Tag Archives: painting

Painting Diary – Chronoscope – Sasha DuBois – part one

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Introduction

Figure in blister packI wanted to paint something and I also wanted to write some reasonably lengthy and meaty blog posts, so I thought it made sense to combine the two things.  Welcome then to my first painting diary where I’ll cover the process I followed to paint Reaper Miniatures’ Sasha DuBois (part of their Chronoscope line).  The whole article is split up into several parts, and this is part one.

It’s worth saying what this series of articles is not.  They’re not a guide on how to paint, they’re not an example of the right way to paint, they’re not about how you should paint.  What it is, is purely a diary about how I painted this specific miniature.  At the moment, I’ve got no idea how the figure will turn out, I may ruin it, I may give up half way through, I may finish it and hate it, or complete it and be really proud of it.

Along with the blog posts I’ll be updating a Picasa web album with all the photo’s I take.  You can check out all the photo’s in the on-line gallery here.

I was going to track the progress of a space marine I got (for free!) when I bought some paint, because it would be something totally different for me.  I’ve never painted a space marine, I don’t usually paint sci-fi miniatures, it’s male, and it’s fully clothed.  However, I eventually decided at least for my first painting diary (on this platform) that I’d stick partially to form.  Hence the figure is female and is at least partially naked (bare midriff), however it is at least a sci-fi miniature.  So, here we go.

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Pretty tired today

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More emotionally tired than physically, and not really able to think of anything worthy to blog about.  The final part of the Lord of the Rings Online review will auto-post at 9pm.  I enjoyed writing that, enjoyed writing something substantial over a number of days, I may try and do something similar maybe about miniature painting.  Perhaps I’ll pick one figure and blog about the whole painting process.  Maybe I’ll get bored long before that happens.

Grete’s dad is visiting today, staying overnight.  The cats will have to cope with his dog so we’ve moved their food, water and litter tray upstairs so they can continue to do what they do (eat, drink, shit, sleep) without being disturbed.  He’s taking our presents for Grete’s sister, brother-in-law and their kids down south with him when he heads out on Saturday.

Not in the mood

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As soon as I put the flesh washes onto the three mini’s I’m supposed to be using blending on I knew I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be doing any painting.

Then I tried putting a highlight onto a hand, decided it looked crap and packed up again.

Maybe tomorrow.

Probably really bad of me

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What motivates you to do better?  Knowing you can still improve?  The pure challenge?  Knowing there are people who can generate better stuff than you but that it’s within your reach?   Totally internal drive?  You don’t need to do better, you just do what you do and see how it turns out?

I’ve covered this in other blog posts, but basically, I’m easily discouraged.  If I find that something I can create isn’t very good when compared to everyone else I’m prone to be discouraged.  It’s odd because I’m really not competative in the normal sense, so I’m not sure where it comes from.

Anyway, after looking around the interwebnets and seeing a lot of very impressive painted mini’s I was feeling discouraged.  But, and this is why it’s bad, I found a huge site with thousands of posted pictures (rated by the site members) and I don’t truly suck.  I’m about average.  I can cope with being about average and not sucking.

That’s something I can build on.

edit: Oh, and the site has a lot of display quality mini’s for sale (rather than gaming style mini’s which tend to be generic) and for some reason, the ones that are out of stock tend to be the half-naked female characters.  You’ll never guess the general demographic of mini painters ….

Blending

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You can practice something over and over again, but if what you’re practicing is wrong, it isn’t going to help.  I look at the work other people do with miniatures and I lament that I can’t achieve those effects, and yet I know why.  Because I’m not using the right technique.  So, I’m going to try and paint the following three mini’s using as much blending and patience as I can muster.

Vampire Blegh

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I knew as soon as I painted the Vampire’s shirt red, and did the hack-black-wash job on the cloak that I’d ruined the entire piece.  Oh well, now I’m just slapping paint on it to finish it up as quickly as possible.

I’ve never been able to do convincing red-clothing, it’s surprisingly annoying.  Although if I did real blending instead of just wash/dry-brushing it would be easier (in the sense that blending works better with reds, but since I can’t blend well it’s a moot point).

Edit: Updating rather than posting a fresh post.  It’s finished – here and here.

Got some painting done

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Did quite a bit.  Finished up the Elmore piece I started an absolute age ago.  Looks ok real-size, looks terrible photographed, I have to work out if there’s a better way (been saying that for 10 years).  Made a start on three Rackham miniatures, did a tiny bit on a vampire and kept going with the 20 zombies.  Doing the zombies is kinda cool, don’t have to be too careful, slap a lot of random colours on that no self respecting heroic single miniature would wear, try out different things to see what works.  The contrast with working on hugely detailed pieces like the Rackham miniatures is incredible, everything takes longer, everything has to be planned out carefully.

The hardest part is seeing what you want to do with the miniature – once you’ve got that in your head it’s just a matter of making it happen.  I’m struggling with the vampire because I don’t know how I want it to look, blacks? purples? oranges? reds? some mixture?  Greys?  Not sure.  Once I have that sorted it’ll be a lot easier.

Happy Geek

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Today I am a happy geek.  I’ve ticked all my boxes.

  • Fantasy Miniatures – check
  • Blogging – check
  • Photography – check
  • Using Picasa to manage photo’s – check
  • Using Picasaweb albums – check

Pretty good day.  We popped into the Games Workshop Warhammer World shop to pick up some paints (white and black) that I’m missing (I can cope with other colours missing, but white and black are pretty essential).  The guy behind the counter was as chatty as they always are in Games Workshop shops, and he was asking what I was painting (I said undead), and if I was looking at getting any other miniatures.  I sort of laughed and said no, I had plenty to keep me going.  He asked what I was interested in, and I had to just say, “I’ve been painting for over 20 years, with some breaks, I’m really not into playing, just painting the miniatures”.

It was a number I plucked out of the air (20 years), but it turns out it was pretty accurate.  Started when I was 14ish, which makes it 23 years.  I’ve probably been painting for longer than the shop assistant has been alive.  When I started painting the miniatures were made out of real lead (probably).

So anyway, didn’t manage to get any painting done this evening but I did end up finding a lot of miniatures I’d forgotten about, and did some web geekery, so yeh, pretty happy.

Fantasy Miniatures, photos

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So I spent the evening going through my collection of miniatures, re-photographing them and uploading those pictures to Picasa.

A disclaimer before you go look (if you were thinking of looking).  Yes, there are far too many half-naked nubile unfeasibly dressed female miniatures, so sue me.  Yes, I suck at painting eyes.  In fact, yes, in general, the painting sucks.  These things are designed to look ok from about 3 feet away and are 1-2 inches high usually, so when you photograph them from 7 inches away and blow them up, they look pretty cruddy (well, mine do).

First up, a collection of my oldest miniatures.

Next, some of my more recent butcher paint jobs.

And finally, a bunch of stuff I’ve not started yet.

Click the images to link to the Picasa albums.  I’ll sort out some photo’s and post some stuff I’m half way done on at some stage.

Edit: In-progress album now up.

Smaller pictures

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Looks like just keeping the images smaller helps, they look more like they would if you were holding them or looking at them on a table.

One of those (left) is a macro shot from earlier, and the other is just a regular shot from distance.