I have been experimenting a little further with the robes on the Cultists. I guess experiment is the wrong word. I thought the grey section of the robes I am painting at their backs was pretty boring. I am going to free hand some designs onto them to enliven the miniatures a little. Here is the beginning of a design on the first model.
November 22, 2009
Getting warmer...
I have been experimenting a little further with the robes on the Cultists. I guess experiment is the wrong word. I thought the grey section of the robes I am painting at their backs was pretty boring. I am going to free hand some designs onto them to enliven the miniatures a little. Here is the beginning of a design on the first model.
November 21, 2009
My arm is on fire
I am struggling with Object Source Lighting. I have started the first flagellant that will have the effect and well parts of him look good. I struggled first with painting the flames as they should be. I have managed that decently but not perfectly.
The Flame: I began with a solid white basecoat which I washed with yellow a number of times to build up the colour. I then washed orange over a smaller area and finally some red. This turned out oaky. The problem I have encountered is that the flame tongues are rather large and round and almost feed from the base of the flame right to the top. This means that when washing the watered paint will still run to the base if too much is applied. I had to thicken the paint a little more to prevent it running too much. Eventually I realised that this was not enough and went back over the entire flame with a yellow wash. This tied stuff together well but sat deeply in the long crevasse at the centre of the flame giving a solid yellow centre that didn't look right. I went along then and shaded the flames to remove some of that yellow and enliven the whole effect I darkened the tips to GW red gore with a little black at the very top. I will have to go back and ass some white to the flames I think but so far they seem to have come out alright considering that I have done them rather quickly. There is a good tutorial here.
The Light: This is tough. A lot tougher than I imagined and I didn't help myself much with the colours chosen. The problem I am having is with the change in the spectrum of the light due to its proximity to the source. I was using Vajello Hot Orange for my light base colour which I intended to highlight with a little yellow. Firstly the model I was working on had blonde hair. Straight away I didn't really know how to proceed. Eventually I felt brave and just applied some orange 'highlights' to the hair. I remember Old Fogey on the Warhammer forum remarking that OSL was just highlighting with different/funny colours. With that in mind I applied some yellow over the orange around the hair and face. This is the area closest to the flame. I then washed this with Baal Red to see what happened. Once dry it looked great! So I am pretty happy with the face. The light skin and hair took the paint and OSL well.
Now everything else I wanted to put the light on was further away and as such the light would have grown less intense. I felt that the orange was still fine and that a slight yellow highlight would be best. I went straight to the dark green robes and put on the Orange. Immediately this was looking wrong. The orange gave a strange effect. I continued onto the arm holding the brand and applied the orange. Again it looked wrong. I continued as sometimes only once the model or technique gets close to being done does it start to look correct. Alas this still ended up a failure. I washed it with red to darken the colours but no that didn't help. Simply put it was terrible.
I still don't have it figured out but I went back and in putting the base coat over everything again I realised that maybe I was forgetting to generally highlight the robe around the light source and that leaving it dark just wouldnt work. The daylight faded here now so tomorrow I will continue. What I am guessing I need to do is give the robe in this area a much lighter tone highlighting it up well beyond what I have done in the other areas. Once this is complete I can then apply some of the light from the source. I really don't have a clue what colour I should use. Stick with an orange or change to red? Hopefully this will be the solution I need. A good look at some different light sourced models can be seen here.
The flesh is a different story as it is the exact opposite of the robe and is already very light. When reappling the GW Tallarn Flesh basecoat it looked horrible. I will have to redo the arm completely. I experimented with some red gore as a wash along the skin but it looks a little like blood. Possibly some vajello Hot Orange would be best? As this part is of the same intensity/distance as the adjacent robe I am assuming that they would both need the same colour. However as one comes from such a dark base and the other such a light one I can't seem to get it to work. I remember that Curse of Beers on the Warhammer Forum mentioned that the object recieving the light needs to be dark enough to show it. Maybe that is where I am going wrong with this? I need to have dark skin.
I have seen a great article here that deals with a blue light source. I really think that I could manage that fairly easily. It seems that the more fickle spectrum of fire light is causing me a lot of problems. Anyway it seems I will have to start bugging some better painters than I for some answers!
November 19, 2009
The Sons are ready
I will be beginning work in my new position on Monday. I am pretty excited and a little overwhelmed. Hopefully all goes well. I got the grand tour of the office yesterday. It was nice to see how these games get developed. My hours will be quite flexible so if it suits I might still catch some daylight for painting. I will know after a few weeks. I had better stay searching for those lamps I think. My tournament preparation continues. Resurgence 09 is only a week away. I have the entire army based but not painted. Hopefully I will still qualify for some of the painting points that way. It is far from ideal but all I can manage at the moment. The lists have been submitted and it seems every Elf army has a dragon. I haven’t really played against large flying beasts much so hopefully I can avoid draws against these players. At least there are no Daemons or Lizardmen armies present so I am a little happier. They are two armies I don’t want to face. We are just awaiting a ‘hardness’ rating for each of the armies and then they will be drawn against each other based upon that rating. An interesting system that will hopefully have the true nastiness facing each other as much as possible!
Here is a nice shot of the sunset behind my house just as I am typing this!
November 16, 2009
Working like a dog
Another things I am going to be constructing is a wet palette. I always wondered exactly what they were and when I saw Noeste's wet palette guide I finally realised I can make one! I thought they were some really specialised and hence expensive piece of equipment. Thankfully they are not. As I will soon be painting the larger Marauder regiment of eighteen this will be useful. I have been painting the smaller regiment in groups of three and this can lead to variations in the colours achieved. The skin on some of them has come out lighter or paler than others While this is actually not such a bad thing especially as the colours are only subtly different I would still like to keep a uniform appearance as much as possible.
Hopefully this experiment works well...
Labels:
Banter,
Chaos,
Warhammer Fantasy Battle,
Warriors of Chaos
November 13, 2009
A little box in a big box
Looking at what arrived I was quite impressed that it need such a big box. The foam was not inside the case but packed all around it making for a massive box. I got five trays all custom cut. One is purely for storage of cavalry models rather than transport. Anyway when I looked at the trays first I thought "damn, my army wont fit in these". I was wrong and not for the first time today as you will see. Anyway I grabbed out all my models and started fitting them in. I was most concerned about the hounds as there appeared to be no correct spaces for them at all. Funnily when I started packing things in I noticed that the spaces I assumed were for Chaos Warriors were actually for the hounds. It is a snug fit especially for some that I have lifted from their hunched pose. Its great though all twenty of them will fit in. I wonder will I ever use that many though. The marauders fit in fine too. The cavalry fit but its not great. The tray for them is four inches deep while the models (mine at least) are much lower. In some cases they are over an inch short leaving a lot of 'wiggle' room in the case. I am not sure if this would lead to any damage especially as they are plastic. Mine are so short because I have cut all the horns off and don't use the lances or standards. It would have been nice to have made that tray a little less thick. I still have to check how my characters fit in though. I am assuming that they will be taller. Some of the holes on the tray I have no clue what fits into them yet!
As for the tray and the pack they are well produced. I had some text put on them and it looks good. On the infantry trays it is a little crooked but it would seem that there was not much space to work with really and having any text there at all is pretty impressive! They are well constructed and glued together. The pack has good pockets for extras such as movement trays dice and books. With the pockets filled I hope it still fits in the overhead luggage compartment. Looking at it now I am thinking it probably has some room to spare! Ryanair seem to have generous volume for hand luggage. I will be testing it in about two weeks I think.
November 11, 2009
Slowly slowly
I might get these Marauders done within the week yet. I have three finished of twelve at least. I had to experiment with the colours a little as I wasn't sure how they would all go together. I can really see how rusty (and possibly lazy) I have become in regards to painting. My transitions in the blends are poor and I really need to work out how I used to do them. It probably just means a bit more time and effort invested per model. While these are gaming models I still want them to come out as best as possible. Most of the problems emerged on the trousers. The stark transitions I managed were not what I wanted. A glaze brought them back into realms of normality at least. Then the highlight over the scorched brown for the belts and straps are far to subtle. A problem I also have to keep in mind is the beards. The colurs on them can easily look similar to the other browns I am using. At least with these three guys I can keep the beards quite red and not worry. On the others they may start to blend in too much.
November 8, 2009
Fleshy experiments
November 5, 2009
At least I am reading!

I am hoping to get right back on track with the painting soon. Tomorrow may be a relaxing day and if so I will be breaking out the brushes and attempting to finish some test marauders I have been doing. I noticed in the almost local Games Store that a Crom the Conqueror model was still on sale. I believe that he is now out of production? I bought him anyway as I wanted to get a nice collection of characters for the army. I am already trying to dream up how I will convert him. Oh and the weather in Hamburg is terrible at the moment!
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