Need for speed! (painting that is)

Hey folks hope you had a good week, Got an early update for you today a speed painting tutorial for two goblins, one done is the bright almost cartoon-y version that I prefer and then the other done in a very quick style that only needs touch ups. I sort of lost my will to paint the skaven yesterday so expect a bonus update about mid-week with the skaven tutorial in which I will show some interesting colors and ways to do things such as rust.

But for now lets talk goblins.

The first step I do is prime white. Many people don't like to prime white and usually choose black, white does three things: Makes colors brighter, absorbs inks and washs better, and finally will make you a better painter because it doesn't allow you to cut corners as black does, I hear many swear by grey primer but I'm not convinced.

So the next step is the basecoat of the skin, in this case I started with scorpion green (which is near necrite green for those using P3's line) which is almost a bright neon in color.This color will be brought down in the next step so don't worry.

So this is the step where these two goblins are going to diverge in their painting evolutions, the tribal goblin is getting a dose of the green shade from GW while the night goblin with the squig will be getting a P3 ink treatment. Normally I water down the ink a little bit but I didn't feel it was nessecary this time as it was just a drop. covering three small areas, Remember Inks are like LSD "A little dab will do ya."

Our goblin friend will remain like this for a little while, as he'll get done rather quickly now that he only really has details and weapons to paint. So we'll focus on the Night gobbo for a bit.

As you can see I added a layer of coal black for his hood and clothes, as well as painted a layer of Lime green (vallejo, Wurm green is the P3 equivalent) for the skin and we can already see the miniature coming together.

Wanthing to give a nice contrast with the model and not seeing very many Orange squigs, I decided to make an orange ink with the P3 red and yellow inks (3 drops red, 4 yellow will net you this mixture) which after it dried I added a light brown for the leash as well as coloring in the eyes on the goblin and squig with mephiston red (which I'm still convinced is the best red I have ever used) and finally added a menoth white base to their teeth and claws.

Now sadly I went a bit fast on this one, and perhaps should have taken another picture inbetween this and the last one, but hopefully I explain it well. The first step was to add a tanned almost ochre color for the wood, when a sepia wash is applied to this color it gives the appearance of wood, I also added a very light silver color to the top and bottom of the hook and when dry went over it with a coat of black wash finally finishing up with very light drags of an old brush with mephiston red for blood spatter. You also notice that the squig is more defined now thanks to a sepia was over the entire skin, teeth and claws, which I feel pulls  a lot of color and character into it.

Meanwhile our tribal goblin  gets his bones and feathers painted, along with the beady red eyes though you can hardly tell those are painted from more than six inches away.

The next few steps were rather simple, adding brown to the loin cloth as well as the bands around the wrists. The bow got an ochre treatment like the hook on the night goblin, it along with the bones and loincloth got a sepia wash while the feathers got their standard blue glaze which I still think looks great. Finally I made the spider pink and gave it a small wash of purple to show the segmentation and such.He may seem kind of dull compared to the first guy but he only took 15 minutes to paint, compared to the 30 of the first, which if you are like me and have an assembly line of the little bastards can be a godsend, but ultimately it depends on what you want to do.

Hope you learned somthing from this, as I said I'll have a skaven up later this week as well as talk a bit on my thoughts on the new CSM codex once I have it in my possession.

Preview of somthing else I'll be working on this week:

Have a great week, See you guys soon.

~SWL

Sweet transvestites (or Why do old dark elves remind me of rocky horror?)

Hey there folks, Late update this week, but I was quite literally working on these gals until a few minutes ago and I still feel like they lack a few details but are done enough to post. 

So without further delays my company commander's squad of Hench-women.

Yes I know these are dark elf wyches but I thought their dynamic nature as well as impossible body structure (look at those size zero waists) made for a good contrast to the rest of the prim and proper feel of the army. 

 Now I love these models for two reasons, the first, it has a charming retro camp feel to it, but I get that a lot from the older models (noise marines with guitars for example) the other is the fact that conversions seem to lend themselves quite nartuarally to the older fantasy models and this standard bearer was the perfect example I could pull from this, one quick weapon swap where the standard used to be and you almost can't tell it was there.

 I wanted to do something decently funny with the musician turned Vox operator, so this being a chaos army I decided to make her instrument have a mouth like it's alive. already had the fangs, not much more to be done really. Also The rocky horror soundtrack came on while I was painting her and it made me notice that she could not possibly be holding that sword in a more suggestive manner could she?

 This is the gal I think came out looking the best honestly. I love the pose even the face is a little munged up, but I also think that is the second best color I have ever gotten for green hair, all the inks seemed to find their place on this model rather easily and the rips in her stockings are just one of the features I love.

 So with the gals out of the way I move onto the request portion of the blog, I got asked by Crab_Nicholson  to repost my IG shelf but a bit closer and an old Daemon prince project that I never completed, so here they are.

Well that is it for this week folks, Next week I'm thinking it's going to be a skaven and goblin painting tutorial for speed painting. As usual leave any comments, opinions or otherwise in the box below and Have a great week.

~SWL

Watch the skies! (The parasite returns)

Hey there folks, This week I decided to work on the parasite after chatting with a few folk I know IRL and not having enough time to paint a tank this week. 

So time to show off the completed parasite, and the color scheme I have chosen for my 'nid army.

 Well it may be a bit of a cop out, but results from those that I hear from were so varied on the two color schemes that I decided to do them both, the medium to big sized bugs getting the darker color scheme, and the small ones getting the bright green with blue shell.

 

 It's worth noting that I tried out the secret weapon purple ink over vallejo pink for the membranes of the wings as well as a few other spots, which I think gives it a distinct contrast, though I think some butterfly type symbols wouldn't be amiss if I ever decide to touch it up.

 So all in all that is my Parasite of mortrex, hopefully I have some gargoyles completed soon to keep him company.

In other news while trying to finish the parasite I wanted to redo my company commander for my Traitor guard. As my army is fluffed as house guard gone cult, I thought it only fitting that their company commander should be the lady of the house.

 Yes I do realize there are better whips around now, but I really didn't feel like remaking or tearing the piece offso even though it looks kinda bad I still kinda like it.

 For those of you wondering the model is from anima tactics, and she's a 32mm scale, so if you decide to get some for any of your armies he will look taller and thinner than most but I feel that kinda fits for this army so I let it slide.

 Her hair was done simply with the P3 brown ink over white paint, which I was astonished looked so good when done. again the pinks were done with a light coat of purple wash over them.

If I can't get around to another tank this week You will probably see these gals next update.

As always leave any comments you may have below, and have a great week.

~SWL

First of the Sister tanks: Olivia the second

So with Scourge saying last week that I should paint some tanks given the amount of infantry I showed off in my armies last week I decided to paint up the trio of Banewolves I had sitting on the shelf looking pretty with my Traitor guard.

This tank, which I have Dubbed "Olivia II" is the first of three, I am tempted to put a crown somewhere on the hull bit I think for now the arrows and Roman numerals will do fine.

I had actually forgotten how long it takes to paint a tank especially when you are doing layers. I had actually wanted to get something else done for this weeks blog, but Olivia wound up eating all the time I had to spare.

 I note looking at these photos again that my freehand is a bit heavy/shaky with things like that line above the roman numerals, something I will need to fix in the near future. 

As with the traitor guard I built up the pink with white to base coat pink, a wash of purple and then building back up to pink. The metals took a bit of work as I was attempting to use P3 for most of the tanks which did not for some reason or another want to adhere to white until I had done about 3 layers 

I was terribly tempted to put a tramp stamp on that empty spot up at the top on the back... Might wind up doing it on one of the other two.

Well that would normally be where I would end things, but I was given something interesting the other day,  I had given my friend a box filled with my old chaos marine army before I left for Germany, I had of course forgotten about it completely. He returned it to me, it it's previous condition and other than a few broken models it looked the same...That is to say by no means it looked great if there is one thing you can tell form then to now I have improved in painting. But all the games I played with them came rushing back to me as I held them in my hands and admired them, I want to make these guys into an army once more, and with the advent of the new CSM codex I think that will be possible, a few will be assimilated into my current army, but I plan to create the rest of them into a working army, their warbands name will most likely be "The sons of Sean". Just wanted to share this as well as a few pics of the least horrible looking ones, before I plop them into a bucket of simplegreen so I can repaint them in the future.

You guys have a great week, any comments, ideas or requests I'd love to hear, feel free to post in the comments below.

~SWL

Such sweet cacophony

Hey there folks, Hope you had a great week, Before we start things off I have Emailed last weeks winner already, and for those of you who will inevitably ask, the prize they will receive is a box of assorted miniatures from a few different lines.

Now then, this week I decided to paint a bit on two HQ models that have been sitting around, Though admittedly I'm going to use the chaos one as a doom siren captain for the assault squad of noise marines. 

The first of the two I'm going to talk about however is the Blood angel. 

 Admittedly I wanted to paint some red this week, and having this model sitting on my painting table staring at me since I posted him in the first blog of upcoming stuff, I decided to work on him a bit. I had the idea while building the sanguinary guard that I wanted an HQ to go along with them that was not the sanguinor. So after looking through the book I found Brother Corbulo.

 Now if I could change two things about this model I built, it would be to replace that bolt pistol with a chalice, and fix the divide in the middle of the sword. I thought I had fixed it before I started but once I started applying washes to the metal it became vary apparent, much like a fat frog sitting on it staring at me.

 That being said however I really do like how this one turned out, I think the reds look nice and clean, and the whites really pop in contrast.

 With the "good guy" out of the way it was time to focus on one of my long neglected noise marines, more specifically I wanted to make a captain with a doom siren for the noise marine assault squad I use (who knows how that will change with the new codex though right?)

 Now I'll be the first to admit, the only thing saving this sculpt is the doom siren on his back, as the rest of the model is unnecessarily cluttered with things like chains, pipes and leather, but I decided to roll with it, I already have three of them anyway might as well use them for somthing (though if I find someone who will do resin casting for the backpacks the models themselves might find their way into my bitz box)

 Once again I decided to go with gold as the main color for the metals, only using silver for the sword, which I feel could have had more color now that I take another look at it, notes for the future.

 

Again I would just really like to say how much I like the backpacks on these guys, they just look really, really good.

I think I actually figured out what throws the entire model off,  it's the face. if it din't look like it was just slapped in there (and it's eyes weren't derped to hell and back) it might look pretty good, might be worth testing on the next one, remove the head and put a CSM head there. Or possibly just scrap the model and put the backpack on a model that deserves it.

All rants/ praise of these above models aside I would like you guys help with something, I was wondering what you the readers want to see more of, as you can see from these pictures I have no shortage of models to paint. 

 From tribal goblins....

To traitor guard...

Chaos Demons...

The host of Sigvald....

Tyranids....

Warmachine and Malifaux....

 Or even simply my noise marines.

 

But often I find myself wondering what I should paint, and not actually getting it done. So I would like to know from you, the reader, What should I work on next? What would you like to see more of? Less of?  

Thanks for reading, Hope you guys have a great week.

~SWL