Things that make you go Hmmm…

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Hello chaps, I hope you’re all well! I have two minis to share with you this week – again, I have been working through my pile of undercoated but otherwise neglected minis. First up is this official looking chap from the ‘Spacelords’ range from Moonraker Miniatures:

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He’s pretty straight forward on the painting front, and is very much intended to fit in with my PDF types on the clothing colours, (though he can also double up as a generic civilian, security guard, robot handler, prisoner transport officer… he’s quite a flexible little fella!). The model isn’t that great if I’m honest – loads of nice detail, but I suspect it is slightly miscast around the insides of the arms… it doesn’t show too much though, so he’ll do:

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Secondly, I have an experiment to share. I returned to a mini that I have started and stopped about three times – I have really struggled to find any motivation to paint this guy for a number of reasons…  1: He’s an Eldar, and I really don’t find the faction that interesting (even in RT). 2: He’s an Eldar, and that means clean lines, crisp colours, sharp highlights… a far cry from my usual weathered look. 3: He’s an Eldar.

BUT… this time I grasped the nettle and decided to get this guy off my bench once and for all. I also had an idea that I wanted to test – I wanted to see if I could get a reasonable coloured metallic look out of the new Citadel gem paints, and this guy got to be the guinea pig. I decided to try the green gloss over a copper base coat on his body armour, and it turned out like this:

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Hmmm…  Not sure if I like the effect or not – the paint is basically a coloured gloss and so looks quite thick and gloopy on the model, (though to be fair, I did get a bit impatient with the application, so this is at least partially due to my own heavy-handedness!). I also think that the colour scheme is a bit ‘meh’, which doesn’t really help the overall look. However, looking at the positives, the end result is certainly is metallic and coloured, so I have to conclude that the test is at least a partial success. I am certain that a more patient approach with thinner layers of this gem paint will likely look much better, and I strongly suspect that the blue one would’ve looked better too. I’ll probably test this idea further, (I quite fancy trying a Sigmarine in blue enamelled armour instead of the usual gold), but I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide if you like the result or not :-)

Anyhow, that’s it for another week dudes, have a good one, I’ll catch you on the flip-side.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, Boom!

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Hello chaps, just the one finished model to show you this week – I have had him undercoated and kicking around the place for some time, so I thought I would crank him out with a view to clearing some backlog and sharpening up my brush work. This time it is the 1991 Penal Trooper – aka ‘The Human Bomb’, (political correctness being less of a thing 25 years ago!), though I prefer to look at him as a max security prisoner who is wired to go bang if he misbehaves rather than a walking piece of ordinance. I had the prison break scene in ‘The Running-man’ movie in mind, and, as such, I didn’t want him to look ‘equipped’. In the end, I just gave him a makeshift weapon using bits from the ever-popular Flagellants kit – I imagine he’s in the act of breaking out of Supermax, (or is mid-riot inside), and he has just grabbed the first hitty thing that he could lay his hands on:

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Paint-wise, I embraced the deranged facial expression of the mini, accentuating this with a 2 o’clock shadow, and added some tattoos and a rather pleasing blood spatter effect. I couldn’t resist going with the obvious Guantanamo Orange for the jump suit, and I used Kantor Blue for the explosive vest. Happily, this ties him in with a few other little collections I have on the go:

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Overall, a quick and satisfying paint job, and another half-finished piece off the list. That’s it for another week, catch you next week & have a great weekend :-)

Guess who’s back!

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Hello folks – just like Arnie, I’m back! Yey!! Man… I can’t believe it has been almost 2 months since I posted my completed Techno-Barbarian village – our house has been upside down in all that time, making painting, modelling etc. practically impossible. I have really missed painting and blogging in that time, though luckily, I have been able to closely follow a number of excellent blogs out in the Noosphere, (yes… you know who you are), and so I have been getting my kicks second hand. I have also managed to get in a fair few games of Frostgrave these last months, (my techno-barbarian warband is now up to level 16!), but nothing to really satisfy my creative urges.

Anyhow, I am really pleased to report that a) the house is finished, and we have a cracking new kitchen & downstairs layout to enjoy, and b) I have picked up the brushes again. You know, it’s weird, but I am feeling incredibly rusty on the painting front, and strangely timid about ‘getting back into it’. I don’t know if anyone else has had a similar situation, but it definitely feels a bit uncomfortable… Ah well, got to start somewhere, right?

So… I’ve been pondering what to work on for my return, and (as you can imagine) I have a number of options. For starters, I have the Silver Tower game to sort out, plus several lovely Kickstarters that shipped recently. Also, I want to expand on the techno-barbarians, I have some Frostgrave creatures to sort out, and I have a number of small Confrontation collections to tackle as well… Such decisions! In the end, I decided to finish up my pit slave conversion, just to get my eye in, so to speak. He’s based on the AoS Slaughter Priest, and we last saw him in this state:

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Now he’s finished, and he looks more like this:

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And a little diorama to show just how big this guy is!

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I worked really hard on getting a nicely weathered look to the armour, and even harder on the blending & washing on the flesh… it did not feel like a very graceful or natural process at first, in fact, I found it to be quite mechanical and robotic at times… kind of ‘painting by numbers’ so to speak. Happily, the process has blown out a few cobwebs for me, and I’m pretty happy with how he turned out in the end. So what next? I have a few Oldhammerish odds and sods lying around in their undercoats, so I’m going to work through them just to sharpen up my brushwork a little bit more… I’m not sure after that, but the main thing is that normal service is resumed at Leadballoony – thank you all for your patience, it’s good to be back.