and I can do this all at once, and hopefully varnish the next day :)

Once I've got a respirator though, I will be working on my minions units, and trying to use the airbrush to get them done quickly, whilst not rushing them.  The bog trogs especially I can see as being laborious to paint after not particularly enjoying putting them together

I will also hopefully be picking up Gargantuans on payday so I can catch up on all the fun :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty