Painting Again

So I've started again, and I'm kind of excited. It's been since last year in February since I've been able to work on these guys again. Finally, I'm able to. Working on miniatures is so relaxing! Well, kind of. I mean, it's nerve wracking too kinda! You're sitting there with a brush and this tiny guy and trying desperately to paint the fella, and not put a dink or a stray stroke anywhere it doesn't belong.

I've done that a few times, and as you glance through these pictures, you'll see where I've done that. I'm debating on how to clean it up. I could just paint over it again with the green, but then I might need to rehighlight, and worse, I need to put the wash back on.

Note, these guys aren't exactly done yet. I still have a few more nick nacks I need to include to make them more interesting. I intend to use a wash on their eyes, which should help darken the edges and make them look more like glowing eyes as well as sink into the armor. It's hard! They're so tiny! Gah! But I want to do that. That's an improvement.

I also need to find a wash for the gold to darken the grooves and help define them more. I want to use a brown, but I've had friends and even Games Workshop tell me that I should use a purple. So I'll give that a try and see how it turns out. I'm not to happy with all of the gold bits. The sergeant's knee pad looks awesome, but most of the shoulder pads that I've done look pretty horrific. On any new models I do, I'm going to try and see if I can figure out what I did on the sergeant again.

A few things I think I did right, is definitely the washes I've applied. That really helps the entire model gel together a lot. It's something I'm going to have to get into the habit of more. Before, I would use inks to help do the shadows. Not only did this take a long time and was pain staking, I often grew tired and began to do things really fast and made a lot of mistakes. Not good! So I'll try this again and see how it goes. I might apply more washes than I have on these guys just to see if that helps out the cracks or not. For now, I think they're good. The guns might use a few more washes, but that's easy to do at the stage.

The bases I made are nothing special, but having moved from Norway, I'm having a few new challenges to deal with. The only sand that Games Workshop had on hand, was really fine sand. I'm use to working with really coarse sand, and after this, I think I still prefer real course sand. Why? Mostly because it looks more defined? This stuff looks a little to small, and when I was trying to paint it, it was harder to get the paint to go all the way into the cracks. It looks good, it's not bad, but it took a little more work than I remembered to get it right.

With the advice of a good friend from Norway, a true "Viking" I'd say! Only because he has a beard that's nearly two feet long! I've started using Vallejo paints. I definitely prefer these paints a lot over the games workshop paints. They're smooth and easy to apply to my models for the most part. You do need to keep them wet, but I made a special effort this time to do that! I'm actually, quite proud of myself in that regard. I don't think a single paint brush of mine is damaged this time, and I kept them wet through out the entire process! So we'll see how they hold up. 

Anyhow, painting these guys up was good fun. I am working with a friend of mine, Steven, to do it. he bought himself some Tyranids to paint up, and I have to say they came out pretty awesome. He's made them a blackish blue flesh with orange fire like carapaces for the most part. I thought they looked swell! If I ever get my camera on them, and he is ok with it, I might add a few of his images here! We'll see.

For those who know me, and live here in Montreal and I know you, please give me a poke if you're interested in hanging out and getting some arts and crafts done. I found it to be both extremely relaxing, and a whole lot of fun. The more people around, the more conversation! It's a blast! And will likely happen more often on Sundays than on Saturdays soon as I /might/ be joining a Deathwatch Campaign. I'm going to have to figure out what my character is and paint him up too, even though I'm pretty certain we won't be using figurines to much at all.