Welcome Back

So let me start out this post with an apology for not updating for so long. I'm not gonna blame life, but ultimately a bunch of stuff came up, and I felt I just didn't have enough stuff painted to a decent quality that I felt like I could actually show it off.  So, I'm sorry.

What's changed?
Three things happened recently in my personal life that made me come back to this blog and really make me want to start doing it again.

The first of which is that I (re)started Malifaux, Which has in my opinion one of the consistently best communities I've ever encountered, and it's because of that, the quickness of the games, and the quality of the miniatures that I have become engrossed in the game.
I went to a local tournament this past weekend and not only came in tied 3 ways for 2nd (ultimately ending 4th) but won best painted crew, Which I honestly had not expected.

The second was that I entered a local painting competition held by a store, and I suspect I won 1st simply by the merit of the turn out being low, the amount of people who genuinely enjoyed the miniature I entered gave me a surge of inspiration that I felt I needed.

And finally the third thing. Being contacted by multiple people asking what happened to the blog. It may sound cheesy but it does inspire me to make more content when people ask me what happened and if I'm still working on stuff for the blog. Thank you all for inspiring me to restart this. I really do appreciate it.

Alright, so with all that out of the way, my future plans for the blog is to be about both stuff I'm working on and gaming things I'm interested in, so it might be painting one blog post, talking about a game the next, a tutorial after that, thinking about magic cards, ect.  I'm gonna try to keep personal life out of it, such as complaining about being sick which I notice I've done before, and I'm going try to do 1 post a week at the very least.

So with all of that crap out of the way lets take a look at a few models shall we?

First up is The "Large Arachnid" from Malifaux (It's actually a brass arachnid, which is supposed to be on a 30mm base....yeah I know right? But I managed to get 3 of them and decided to turn two into large arachnids because they hadn't announced a kit until about a week ago...)

Since my arcanists are themed around Colette's stage/ performance theme I wanted to make the spiders look like they were coming down off the curtains. 

  

I feel I accomplished this quite well, and that the orange flames coming out of the spider work well with the metals of it. Not a clue what I'm going to do with the color of that base though...might go with a nice dark blue to contrast with the red and orange. 

Looking back a little further at my Neverborn, I feel I can show these off now if only to reprimand myself for things I notice. We'll start with Jakob Lynch and The Hungering Darkness

I feel I did really well with the hungering darkness as I wanted a deepsea bio-luminescence to him kind of like an Angler fish I copied this on to a few other models with the brilliance mechanic and will probably do it again when I tackle the spawn mother. Lynch on the other hand while I feel I did well with him, I think I relied too heavily on a wash for his face, and fucked up his eyes in the process. I may go back and try to fix him later, but I'm going to blame being out of practice on this one. 

  

My Lilith crew on the other hand I feel like I did really well with, my only complaint is that I can't seem to take a picture of this crew that is (to me) out of focus a little bit due to the red color I used. The young nephilim on the right was also the first model that I used the technical paint "Blood for the Blood God" on, which works really really well. 

Well that's all for the is post, I want to know what you guys think about the changes to the blog and what you might do to make it less of a god damn eyesore. I'd also love to know what you all would like to see for the next painting segment. More Malifaux, some 40k, or some Super dungeon explore stuff?

Judge, Jury, Executioner.

So while this won't be a large update I do have more stuff coming this week, as I've been working on my new throgg model, a full unit of Chaos warriors, a sorceress for them and been trying to learn fantasy for the last two weeks, so I do have stuff coming, but I thought since I took some shots of it today it would be neat to show off my Judicator which has been selfishly hogging my paint table. 

 I decided to stick a cleanser officer next to him to show off how big this dude is even off his massive base.

 I finally found a replacement for the cheap gold I've been using that is difficult to thin, PP's rhulic gold when gone over with a nuln oil wash gives the same gold show here.

Hopefully the ruined garden I give this guy will be worthy of the model

Burn baby burn! (Disco inferno)

So I said I would have another update and here it is. Feora's bonded redeemer that you all saw a little of last time.

Now I'm sure the first thing you will notice is the fire I've done, it's really simple to do yourself, start with white, yellow ink over it, and then 50/50 yellow and red ink to make orange, and wash it over the yellow, the orange goes over and into the recesses and the yellow peeks out of areas.

For those not into warmachine and wondering why I added flames to this jack it's because Feora (who I painted last time) has a special ability to make one jack in her warband have all it's attacks gain continuous fire, So I wanted to bring across the idea that this is her bonded 'jack (which I am now tempted to call disco inferno) so my opponents don't forget. That and I thought the abundance of orange on this model would contrast sharply with the green of the rest of the army. 

Speaking of green you'll notice that since there is no cloth on this jack I decided to simply do the gems on his redeemer rocket pod, on the metal above his head and the three on his belt as dark emeralds. I started to do the rivets near the flames as gems but decided against it leaving green as a passive contrast that appears only a few times instead of all over the model.

Relooking at the back of the model I think I should have added some green somewhere on the back  as all that metal makes it look rather barren. Just something to keep in mind on my other light warjacks. 

The Lucky lady and Her new 'Jack.

Well that's it for now, Hopefully I'll have the choir boys done soon, and maybe talk about the idea behind this themed army for coastal assault.

And we're back.

Sorry about no posts over the past couple of weeks folks, stuff has been crazy around here and I haven't gotten much done. But I have been painting this week so lets dive right into it.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been seeing several people asking how I get my whites so smooth, which I consider really simple but I understand how people might not come to the same idea, so I decided to do a tutorial on my Feora, protector of the flame.

As always I base in white, but instead of inking or going straight to the base colors I went over the white base with a badab black wash (now nulh oil shade from GW), You'll note there is a redeemer in the first couple of photos I hope to be showing him off later this week.

Now obviously you want to leave any areas you plan on inking something else white, so control your brushstrokes, which really is the trick to painting white, Control.

Now this greyish black base color is excellent to work up from because the cracks have been dealt with but it's still bright enough to get en effectively colorful pallet out of.My next step with Feora though was the white parts of armor,  the I did two coats of Marrow white from the P3 line. Watering down the mix very little ( I would guess 1 part water to 6 parts paint).

You'll also note I already added the basecoat of the cloth to her at this point.I was simply trying to get the bases set up so the rest would be done quickly. as you can see on the redeemer I was already setting up the gems on his chassis, better to get something done in one fell swoop than have to go back and do the same step later.

(I apologize ahead of time for the shadows on these next few photos. I was testing the camera from a new position and didn't catch them until after the model was done.)

the next step was to start with the detailing on Feora, Gold suits well with this sort of look and feel, so that is what I decided for the trim as well as the vent sections of her armor and the busted jack beneath her feet, but it's gold would look different by the end of this venture.

 Silvers were the next step before inks and washes to completing Feora, covering her halberd head and staff in it as well as touching up the chainmail cloak on the underside of the cloth. The final step was to add P3's green wash to her cloak (like I showed back in the goblin walk-through before we gave it another coat on the face.) give the vents on the back a wash of sepia, and the rest of the metal a wash of badab black with a 10/0 hair brush so as not to mess up the white that was put down.   The busted jack beneath her got a wash of Sepia on the back, and a light brown wash on the rest of it , before adding orange to pieces of it to give the appearance of rust.

Finally the basing, All I added was some static grass, and some homemade bunches of flowers (which I also plan on showing a small tutorial on in the future) and a small brass piece of ivy to give the jack a rustic overgrown look.

 I have more menoth stuff that will be showing up in the coming weeks, in preparation for COASTAL ASSAULT.  (I'm also kinda sick of looking at yellow every time I sit down to paint, need a break from it)

Speaking of which....

So I got a box of super dungeon explore models (Caverns of Roxor), and after learning their plans to put out a Castlevanina like expansion. decided to get the main game when possible. However I found a Candy & Cola miniature for the game, the model looks good so I did my best to recreate it according to the art work it came with, of course taking a few artistic licenses.  I think it turned out rather well.

Well that is all for now, check back later this week and I should have more updates.

As always Comments, suggestions, ideas, and emails are welcome, If you liked any of this stuff and think your friends might by all means share it and spread it around.

~SWL

Power swords and Lightning claws (or why I5 is awesome for characters)

So I apologize for not having an update the last week or so I had some personal shit go down an it's still ongoing so expect odd updates, but short of that lets get this ball rolling.

So about 3-4 weeks ago when I picked up the forgefiend (which is still in progress) I also picked up a box of the new raptors some parts of which I mixed and matched with a box of regular CSM but we'll get to that another time. Four of the raptors became Lords/Captains, and I gave two of them power swords and the other two lightning claws so they could be switched out. Though most of the time I honestly think I'll be running a lord with lightning claws. 

Now it's no lie I love raptors, and almost all jump troops, something about the phrase "Strike from the skies brothers!" sounds almost magical to me. Thus I love having a massive amount of jump troops to harass the enemy early in the game I5 with the option of FNP is simply a nice icing on the cake. 

 I was slightly torn on how to paint these guys weapons though, as I thought too much metal would make them as characters look kinda bland. I decided to go for the classic glassy blue color, as I thought it would be nice to bring a cool color into the model. Though It was pointed out to me that I chose in doing so the three primary colors blue, yellow, and red.

 That being said though I really love the design of the claws, most of them are designed very very well and produce a fear effect that I find quite nice. my main bitch about them though is the lightning bolts. I cannot properly describe the annoyance of these thin lines but I'll do my best, Imagine that you are painting on a space as large as your paintbrushes brush but you can't get a smaller one because the paint is too thin and runny. It looks neat but I would have much preferred an alternate claw without the lightning bolts.  

The only other thing I realy don't like is the lack of laying with the models movement, most of them look nice, but some of the arms and heads together don't quite look well, and most of the heads have the problem of the neck joint being too short and kind of sunken into the chest cavity. 

 Now I felt these two looked much better than the first, in terms of movement and decided to make them white helmets (vets.) but it is worth noting that these heads were altered and not in the raptors box, The one with claws is a standard topknot CSM head which was cut off and shaved into the arrow, I having never been fond of the top knots with few exceptions (Abbadon and the fantasy Slaanesh lord being they) The other was a khorne berzerker helmet that I cut those stupid looking bunny ears off of, actually if you do this with most of the berzerker heads they look much much better IMO.

 Not much I can say about this guy, he came out how I wanted, though I kinda feel I should have put a mark on his shoulder.

 now I did some other converting on this guy most notably adding the sword from a Chaos knight from the fantasy line, but I think it will look pretty good should I ever decide to take a lord with the murder sword. I took a bolter from the sanguinary guard and gave it to him, though I kinda wish I had some fire effects to add to it.

So moving on from the raptors are a couple of champions I made/painted for my noise marine squads. Though I not sure how often I will be using both.

 Now let me start off by saying I love this shoulder pad, it looks fantastic for noise marine dudes in general. In fact most of the paldrons with those vents that look like speakers do.

 So you may be wondering why they have tongues. long story short I had these fucked up helmets, I kinda wanted to do something with them but I wanted them to look a bit more like chaos, so I drilled them out and put an elongated tongue in their place feeling it would fit the slaanesh theme.

 Now I kinda like this guy, even though I'm not a fan of the X-23 thing he has going on with his version of the lightning claws, though I suppose it beats the retarded look of the wolverine claws they made for the 5th set. Not too much I can say other than that, I decided to do a royal purple here, thinking blue would look weird but I'm kinda regretting my decision now....maybe I'll change it in the future but chances are I'll leave him as is as a reminder.

 Finally we come to the last painted model of this week. I struggled for a while trying to decide how I wanted to paint him, a suggestion coming my way of a family member to do him with an homage to david bowie with glam makeup.... So I did...and I think it looks pretty good.

Not much I can say that the picture does for me.

Finally the last little pit this week, a W.I.P. that might not see finishing for a little while but looks cool none the less. 

That's it for this week, Hope you enjoyed it, Comments, questions and such are always welcome below, Have a great week. 

~SWL