Well, the school year has wrapped up, the Necro is less than a month away, and with the month ending we decided to close our storage account and bring all of my gaming stuff back into the house. In accordance with my earlier plan, I went ahead and inventoried ALL of my uncompleted miniatures so I could set up a priority list of projects and the like.
The horror... the horror...
I decided on a completely rough-stick estimate of 1 hour per model or stand of models, figuring that the drybrush specials will balance the big models and showpieces. I also figured I could reasonably put in about five hours a week with a new baby coming up. Optimistic, I know. So given that, I figured out how many weeks it would take me to work through my stash of models.
10.2 years.
Oh. My. God.
Note that does not include the Minas Tirith models that I need to touch up after my piss-poor painting showing at the Gathering. Oh, or the rest of my Dark Angels company that still needs to be done. My baby will be getting ready to take classes from me in middle school before I'm done!
The scale of this is almost completely overwhelming. I have no idea how to start prioritizing. I need to just cut sling load on a bunch of this stuff, but I don't even know when to begin.
I'm almost depressed. I need to get my brain wrapped around this before I can really proceed. Well, and get cracking on the improved paint jobs for the Necro.
Just don't look at the huge pile of mini boxes...
Showing posts with label speed painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speed painting. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Main parts of Fountain Court done
I wasn't able to get pics taken yet, but I've gotten all of the basecoating done for the Guards, and now just need to get detail and highlights. They're looking pretty sharp, though I probably could have done a better job with more time. I'll get Ecthelion and a couple of Dunedain with spears primed this morning to see if I can get them knocked out tonight.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
First Fountain Court done to minimum standard
OK, so my test model for the Guards of the Fountain Court is done. I am pretty happy with it, but I'm going to have to determine how to do it more quickly than the hour and a half or so that it took me to do. Assembly lining it should help, but some parts are just going to take a while.
So I started off with a coat of Khemri Brown, a tan Foundation Paint, covering the areas that will be white. Nexxt I put down some Bleached Bone - I had to put a couple coats down on the flatter areas - keeping light colors smooth is a huge pain. I tried to keep the darker Khemri showing in the low areas.
Following that, I put down Skull White, again in some cases having to put down a second, more watery coat of paint to smooth things out. The feathers on the helmet did take a significant amount of time here.
I then put down Dwarf Bronze on areas that would be metallic gold, including on the edges of the shoulder plates. I then put down Shining Gold. The Bronze is a key element to put on first, because without it the Gold looks thin and streaky. I'm going to have to pare this back - the armor edges were a huge pain in the rear to get right, so I'll probably just stick to the helmet and the tabard. I also had to put some Ogryn Flesh wash on the decoration on the helmet then flat highlight with Shining Gold, since the texture wasn't very deep and the paint was thick. Next time I'll just put down the wash over the Bronze. I also put black paint into the areas along the gold to separate it from the white cloth.
Next came putting black on the shield, including taking the time to put some black between the branches on the shield. This does make the shield look nicer, but I'll only do that on all the models if I'm flush on time. Not bloody likely at this point. I also put a black wash over the chest armor, which brought the tree out nicely - it kind of looks like a Spiderman symbol while painting it...
Finally, I highlighted the black cloth with a mix of black and Shadow Grey. This was the hardest decision for me, since I really wanted to black to look black, but in the end I thought tying the highlights into the rest of the force would work. I then painted the skin inside the helmet with Tanned Flesh, painted the eyes white, dotted the pupils with black, and highlighted the flesh with Dwarf Flesh.
At some point, I want to improve the highlights on the cloak, highlight the metallics, and put a design into the gold trim. Oh, I need to paint the spear shaft brown as well, but that's a must do. I'll probably do that later tonight or tomorrow. I think next up will be converting Ecthelion.
So I started off with a coat of Khemri Brown, a tan Foundation Paint, covering the areas that will be white. Nexxt I put down some Bleached Bone - I had to put a couple coats down on the flatter areas - keeping light colors smooth is a huge pain. I tried to keep the darker Khemri showing in the low areas.
Following that, I put down Skull White, again in some cases having to put down a second, more watery coat of paint to smooth things out. The feathers on the helmet did take a significant amount of time here.
I then put down Dwarf Bronze on areas that would be metallic gold, including on the edges of the shoulder plates. I then put down Shining Gold. The Bronze is a key element to put on first, because without it the Gold looks thin and streaky. I'm going to have to pare this back - the armor edges were a huge pain in the rear to get right, so I'll probably just stick to the helmet and the tabard. I also had to put some Ogryn Flesh wash on the decoration on the helmet then flat highlight with Shining Gold, since the texture wasn't very deep and the paint was thick. Next time I'll just put down the wash over the Bronze. I also put black paint into the areas along the gold to separate it from the white cloth.
Next came putting black on the shield, including taking the time to put some black between the branches on the shield. This does make the shield look nicer, but I'll only do that on all the models if I'm flush on time. Not bloody likely at this point. I also put a black wash over the chest armor, which brought the tree out nicely - it kind of looks like a Spiderman symbol while painting it...
Finally, I highlighted the black cloth with a mix of black and Shadow Grey. This was the hardest decision for me, since I really wanted to black to look black, but in the end I thought tying the highlights into the rest of the force would work. I then painted the skin inside the helmet with Tanned Flesh, painted the eyes white, dotted the pupils with black, and highlighted the flesh with Dwarf Flesh.
At some point, I want to improve the highlights on the cloak, highlight the metallics, and put a design into the gold trim. Oh, I need to paint the spear shaft brown as well, but that's a must do. I'll probably do that later tonight or tomorrow. I think next up will be converting Ecthelion.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sense of urgency restored
Well, I found out on Thursday evening that there would be another tournament this weekend, but I put off doing almost anything about it until this morning. That's right, this morning, specifically around 5:30 am. At that time, my army looked like this:
To back up a bit, the tournament was being held at Games Workshop in Alamo, CA. Well, this is a good venue, but there are always limitations to playing in a GW store, which I am personally familiar with from having managed one and running many tournaments there. In particular, store hours is a big issue. In this case, the store was open from 12 noon to 6 pm. Also odd was the points level: 650. Upon prompting the manager, it turns out the rounds would be 1:45 long. Ooooo-kaaaaay. Grand Tournaments run 2:30 for 600 points, why would this be shorter rounds and more points? I made a quick decision that I wasn't going to paint any more models than I had planned on for the 500 point tournament, so I needed to crap some painted models. I decided on the following list:
Gandalf the Grey
Damrod
17 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
4 Citadel Guard with spears
4 Rangers of Gondor
7 Rangers of Gondor with spears
Eomer with horse and shield
5 Riders of Rohan (1 with bow, 1 with throwing weapon)
This made things easier because all of my Rohan are painted. Plus I didn't want to bulk out the army heavily so I could play it faster. And I already had my hands full painting the above models.
So back to 5:30 am. I knew my ride would be arriving around 10:30, so I had a total of 5 hours to crank out as much of this army as humanly possible. Oh, and get dressed and showered. Preferably not in that order. I figured I could get a passably painted army done in that time. Time to work on the Zen of the Tank Brush!
First step was an overbrush of Boltgun Metal on all of the armor. I love Boltgun Metal. It comes out nice and dark in a drybrush, but it's bright enough when block painted to look like steel. Twenty minutes later, my warriors looked like this:
This was a nice overbrush, achieved by putting a small amount on the tank brush then dragging it in circles on the palette until it could be seen through. By the way, I have found that a tile palette is a very, very useful tool. For a while I used a plastic one, but it was hard to clean and of limited use. But here's a look at what my palette looked like after loads of overbrushing.
One shortcut that I also decided upon was to just drybrush the shields metallic instead of going white. I can touch them up later if I really want to. Note the difference between the drybrushed shield and emblem and the overbrushed armor:
Next, I overbrushed the armor of the Citadel Guard with a smaller brush. This took me about five minutes.
By the way, I did take pictures with a couple different light arrangements. You can see all the pictures if you really want to at my Photobucket account.
A couple minutes later, I had the Guards armor washed with Badab Black, and by 6:40 I had all of my models washed black, including some on the rangers for emphasis of the textures.
Next, I did the overbrush of the two extra rangers, and tried to do a tank brush overbrush on them without using the tankbrush. This didn't work so well. Instead it left big swaths of Bestial Brown over the model. Hopefully I can shade that out later. After that, I block painted Boltgun Metal onto everyone's weapons. Here was the status as of around 7:20:
At this point, I took a break to shower, get breakfast, and type up my list. This also let the washes thoroughly dry.
I was back at the grind around 8:00. I did a heavy drybrush of Chainmail over the entire warriors armor, and this came out very nicely. Unlike the overbrushes, I removed some of the paint via a paper towel this time. I liked it so much I just decided to do the exact same thing with the Citadel Guard. Here is a shot of two of them, the left after the Chainmail drybrush and the right with washed Boltgun overbrush.
I also gave the shields of all the warriors a nice drybrush of the Chainmail to highlight their trees. Here was my army around 8:30:
I next threw a light drybrush of Mithril Silver onto the symbol detail, particularly the trees and gull wings on the helmets. I also did some onto the upper shoulders and raised arms. This is as of 8:45:
At this point, the messiest parts are done. In order to really make these guys look done, I needed to get their bases looking good. A couple of things about basing: First, you need to choose a base that complements the model but doesn't distract. With a pretty light model, I prefer a darker base. With a dark model, I'll go for a lighter base. In this case, I'm doing Scorched Brown bascoat, Graveyard Earth midtone, and Bleached Bone highlight. This step was the biggest pain. I'd already done the basecoats, but I have a really hard time doing good mids and highlights. The best ones are controlled overbrushes which leaves plenty of paint up higher and the darker color beneath showing. I always either seem to smear tons of paint over the bae or dust the base so lightly it's almost invisible. I finally managed to get something decent around 9:15:
Next step, skin. I'm starting to feel the crunch now, and I'm also sitting around in my bathrobe still. I just decide to get some Tallarn Flesh on now, and if I can shade it later then great. I whip out one of my kolinsky sable brushes and apply the flesh to my models. Around 9:30 I had this:
Now I took a brief break to pack up everything I needed (other than the models I was working on) and get some clothes on.
One note about my brushes. You may have noticed from my painting station that I have two sets of brushes in it. On the right on standard GW brushes, and on the left are some brown handled brushes. These are Vallejo brand kolinsky sable brushes. A couple of years ago I wouldn't really have been good enough to use these guys. They are incredibly precise – in fact sometimes it's hard to get everything you want covered if you're not very careful about it. For this reason I use my GW brushes when I want good general coverage, since they tend to slide down into crevices and flow around the model, while I use the kolinsky brushes for all of my detail work.
I sit back down around 9:45 and get to work on the cloth of the warriors. About ten minutes later, I had:
I decided against shadowing or washing – I just didn't have enough time to do a good job. Much more important was covering appropriate areas with black paint, such as the Citadel Guards' cloaks and the warriors shields. This took some time – I used the GW Large Brush for the cloaks (coverage), and the Vallejo #1 brush for the shields (control). With minutes until 10:30, I grabbed the Iyanden Yellow from my paint rack and put it onto the trims of the Citadel Guards. At almost 10:30 exactly, I had this:
I packed up and went to the tournament. I brought along some washes and my static grass in order to get some more work done with the models. Once we got there, I did manage to get static grass onto all of the models, and here they are, along with their Rohan buddies, on the first table:
Whew! From black models to gaming quality in 5 hours. I was quite pleased with myself. Over the next few days, I'll improve them, adding shading and highlights, plus making the details better. I'll write a report on the tournament itself in a little while.
To back up a bit, the tournament was being held at Games Workshop in Alamo, CA. Well, this is a good venue, but there are always limitations to playing in a GW store, which I am personally familiar with from having managed one and running many tournaments there. In particular, store hours is a big issue. In this case, the store was open from 12 noon to 6 pm. Also odd was the points level: 650. Upon prompting the manager, it turns out the rounds would be 1:45 long. Ooooo-kaaaaay. Grand Tournaments run 2:30 for 600 points, why would this be shorter rounds and more points? I made a quick decision that I wasn't going to paint any more models than I had planned on for the 500 point tournament, so I needed to crap some painted models. I decided on the following list:
Gandalf the Grey
Damrod
17 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
4 Citadel Guard with spears
4 Rangers of Gondor
7 Rangers of Gondor with spears
Eomer with horse and shield
5 Riders of Rohan (1 with bow, 1 with throwing weapon)
This made things easier because all of my Rohan are painted. Plus I didn't want to bulk out the army heavily so I could play it faster. And I already had my hands full painting the above models.
So back to 5:30 am. I knew my ride would be arriving around 10:30, so I had a total of 5 hours to crank out as much of this army as humanly possible. Oh, and get dressed and showered. Preferably not in that order. I figured I could get a passably painted army done in that time. Time to work on the Zen of the Tank Brush!
First step was an overbrush of Boltgun Metal on all of the armor. I love Boltgun Metal. It comes out nice and dark in a drybrush, but it's bright enough when block painted to look like steel. Twenty minutes later, my warriors looked like this:
This was a nice overbrush, achieved by putting a small amount on the tank brush then dragging it in circles on the palette until it could be seen through. By the way, I have found that a tile palette is a very, very useful tool. For a while I used a plastic one, but it was hard to clean and of limited use. But here's a look at what my palette looked like after loads of overbrushing.
One shortcut that I also decided upon was to just drybrush the shields metallic instead of going white. I can touch them up later if I really want to. Note the difference between the drybrushed shield and emblem and the overbrushed armor:
Next, I overbrushed the armor of the Citadel Guard with a smaller brush. This took me about five minutes.
By the way, I did take pictures with a couple different light arrangements. You can see all the pictures if you really want to at my Photobucket account.
A couple minutes later, I had the Guards armor washed with Badab Black, and by 6:40 I had all of my models washed black, including some on the rangers for emphasis of the textures.
Next, I did the overbrush of the two extra rangers, and tried to do a tank brush overbrush on them without using the tankbrush. This didn't work so well. Instead it left big swaths of Bestial Brown over the model. Hopefully I can shade that out later. After that, I block painted Boltgun Metal onto everyone's weapons. Here was the status as of around 7:20:
At this point, I took a break to shower, get breakfast, and type up my list. This also let the washes thoroughly dry.
I was back at the grind around 8:00. I did a heavy drybrush of Chainmail over the entire warriors armor, and this came out very nicely. Unlike the overbrushes, I removed some of the paint via a paper towel this time. I liked it so much I just decided to do the exact same thing with the Citadel Guard. Here is a shot of two of them, the left after the Chainmail drybrush and the right with washed Boltgun overbrush.
I also gave the shields of all the warriors a nice drybrush of the Chainmail to highlight their trees. Here was my army around 8:30:
I next threw a light drybrush of Mithril Silver onto the symbol detail, particularly the trees and gull wings on the helmets. I also did some onto the upper shoulders and raised arms. This is as of 8:45:
At this point, the messiest parts are done. In order to really make these guys look done, I needed to get their bases looking good. A couple of things about basing: First, you need to choose a base that complements the model but doesn't distract. With a pretty light model, I prefer a darker base. With a dark model, I'll go for a lighter base. In this case, I'm doing Scorched Brown bascoat, Graveyard Earth midtone, and Bleached Bone highlight. This step was the biggest pain. I'd already done the basecoats, but I have a really hard time doing good mids and highlights. The best ones are controlled overbrushes which leaves plenty of paint up higher and the darker color beneath showing. I always either seem to smear tons of paint over the bae or dust the base so lightly it's almost invisible. I finally managed to get something decent around 9:15:
Next step, skin. I'm starting to feel the crunch now, and I'm also sitting around in my bathrobe still. I just decide to get some Tallarn Flesh on now, and if I can shade it later then great. I whip out one of my kolinsky sable brushes and apply the flesh to my models. Around 9:30 I had this:
Now I took a brief break to pack up everything I needed (other than the models I was working on) and get some clothes on.
One note about my brushes. You may have noticed from my painting station that I have two sets of brushes in it. On the right on standard GW brushes, and on the left are some brown handled brushes. These are Vallejo brand kolinsky sable brushes. A couple of years ago I wouldn't really have been good enough to use these guys. They are incredibly precise – in fact sometimes it's hard to get everything you want covered if you're not very careful about it. For this reason I use my GW brushes when I want good general coverage, since they tend to slide down into crevices and flow around the model, while I use the kolinsky brushes for all of my detail work.
I sit back down around 9:45 and get to work on the cloth of the warriors. About ten minutes later, I had:
I decided against shadowing or washing – I just didn't have enough time to do a good job. Much more important was covering appropriate areas with black paint, such as the Citadel Guards' cloaks and the warriors shields. This took some time – I used the GW Large Brush for the cloaks (coverage), and the Vallejo #1 brush for the shields (control). With minutes until 10:30, I grabbed the Iyanden Yellow from my paint rack and put it onto the trims of the Citadel Guards. At almost 10:30 exactly, I had this:
I packed up and went to the tournament. I brought along some washes and my static grass in order to get some more work done with the models. Once we got there, I did manage to get static grass onto all of the models, and here they are, along with their Rohan buddies, on the first table:
Whew! From black models to gaming quality in 5 hours. I was quite pleased with myself. Over the next few days, I'll improve them, adding shading and highlights, plus making the details better. I'll write a report on the tournament itself in a little while.
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