Synir og dughters í snjó

I finished Astrid of the Stones from Red Box games:

and added some basing to her and her compatriots:

The snow is just a baking powder / white glue mix. I tried using GW's stuff and it works great for texturising bases, but as snow - not so much. And in the theme of barbarian madness:



view it in fullscreen HD! :D

What is Best in Life? Hasslefree and Red Box minis

So, yes, I finally got back into doing some painting. No, it's not my Mass Effect figures - in all honestly I probably won't get back to them until the Extended Cut comes out and I get my ME mojo back.

First up is Sana from Hasslefree Minis:

A beautiful mini (she's resin) and great to paint. Got some weird reflections in the pics making it look like there are a few white spots, but they aren't really there.

Next up is Ferrus, also from Hasslefree:

The blade he swings is black as night.

Like Sana he's resin, and while not as flawless as, say, a Studio McVey LE mini, there was almsot zero cleanup required - only issue was a bit of greenstuffing required on the joins around their wrists. No flash, and barely any mould lines at all. Crisp details and soft enough to cut easily without being too soft that I'm worried about them sagging in heat etc.

Lastly is Hakar the Horrible from Red Box:

When taking the photos I noticed I got some grey on his right arm and the handle of his axe.

Bummer - that skin's going to be tough to fix.

The plan is to base them with a grass/snow mixture - going to play around with GW's new snow texture stuff and see what happens.

Group shot with a couple of other Red Box barbarians:

 I'm painting these guys up to (hopefully) get a game of Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies in with them and my other generic fantasy figs. Should have some more to show soon.


If that isn't enough to sate your barbarian rage, check out

BadassDungeonCrushers.com

and take the membership test:

100th post - Dark Sword, Red Box and Studio McVey

These three lovely ladies are from Dark Sword Miniatures, part of their line to of figures based on George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, though I just painted them how I felt like.


Sansa Stark, who dislikes giving me a decent photo.



Lannister Lady in Waiting, who uses a lot of double sided tape methinks.



Catelyn Stark, who I thought looks very much like the lovely Cate Blanchett. Might even be worth getting a second to make into a Galadriel since GW's are pretty terrible.



Group shot from behind.


Here's one for the ladies:


Red Box's Hakar the Horrible WiP.


Also on the workbench I've got Studio McVey's (as in Mike) limited edition Lisbeth (I have #52):


First thing I did was swap her around on her board to make her a goofy footer. This is mostly due to her stance - it is very much putting all her weight on her left foot, which would indicate pitching the opposite end of the board upwards. The original stance had this the other way around, with her leaning away from her pursuers yet going upwards.

Another issue is that it is very rare for a skater/snowboarder/surfer to grab the board to their front with their leading arm - doing so would make it very difficult to see where you're going. This is of course the opposite when doing a method grab when you use the leading arm for the very same reason.

So, after swapping her around (and re-sculpting the fingers on her left hand [they were part of the board]) I chopped off her right hand and cut up her shoulder to bring the arm down and to the outside in a more natural position for balancing. Then it was sculpting on fingers.

I've also given her a singlet and converted her hand grenade into a water bottle. The holster for her now non-existent pistol has been cut down and I'll be adding some wires to her ears as if it is a MP3 playr case or somesuch. Her thong was also changed to simply be high underwear (it seemed like it would be uncomfortable). She also got some hair at the back.

Colours will probably be khaki pants, black singlet, red fancy top, and a white/blue board with a hibiscus pattern .

Myrianna and Ingrior of Aelfheim

Painted up Myrianna and Ingrior from Red Box Games tonight, and quite happy with how they turned out.

For their cloaks I used Ron From the Warp's 'suggestion of colours' technique, though modified to my methods. I started with a black base, followed by a heavy drybrush of Regal Blue, then lighter goings over with Ultramarines Blue, Enchanted Blue then Ice Blue.
They then recieved a glaze of Asurmen Blue, followed by another (very light) drybrush with Ice Blue and Skull White on the extreme edges.

It worked incredibly well, and if I hadn't already painted up a whole bunch of my Rainbow Warriors already I'd use it for them. Ah well.



Ingrior was quite simple, and I went for a high contrast scheme with her. I wanted her to look very clean compared to, say Gunhildr so I didn't do any washes on her shield, sword of helmet. She only recieved a very careful wash on her breastplate for shading.
The fur lining of her cloak was simply done with Fortress Grey, washed in Devlan Mud then Badab Black, then drybrushed with Skull White. I think it makes it look very well looked after and, as I said before, clean.

Her shield is Regal Blue over white and based partly on the Zodiac sign of Capricorn, one of the Space Wolf Great Company runes and adding in a dragon.
With her hair I wanted to go a somewhat platinum blonde look, so simply washed Skull White with Devlan Mud, then drybrushed white over it again.



Myrianna was more complex than Ingrior with more details and fancy bits to her. The haft of her staff is Dheneb Stone streaked with Snakebite Leather and washed with Gryphonne Sepia, Devlan Mud and Badab Black. The gem atop it is Regal Blue drybrushed with Ice Blue, washed with Asurmen Blue, then drybrushed with Skull White. I kept out the middle shades to give it a very high contrast.
Her hair is Calthan Brown washed with Badab Black and drybrushed with Vermin Brown. The little dragon on her shoulder is simply Cammo Green washed with Badab Brown and Devlan Mud.



I painted them together to get a unity between them, and all up it took about three and a half hours for the pair from blister to done.

Gunhildr of Utherby & some thoughts on colour composition

So I took a break from 40k for a bit and decided to paint some vikings, namely the new mini by Red Box Games, Gunhildr of Utherby. Much like her 'sister' Vilhanna she was a great pleasure to paint, full of character and such.

But while I was painting her I was thinking about one of the more important aspects of painting that many people often forget about - colour composition. Sandwyrm at The Back 40k has already covered chosing the right shade of colour indepth, so I shan't go over it again. However I will ramble for a bit about how to put those colours on your mini.



Here's Gunhildr in her base colours. By virtue of her being a barbarian she is in rough and ready clothes, with a variety of strappy bits and fur, and obviously has a large area of exposed skin.

Looking at the mini I could see there would be a large area of exposed skin (light), so to contrast this I chose a dark colour for her clothes (I use the term loosely). However using a pallette of browns exclusively meant I had to retain contrast internally, or the details would blur together and be essentially unrecognisable.


I also had a limited number of colours so there was balance in the shades - the colour of her boots is repeated in her knife's sheath and left bracer. Similarly the ties on her left leg are the same as the hilt of her knife and the leather around her right wrist.




By using a light wood colour for the axe haft I stop her from being too contrasting between her top and bottom halves as it is similar in tone to her skin.



So how does this relate to 40k? Well for a tabletop army it means using a high contrast scheme looks better from a distance as it is easy to pick out what's what. For example think of the 2nd ed Ultras with their bright red bolters and yellow trim. Even in the tiny pictures in the rulebooks you could easily pick out their shape and the details.
If you go to coolmini and browse by the gallery looking at the thumbnails you may notice that many of the highest ranking minis look like pastel coloured smudges. This is due to their amazing level of blending so, much like a real person, from a distance they're kindof a blur.


But is this a bad thing?

I think yes and no, personally - yes in that pastels are never a good idea, and I like high contrast 'comicbook' type minis. I think they look better on display as they catch the eye (my eye) more than more realisticly painted minis (perhaps why I never got into historical minis).

No from the sense that the people who can paint like that are always coming up with the hard work to figure out new techniques for the rest of us to simplify ;)

This guy is a perfect blend of the two styels I think. He has the masterful blending and shading but the red of his cloak is dramatically different to his armour and skin. Also his base is a counterpoint to the mini as a whole. Being larger scale helps, but regardless the colour scheme could easily be shrunk down.



So there're my thoughts on the matter, and a finished mini to boot.

Vilhanna the Victorious

Vilhanna the Victorious from Red Box Games. I quite enjoyed painting her, and am rather pleased with how she turned out (her hair especially).

The model itself had a few minor issues - there was a large air bubble behind her right knee that had warped her stance slightly, but it was easily remedied.

for colour her hair is Vermin Brown drybrushed with Marcharius Orange and washed with Gryphonne Sepia. Her skin is a mix of Elf & Dwarf Flesh, and Skull White, washed with Gryphonne Sepia and Devlan Mud. I may go back over it to highlight her musculature some more (it's nice to paint a muscular female warrior - too often they seem overly scrawny for professional fighters).
It's not really evident in the photo but she has freckles, being a red head and all.