Tag Archives: painting

Painting Diary – Chronoscope – Sasha DuBois – part five

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Cloak and not Dagger

First couple of washes go onThis is the fifth post in the Sasha DuBois painting diary set (the others are one, two, three and four).  I’m a bit up and down about my painting skill level at the moment (my regular normal state for anything I create), some days thinking I’m quite happy with my skill level thank you very much and other days a bit down because I feel I should be better, if I just spent a bit more time.  However, I spend as much time as I spend and I enjoy that time and at the end of the day that’s what truly matters, it’s relaxing and enjoyable.  I’m happy with being slightly better than barely average (at the moment).

At the end of the fourth post I’d just put the base coat onto the coat (this could get confusing), using scab red.  I then spent a little while (a few days) not really painting anything, and finally got back into the swing by putting a lot of effort into the zombies.  I also managed to wash and brush the coat on this mini and then put some black onto the boots (too thickly, sigh).  Anyway.

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Miniatures over time

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The five hobbies I’ve been doing since my early teens are watching movies, reading books, using computers, playing games and painting miniatures.  Books have changed the least, although I suspect we’re on the cusp of something in that area.  Computers have changed beyond recognition and now take part in every aspect of my day-to-day life.

But I’m surprised by how much has changed in the world of miniatures.  When I was collecting and painting miniatures in the 80’s, they were pretty cool, almost all metal and made by a range of companies.  They were sold in Beatties and various model shops as well as early hobby stores.  The model detail was ok, but they weren’t always very crisp.  Multi-part pieces didn’t really fit together that well and you had to spend a lot of time filing and filling.  As the 80’s progressed the miniatures got better and at some point, Games Workshop flooded the market with collectable miniature games.  Soon, all you could easily get hold of were GW mini’s, and they were plastic!  Cheaply moulded, not always very clean and very similar in design.  Time moved on again and their mini’s got more complex and more interesting, and now I find, after not painting for quite a while, that in the UK there are a few small family run mini businesses making very high quality figures in a range of genres.

What has also changed, in my eyes, is the quality of painting.  Sure the guys painting for White Dwarf in the early days were good, but these days the quality seems to be on another level all together.

It’s interesting to me because I tend to paint for a while, and then take a long break, and when I come back there’s usually been a major change in the world of miniatures.  This time I have a real desire to keep at it, to continue painting for long stretch in the hope that it gives me something to do and that I can actually improve my skill past the point I’m at.  I feel that I’m no further forward now than I was in the early 90’s at university because of the long breaks I always take.

If I can paint more often, keep my hand in, as it were, hopefully I’ll be able to improve my skills, and now that I’ve found some amazing mini’s for sale in the UK there’s a wealth of figures I’d just to have a go at.

I’ll try and dig out some of the mini’s I first bought and compare those with the detail on mini’s you can get now.

Painting Diary – Chronoscope – Sasha DuBois – part four

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Fancy Pants

This is the fourth diary entry in the ‘Painting Sasha DuBois’ series, parts one, two and three can be found by the simple click of a mouse.

First base coat of trousers and topWith some miniatures (for example, a zombie army you use for gaming) it’s entirely possible to make yourself get on and paint them.  The technique is different, you’re trying to paint them reasonably quickly, and it’s not likely anyone’s going to be inspecting them individually from 12 inches away, but they have to look good at distance as a unit on the playing surface.  So you can forgive yourself short-cuts and missed lines and broad brush strokes (as it were).  However, when I’m painting a miniature I like, and I really want to look good I have to be careful not to make myself progress, because I find that I lose the spark that makes me care about the detail.  If I push it too hard, it ends up looking rushed.  So I barely touched Sasha when I sat down a couple of nights ago (hence the short part three post) and although I’ve made more progress again it’s slow going.

I’d just spent a day painting a mini with blue and scab red and wanted to avoid that exact combination, but I knew I wanted to do Sasha’s coat in the red because it just looked so cool when washed / brushed.  So I went for green on the trousers and top as a nice contrast.  In the past I’ve made the mistake of starting with a base layer that’s too dark.  The issue there is that the wash makes little difference or you have to use a black wash to get any result, and then any amount of dry brushing is just too severe.  So, this time I went with a lighter green base coat with a plan to wash that with a dark green to give it some depth.  I was in two minds about starting with the trouser layer, there’s a tricky bit of work between her legs (no sniggering) where the coat shows through.  There’s a good argument to be made for doing the coat first, since it’s slightly easier to work on the legs and not hit the cloak.  However, if you put a green wash on the legs there’s a chance it’ll run onto the back of the coat, but when you wash the coat due to the layout of the model it’s very unlikely to run onto the legs.  So I went with legs first.

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Painting techniques

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It occurs to me that I talk a bit about dry brushing / washing / blending in my various posts on painting miniatures but never really explain what they are, and rather than me try and explain I’ll instead link to a few good resources on the web.

The first two links come from Hot-Lead.  Here’s the page on basic painting techniques, which despite having been painting for the better part of 20 years on and off, I’m still using and still improving at.  That covers washes and dry brushing, which on the right kind of mini can be extremely effective.  Where they aren’t so good are for subtle highlights on largely flat areas, or for very small areas which are hard to dry brush effectively.  That’s where blending can really give your work some depth and that’s covered over here.

Here’s a couple of further posts on blending over at How To Paint Miniatures.  There’s also a YouTube video, embedded below which shows someone using some of these techniques.

Finally, if you want to see some amazing and some not quite so amazing mini photo’s, check out CoolMiniOrNot and their huge range of photo’s.

Tada!

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Painted from around midday to around 10pm, while also watching the first season and two specials of the Vicar of Dibley, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and also Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Did a tiny bit of work on Sasha and will update the diary posts (there’s a post to come covering stuff I did last week, and I’ll write up a new post covering today’s work which will show up in a few days time).  Messed around a little with one of the fighting nuns, but most of the work went into the zombies.  Finally got a half-dozen or so finished and some pictures posted in the Picasa album over here.

Here’s a group shot, I managed to convince them to stop eating dwarves and stand still long enough for a photo.

zombie troop

… and tomorrow

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… I am going to paint, I swear.  Not sure right now if I’ll do any Sasha or if I’ll finally suck it up and finish up the zombie troop.  I kinda want to get them finished, I know how excellent a squad / group of similar miniatures can be.  Plus we have the incredible fighting nuns, although each one of those will probably take as much effort has half the zombie troop so getting them all done is no mean feat.  At the very least I should paint something just to keep my eye in, as it were.  I guess in some ways I have too much choice!  And on top of that, I’m seriously considering stripping the paint off some of my older mini’s and doing them again (like Blue Ogre or some of the large miniatures that I didn’t post pictures of because they’re truly terribly painted).

Too much choice!

Painting Diary – Chronoscope – Sasha DuBois – part three

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Best laid plans

First base coatI planned to work on the major clothing areas on the Sasha piece after finishing the eyes for the third part in the diary painting thing (part one here, part two here).  However, if you read my post on inspiration then you’ll know I ended up doing Sasha’s hair.  Hair is one of those funny things, although we talk about it being black or brown or blonde or red, it’s really not those colours and it’s very hard to just simply paint hair.  Harder than you might imagine, so when I find a colour combination that works I’m really quite happy.

While painting the deadly hammer wielding nun in the inspiration article I found that one of the brown paints in the new paint set is really good as a base hair colour, which I then wash with a brown wash and dry brush highlights onto.  It’s really effective.  So once I’d got it looking nice on the nun, I picked up Sasha and did her hair.  That’s it, that’s all I got painted on her in this session.  Sometimes that’s the way it goes, I’ll paint huge areas and get loads done (if I’m inspired) or each section will be a real chore forcing me to keep going (if inspiration is a little lacking that day).

Hair after wash and dry-brushSo, Sasha got her hair sorted, hopefully soon she’ll get some clothing as well.  Her clothes really are quite interesting with multiple layers and lots of scope so I’m quite excited about painting them, but I’m also concerned I’ll screw them out, so I’m probably going to try and get into a bit of a groove by working on other miniatures first / as well.  I find that I get better and re-learn things after a long time away and that a few weeks in my hand is a lot steadier.

Fingers crossed.

You can check out part four here.

Christmas Eve

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Welcome to Christmas Eve.  I’m just finishing a can of red bull before heading into the kitchen to make us a small fried breakfast (mushrooms, tinned tomatoes, hash browns, bacon, eggs, sausages, beans, toast).  While I’m doing that you should all go and watch a video over at Zeeker’s livejournal.

We finished season two of Black Adder last night and started season three.  I really can’t believe there’s only six episodes in each season, that’s mad.  By the way, if you’ve never seen Black Adder (because you’re too young, or you live in a country where it’s never been shown, or you’ve just not seen it) then you should try very hard to see it.  All four seasons are classic comic TV with some truly side splitting moments of laughing.  Still, I can’t beleve there’s only 6 episodes per seasons, although as Grete said, “BBC”, which explained the whole thing in one word.

We discovered half way through season two and into season three that both of us have speech patterns heavily influenced by Black Adder.

I need to write up part 4 of the painting diary after doing some more painting yesterday as well (I write them and and schedule them three days apart so that even if I don’t paint for a couple of days the diaries aren’t too far behind the miniature).

But first.

Breakfast.

Painting Diary – Chronoscope – Sasha DuBois – part two

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The eyes have it

First thin layer of flesh tone paintThis is the second part in a series of articles covering the progress of a single miniature painting job (Sasha DuBois, Time Chaser).   In the first article I covered the basic preparation of the miniature.  In this article I show you how I can take a perfectly good miniature and ruin it from the outset with a hack skin and face job.  Rather than just include a long line of images near the end, I’ll scatter them throughout the paragraphs, each one has a title which should let you know which stage it’s at.  For full pictures and descriptions you can still check out the Picasa web album.

Once I’d prepared the figure I had a think about basic colour schemes and skin tone.  I’m really uncomfortable painting much other than ‘sun beaten caucasian’ skin, I’ve tried a range of colours in the past from the realistic to the fantastical and either my technique doesn’t suit them or I’m just not able to convert what I see in my head into colour choices and colour application on the final figure, so I went with my traditional skin colour choice.  For the rest of the figure I want something bold and colourful, this is a steampunkish / sci-fi figure and I really want it to be vibrant.

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Inspiration

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Like anything creative, you paint your best miniatures when you’re inspired (by the figure).  Oddly, inspiration is a bit random, you can look at a miniature lots of times and not be inspired and then one day just get an image or a colour scheme or something finally clicks and you get excited by the prospect of painting it.  We set up in the lounge this evening and decided to watch some Black Adder and do some ‘crafting’, so Grete got out a rug she’s making and I dragged all the paints through from the computer room.  I intended to keep working on the Sasha DuBois piece for the diary and maybe potter about a bit with some others figures (I have a zombie army I’m supposed to be painting after all).  However, I picked up one of the heavy metal nuns I had started and was just inspired to finish it.  It ended up being worthwhile because I found a hair colour I really like and think looks very effective which I then used on the Sasha piece.  We watched all of the first season of Black Adder and half of the second and I finished the nun (flesh had already been done although I did a little extra washing and dry brushing) and I’m really pleased with the overall finished piece.

Photo’s don’t do it justice, but I don’t have time for two hobbies (painting and photographing really small things so they look like they do in real life), but here’s a few pictures anyway.  More posted in the relevant picasa albums (in progress and complete).  I think I made a claim that I’d be doing these figures using blending, but let’s face it I suck at that and I’ve proven I’m no good at keeping creative promises, so I’ll probably stop making them.  The figure on the right in this photo is the one I finished.  The full unpainted set are here.  I might try and keep the same colour scheme running through them all, a mixture of scab red (mmm lovely) and dark blues with gold edging, but then again, I may not.

I am pleased with the result, I think I did the best I could although I wish I could get the edges tighter and get the colours blended better but that’s either going to come with a lot more practice or never come at all.

Either way, I enjoyed painting this figure and I enjoy the result.