Just a quick update with some pics showing the models I have been working on recently.

First up is a Large Steampunk Arachnid. I bought a Robogear boxed set several years ago back when I was doing my Ork army. It is a fantastic source of bits, and one of the kits is a multi-limbed walker. It fit quite well on a 50mm base, and once I added the buzzsaw piece I realised I had a fine Large Steampunk Arachnid.

I primed it black, and then airbrushed Iyanden Darksun on the armour plates, followed up with VGC Sunburst Yellow. I highlighted by adding some white to the yellow, and shaded with some Darksun. Then I re-blacked the rest of the model and painted the metallic parts in the usual way. Weathering was done with a sponge and some Adeptus Battle Grey Foundation paint.

Using the same Robogear kit I decided to make a ludicrously large Supply Wagon, for the Strategy of the same name.

Ramos and Colette du Bois are proud to present their fellow Arcanists with their new Supply Wagon, christened Zippy. Ramos’ suggestion of Steamstrider Thunderborg was veto’d by a gaggle of Showgirls, who all giggled until Ramos gave up and let Colette have her way.

Zippy was recently recovered from a disused mine, and has yet to receive a clean-up and a fresh coat of paint, but in the meantime Ramos ordered that the official Arcanist sigil be painted on its hull. At least, that’s what he insists he said. It is not, according to Cassandra, what she heard…

Here is how I made it:

1. One Robogear Spider set and some Urban War Bio-toxin Plant parts.
2. Prime black and then add rust. I used Deluxe Real Rust, and some pigments.
3. Gloss varnish (to stop the rust coming off at step 6)
4. Apply lots of liquid mask over the rust and allow to dry.
5. Airbrush blue. I used the airbrush to shade the panel lines and to highlight the middle of each panel.
6. Using a variety of brushes, remove the liquid mask.
7. Cut a circle in some paper and stick it onto the model with masking tape.
8. Airbrush a Foundation paint as a base (some Ochre colour) and then airbrush Sunburst Yellow. Highlight top of circle by adding some white to the yellow, and then shade the lower part with some Ochre.
9. Remove the stencil and freehand the black.
10. Apply powders to weather the whole hull and paint the metal parts silver (wash and highlight the metal parts as usual)
11. Go over edges with a graphite pencil, which gives a nice dull metallic look akin to exposed but unrusted metal.

Lastly, I ordered a set of 10 Cyber Beetles (Necron Scarabs) from Puppets War to serve as Steampunk Arachnids. I got 14! The casts are fine on the top, but some of the legs were miscast or missing. Apart from that, a good deal and a great price, and I don’t really notice the odd missing leg here or there.

Here they are on 30mm bases. Working on the 50mm bases for now. I will be doing 6 x 30mm and 2 x 50mm, and that leaves me 2 for spare parts/ bitz.

Painting was simple enough. Airbrush VAC Black all over. Airbrush the tops VAC Steel at an angle. Airbrush VGC Ice Blue around the glowy bit. Then add some white and airbrush a dot onto the glowy bit itself. Took about 20mins to do all 12.

I painted this model for a local competition, which makes this the first mini I have ever painted for a competition.

I didn’t care for this sculpt when it first came out, and even now I think the left arm is the wrong side of clunky and the gun is too cartoonish, but I really enjoyed painting it. It has a lot of different surfaces and details, and I decided to go for a high contrast style. In addition I tried to make the colours a bit more interesting, so the skin is shaded with greys, for example, and the trousers shaded with purple.

The metals are done with Dr Faust’s Weathered Metals technique, which you can see here

You can see a brief Youtube video of this guy here

Because no-one can look at the Showgirls and not want to join in, Killjoy launches himself from the bowels of hell, bursts through the floorboards of the Star Theatre, puts on his bestest of hats and breaks into a Rogers and Hammerstein number.

The OSL does not show up as clearly on the camera phone image as in real life, but hopefully you can see what I was trying to get (strong light from above, heavy, dull, fire-y glow from below).

Here is how I did the blood on his cleaver (although I am fairly sure it would work with thinned red paint instead). Mix Black Ink and Tamiya Clear Red. It is very thick, so thin with Alcohol. Load up a brush, and hold it over the part you want to splatter. Hold the straw over the brush. One sharp blow through the straw, and splatter effect complete. Best to practice on a bit of paper first to ensure you have the right consistency and amount of paint on your brush.

Underneath the gore (and on the chains) is my usual diseased metal mix – Black Ink and Tamiya Clear Orange, dabbed on. Works wonders, especially if you follow up with Devlan Mud and/ or Badab Black.

Here is another shot of him with a slightly darker tone so you can see how I painted his skin, lit from above.

I am just trying out these slightly more extreme styles of painting for the first time, so if anyone has any pointers, helping hints or suggestions, please comment.

This is one of the limited edition models Wyrd does a lot of, and in-game she counts as a Convict Gunslinger.

I took a bit of care with this one, especially with the skin tones on the legs. The arms are not so successful, as the blending is much less subtle there.

I also tried a little NMM (non-metallic metal) on her pistols, just to see how it would look. I quite like the way it turned out.

Once I had this painted, I remembered I had bought a pair of painted Viktorias from Ebay (£20 was too good to pass up, and they are nicely painted. Sadly, the seller decided the best way to package them was in a padded envelope, which the bendy swords and wafer thin joints did not appreciate). That meant I now had a viable Mercenaries crew, so I put this lot together:

and had myself a game, which you can read about here.

By the way, something odd has happened with my WordPress install, and doing new posts is challenging at best. Things will be a bit slow around here until I can be bothered finding out what has gone wrong.

“Make sure you never run out of unpainted white metal!”

Having taken this advice to heart and being possessed of a collection that ensures I will never fall foul of its terms, I decided to risk ruining a single metal miniature by pointing my new airbrush at it. I know you can always strip metal minis, but I can’t be bothered with the hassle usually, so a bad paintjob tends to stick round here.

The miniature I chose was the Guild Guardian, mainly on the basis that it was big  It also has a very large sword which would be ideal for trying NMM (Non-Metallic Metal) effects on, again using the airbrush.

Since this was the first miniature I have ever painted with an airbrush, and only my second time using the airbrush, I took things slow. Vallejo drying retarder was added to all paints to avoid the paint drying on the needle tip, and I kept the paints well-thinned (with Vallejo Thinner) and the PSI low (around 10-15 PSI).

I gave the model an even coat of Iyanden Darksun. I then made a 50:50 mix of Calthan Brown and Iyanden Darksun and went over all the recessed areas, all the shadowed areas and all the joints with this mix, keeping the lines as thin as I could. Then I mixed some White in with Iyanden Darksun and used this to highlight the model. Here is how it looked after that:

In this picture you can also see I have done the sword, using the technique from this video (Youtube link). This was a simple case of masking off the whole of the model apart from the sword. Note that I didn’t do this as well as I could have, and I got some overspray on his right forearm. Then, using the airbrush, I painted the sword Astronomicon Grey. I then masked one half of the sword (on both sides) and sprayed White at one end and Vallejo Night Blue at the other. Take off the masking tape, apply it to the painted half of the sword, and repeat the process on the other half of the sword.

After that I used Gryphonne Sepia to line every rivet and joint, which really made the detail pop:

Then it was out with the airbrush and back to a normal paintbrush to finish off all the details. I used some weathering powders and some glazes to get some colour modulation on the yellow armour, and here is the finished and based mini:

Just a quick post to show the results of airbrushing this morning with Vallejo Scarlett Red. The shading and highlighting comes through very clearly. A few spots I missed I can touch up hand.

The kids gave me a hand, and they got to try airbrushing as well

Pre-what a huh now?  Shhhh.  I will explain all

I have had a spraygun for a couple of years now (you can find some previous posts here), and I have finally upgraded to a proper airbrush/ compressor set up.  Some details on the setup at the end of this post, if you’re interested, but I thought I would stick up a couple of photos of a model I have been working on recently.

The model on the left is the Brass Coffin, a resin model costing £9 from Ramshackle Games.  It is in the 28-32mm scale, and so fits perfectly with steampunk games like Malifaux (Malifaux doesn’t have any vehicle rules as such, but it can always just sit there as some cool terrain).

I won’t be painting mine as weathered as this, as I want to try a technique called pre-shading with my airbrush.  Basically, this involves using an airbrush to set down dark lines and dark areas on the vehicle that then show through a later base coat, provided the base coat is applied thinly enough.  You can see a very good demonstration of this technique here (Youtube link).

You can take the basic pre-shading technique a step further and add some pre-highlighting.  This involves using the airbrush to lay down white highlights which, again, will show through the later base colour layer.  Obviously, with black shading and white highlights the model needs to be primed in grey.

Brass Coffin

The first model I bought from Ramshackle Games was not impressive – behold the Killdozer.  I am not a novice with resin models, but I could not find any way to fit this model together in any way that would resemble the picture.  I contacted the manufacturer to see if I was missing any pieces, but I was not.  He explained that this model was one of the very first ones he made, and the quality had gone up a lot since then.  Not a great deal of comfort for me, but I ended up with some bitz for my Orks, so – well.

Is the Brass Coffin really an improvement?  Yes – massively so.  It is not perfect, and there are areas where the mold is clearly struggling to replicate detail (esp on recessed areas), but this is a sizeable model which comes as one massive chunk of resin and four separate wheels.  It needs some clean up, but while I could not recommend the Killdozer to anyone, I could recommend the Brass Coffin.  Not without reservation, but provided you don’t mind getting out the files and hobby knife this is a kit you will like.

Probably best to pin the rear wheels, btw.

Pre-Shading/ Highlighting

This was my first outing with the airbrush, and I think it went pretty well.  I added some Vallejo Retarder Medium to the paint to prevent the paint drying on the tip, and that seemed to work well, meaning that I was able to keep spraying over an extended time without needing to strip the airbrush down or run any cleaner through it.  Here’s the pics:

Airbrush Setup

For those who are interested, I picked up the AS186 Compressor from Ebay, which comes with two airbrushes (both double action, internal mix, and one is side-feed while the other is siphon feed).

Here is a pic of the airbrush in an airbrush cleaner/ holder I bought from Ebay as well, and then a pic of the compressor itself.

I am very pleased with the compressor.  It is very simple to operate (an on/off button and a regulator to select the air-pressure), small and quiet.  I have young kids and this can run at midnight in the house without bothering them.  It has an airtank, meaning that the motor only runs until the airtank is at full pressure (50psi) and then turns off.  You then have completely silent airbrushing with a steady, moisture-free air feed.  It has auto-on and auto-off, moisture trap, standard airhose fittings, safety valve, sump valve and a UK plug fitted.  For the price, it is a steal.  Given that it comes with two excellent airbrushes – best deal of the year, as far as I am concerned.

One thing I need to get is some good, bulk cleaning solution.  Cleaning could be a pain in the neck without it.  I did buy the airbrush cleaning pot/ holder you see in the pic above, as well as Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and some cleaning brushes.  I am really looking forward to really getting to grips with this kit over the next few weeks, but a good start so far, I think

Click to enlarge-ify

When I was working on the stories for Book 3 of Malifaux I got a sneak preview of the Kaeris artwork, and decided here was yet another Malifaux model I needed to have.  I worked her into the Misaki story, and – frankly – I think Kaeris got the best intro scene out of the pair of them.

Kaeris sets stuff on fire, and then pours magical petrol on it while her little fire demons run around burning things even more.  She has a bit of a fire theme going, making her a beautiful pyromaniac with wings.  Does it get any better than that?

Given the totally OTT theme of the crew, I decided to match that in the paint scheme.  The main crew colour would be orange, with an Ice Blue highlight.  All other colours would be muted browns and greys.  Subtlety?  I laugh at the merest thought of it!

In terms of actual models, I used the M&SU Assets boxset, which comes with Kaeris, two Gunsmiths and three Fire Gamin.  To this, I added two Soulstone Miners and an Essence of Power totem I made from the Wyrd Flame Accessories set a while back.  Renegade Steamfitter Johan is on his way from Wayland to join the call to arms.

The bases are Steampunk bases from Kerr & King in the UK.

Turn it up!

Kaeris' cloak was done without washes, and was shaded and highlighted by hand, from Blood Red all the way up to Yellow with some White added. A Yellow Ink glaze smoothed the colour transitions, knocked the white-ish highlights down and made it all PVC-shiny

This is not all the armies that were on display, but all that I had the time to video properly between Rounds 1 and 2 of the Tournament.

The Best Army award winner was Jamie Farquhar’s Space Wolves, starting at 3:20.

It was recorded in 720p, so watch the video in a pop-out, or on Youtube’s site, for proper HD quality.

Belial Conversion

Every Deathwing (by definition) needs a Belial.  Mine had lightning claws, but for the tournament this Saturday I decided that I wanted a proper figurehead model, so I opted for a Belial with a Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield based on the Forgeworld Lufgt Huron model.

Seriously, Lufgt?  Lugft?  However you spell it (and GW spell it both ways), you cannot pronounce it.  Perhaps if you have some kind of forked tongue and daemonic teeth you could manage it – but, does that mean he was always destined to fall to Chaos?!?!  Was his fate gifted him by his mother and father?  “We will give him a name he can only pronounce with suitable mutations!  Praise Nurgle and pass the baby-wipes!”  Or did he fall to Chaos out of sheer frustration at trying and failing to tell call-centre staff his name?  “Lufgt.  It’s Lufgt Huron.  Not Lift.  Not Luft.  Not Luff-git.  Bloody Lufgt Huron!  What?  Huh?  No, I can’t remember my password!  Just tell me my balance, or I’ll have you turned into a servitor!!  What?  You already are one?  Sod, it – Chaos, here I come.” The mind boggles!

Oh, yes.  Painting blog.  Sorry.  Couple of things to note about this model.  One is that without my Windsor and Newton Kolinsky Sable Series 7 Size 1 brush this would have been ten times harder to do.  You have no idea how much control over paint placement, detail and paint flow you can have with a brush until you try one of those.  Otherwise, it’s like wearing a blast shield and trying to paint with the Force.  I know, wrong IP.  Sue me.

The second point is that I used an alcohol-based paint for the gold.  Wow.  Just wow.  I will do an HD video of this guy just so you can see how it looks as you move the figure around.  It is impossible to consider going back to acrylic gold after using this stuff.  Don’t use your Windsor and Newton Kolinsky Sable Series 7 brush, though, as the alcohol will dry out natural bristles.  Try washing your hair in vodka if you don’t believe me.

I did a few test models with the Liquid Gold, and found out that applying it makes it look like you have electro-plated the model.  This is good and bad.  Good in that you could probably sell your model to a kid as a “real gold Space Marine” and then run away before the crying starts.  Or you could just stand there and watch him cry – he’s a kid, what’s he going to do?  Bad in that all the usual problems of scale come into play, and it looks like a model, not like a Space Marine.  The shadows are notable by dint of not being there at all.  Even a wash doesn’t really help, and dulls down the gold.  What I did was to base coat with a mix of a medium brown and Vallejo Brass.  Tin Bitz would probably do as well.  Then I washed it with undiluted Vallejo Brown Ink.  Then I basically dry-brushed the Liquid Gold on.  Before you hold up your hands in horror at the dusty abomination that is dry-brushing, know well that because the medium is alcohol and because the metallic particles are so fine, the end result looks nothing like actual dry-brushing.  The end result looks like King Midas and Montezuma joined forces in some parallel dimension, snuck into your house and superglued antique gold to your model (I know because that actually happened once).

Infinity – Another Try

My first (and last) game of Infinity did not grab me.  I was expecting another miniatures game like the ones I have played to date, so I pretty much threw my people forward to see what they did.  They died, and I was left unimpressed.

This time I played it as more of a tactical shooter, and I have to say I enjoyed it a whole lot more.  Rather than trying to accomplish something on my Turn, I found myself thinking about what my opponent would do on his, and setting up my models to capitalise on that.  Overlapping fields of fire, no approach uncovered, areas choked off with anti-personnel mines – that kind of thing.  It was a fun game, and very different to other miniatures games I have played.

That said, Infinity badly needs an objective system.  Something to make you need to move about and to force you into harm’s way.  Maybe I am missing something, but it seems like unless one player is willing to push the pace, the game could get very slow and cagey.  I am sure more games will help.

BTW – this time out I took Nomads.  I like them a lot better than I did the Haqqislam.  A bit more cartoony.  I don’t like too much realism in games like this.

Puppet Wars

From the good peoples at Wyrd, I am fortunate enough to have a complete set of Puppet Wars, plus all four of the initial Booster Packs, along with two of the Gencon-only models.  Woot!  There is a video here of my swag-bag that I could not resist taking, because it is not every day Santa says, “f**k it, Xmas is coming early for this punk.”  (and Santa does swear like a trooper – I have a vivid childhood memory of waking up late on Xmas Eve, and hearing Santa stumbling around downstairs and swearing up a storm as he stubbed his toes in the dark.  He sounded drunk as well, now I think about it, but most every Santa I met in a shopping centre Grotto as a kid smelled of booze, so that makes sense.  That crinkly, brittle beard?  Washed in vodka)

Deathwing

Just got a couple of Terminators to paint tonight, and then tomorrow night I can get the whole lot touched up, based and packed away.  Simples.

Test game?  Nah.  No time.  It’s Deathwing – how hard can it be? 

To be honest, I am just looking forward to shuffling models around and rolling some dice.  The armies at Counter-Attack! are usually excellent, so I will get some HD video of them.  And maybe try and shoot some of my games, too.

"REPENT!"