New fully painted minis and comp update

Feast your eyes on five Assault Terminators. Two with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields. All fully painted, based, and finalized with a nice coat of Purity Seal. Next up, Danarth Lysander and a Land Raider!

For a list of all my painted Imperial Fists (minus one Tactical Squad that I need to take photos of) head over to: Flekkzo's Imperial Fists.

Also tomorrow I will crown (!) a winner in my little competition, which means one lucky hobby enthusiast will be one box o Eldar death richer.

And to all of you: God Jul!

New brushes

I've tried one of my new brushes today. Painted on a bunch of yellow and grey (decided to first paint Astronomican Grey and to then follow it up with white) using thinned paint and my initial impression is: It's a very different way of painting. The thinned paint worked far better with the Raphaël 8404 size 0 than my GW brush. It kept much more of it and it went on better, painting with the sides of the brush rather than the tip tip. But you really really have to develop a lighter touch. I could be much more raw and rough before, it's almost like I could force the paint onto the mini in the past, and now I am just gentle nudging the surface.

For those curious I use a thinning recipe ripped directly of the intertubes. It's suppose to be Jennifer Haley's. She's damn good so I thought it could be a good start at least:) And it works quite well for me right now. I drop a few drops on my palette and then put some paint next to that and mix it up as I go along. So no magic there, just messy old me :)

For the curious, this is the recipe in question:

• 25% Liquitex Slow-Dri
• 25% Winsor and Newton Flow Improver
• 50% Water

A bad bad picture (an iPhone 3G is *not* a good camera for minis!) but the paint just goes on so much nicer with it thinned properly and a good brush, and the yellow is easily the nicest in my collection already. Hopefully my remaining vehicles will end up real nice with the same way of painting. I am actually starting to wonder if I should bring out the airbrush at all as painting this way is quite quick. At least quick for *me*.

Finished test Terminator, Assault Terminators WIP, and Brushes

I tried a few different things with this test model (the last test!) and I think that I need to add an extra highlight above sunburst yellow. Thinking of bleached bone.

I also tried Gryphonne Sepia on the white. Nope, didn't really turn out that well. Looks off. Going to go for a very thin astronomicon grey on the real deal. At least I am planning to do so, never know if I will change my mind :) I do know that I am done with building up yellow for quite a while, white base is the way to go. And nicely thinned paints which I will get back to after this message:

I paint very randomly. I see something I want to paint on the model and I go for that. There's a lot of detail on these guys so it will take some time it seems. Going to go for painting all of them to the step before washes and then probably finish them one by one. I am happy with the shields which are turning out quite nice. I am also going for a kind of red tone for the gold which we will see how it will pan out. Lysander got quite a lot of gold on him so I better get some practice in :)

I now thin my paints with something else than just pure water. I found Jennifer Haley's recipe here and there on the web and copied that as a starting point. I got a fairly large empty bottle as well to mix it up in, which turned out quite meh as it is very hard to pour from. So mostly I pour some of the liquid into my palette and mix the color and thinning medium right there and then. Works quite well and it is a lot easier to paint, slowly starting to get the hang of it (I hope) and I really get while people want to start out with a white primer as thinned paints are hard to paint on top of black (for me).

In minor news, I got the Dark Eldar codex, awesome, and just a few minis because they look so awesome that I want to paint some. I ordered some real brushes (sorry GW) so I will probably give some thoughts on them when they arrive and I can try them out. I have also gotten 0(!) contributions to the painting competition. I think I need to promote it a bit more soon! So anyone wanting to enter will not have a lot of competition, at least not yet.

Happy Halloween

WAAAGH!

:)

1st Company tests

I've done some previous tests but this will be the final test model before I go "live". I intend for this to be the new look of my Imperial Fists, with the 1st Company being the firsts to get it and then it is vehicle painting time™.

So my plans were pretty grand, I would being with a wash, so I would go from this (I got some poor coverage on the white, more on that later. I am also trying out a new primer which can be seen in the picture below):

To these:

 

I tried six different washes. From left to right, top to bottom: Leviathan Purple, Ogryn Flesh, Gryphonne Sepia, Badab Black, Devlan Mud, and Baal Red. I can really see why there are people who can get really cool results with Inks and Washes as they hug the mini quite well in many ways and help with showing off details. My idea was that I could paint over the already shaded mini with yellow and get a nice looking effect. This is what happened:

Thinned down Golden Yellow, with I think three layers. What do you all think? I can tell you what I though, "By Dorn's dirty underwear, this will never fly!". Yes, didn't quite work out as well as I thought. I don't want to pin my hopes on my airbrush either (which is what I am using on the vehicles later on) so I decided to put some more Krylon white primer on the mini. It was at this point I realized that I really should put more primer on as I really need the good white to paint on top of. I will give my Assault Terminators an extra bath in white before they get painted.

So I tried painting with a thinned down 50/50 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Golden Yellow instead which worked well. Covered nicely over the white as well. So I base coated the rest of the mini as well and here's the result!

The plan is to wash everything that isn't yellow the normal way, and use a good brush to careful apply Gryphonne Sepia only in select spots. Then give the yellow a coat or two of Golden Yellow and finish it up with some highlighting and the likes. I think this will be my recipe and I am starting to like the 1st company so I want to paint up some more of them. Like Vanguard Veterans and some Sternguard Veterans. Planning on some conversion for those as well.

Stay tuned for more and don't forget the competition!

Paint to win an Eldar Fire Prism/Night Spinner!

It's time to bring out the bitz box, the bartering skills, and your painting tools of choice! I'm holding my first ever painting/modeling competition. Let's start with the prize. A brand new, still in plastic wrap, Eldar Fire Prism/Night Spinner. Shipped for free to the winner. Sounds pretty good doesn't it? If you are an Eldar player you sure could use it, if you just like to paint it is one awesome looking model (I have one myself that I am going to paint in the future), and if you don't want anything to do with the Pointy Ears you should be able to trade it with someone who does for something you fancy more. If you win and do paint it up yourself, please post photos so I can see the result.

What do you need to do to win this prize then you ask? You need to impress me with your enthusiasm, skill, ingenuity, and ability to finish a project. To be eligible to win you need to follow these rules:

• Send me
• Three WIP photos from various stages of modeling/painting.
• Three photos of the final entry.
• Follow the theme. The theme is loosely "Mirror world". Model and paint something like something else. Turn good guys to bad guys, one race/codex to look like another another. Go wild, be funny, slick, clever, cool, different, or surprising. Be subtle or obvious. Give someone an evil beard like Evil Spock or Flexo from Futurama. Have fun!
• The final entry needs to be painted. Anything from base coated (with a dip perhaps?) to golden deamon will be accepted.
• Email me the photos by the 20th of December and include contact information. I will repeat that last one, contact information. I will have the email you sent from, but I need to get hold of you so make sure it's an email you check often enough. If I can't reach you by the end of the first week of January 2011 the prize will go to a new winner.
• Any and all contributions to the competition can and will be posted on this blog by me. I will do my best to comment on all the entries but I will not give criticism. All entries are welcome and you have nothing to fear.
• I will select one winner from all entries. So what do you need to do to win? I will simply select the entry that I like best and upholds the spirit of the theme the best. If the criteria seems a bit murky, the best thing to do is to create an entry that you yourself really would like to see.
• The winner will be announced, on this blog, on the 23rd of December. I will be the high Inquisitor and my judgement is final.
• If you are too lazy to look up my email address: flekkzo at gmail dot com.

If you have any questions just comment on this post and I will answer it promptly. I hope that this will be a chance for you to get away from painting squads of ten, twenty, thirty models and use some colors you don't use so often.

Most importantly, have fun and enjoy yourself. I will be looking forward to the entries coming in!

Getting ready for Halloween, WAAAGH! style :)

Carved my first ever pumpkin today. I don't yet have a candle to put into it but I did a quick dry-run with a flashlight and it looks far more awesome with the light on.

So what do you guys think, should I make this into a tradition and have Ork themed pumpkins carved every Halloween?

Stay tune for something awesome coming up soon on the blog!