Ogre update

I'm more or less happy with the progress so far. I realized after i started painting him that he has an eagle brand on his forehead too. I green stuffed the brand on his shoulder. I will have to turn the forehead thing into a tattoo or something.

The shading is rubbish in the pictures. I am much more satisfied with how it looks in person, but may add another highlight and re ogryn flesh wash all skin areas to give it a more dramatic shadow and highlight look. Next step will be to add a small highlight to the pants and then give it a black wash as I want them to look like faded black pants. I'm debating adding a Han Solo green stripe down the side of his pants to tie in the war band's accent colour.

All the metallics are yet to be done.

Bard

New Ogre(yn)

I need a young whipper snapper Ogre for my new Warband. The gut plate ogres just aren't cutting it for me. Enter the newest member of my Mordheim collection, a Bullygyn at heart, Ollie.

Imagine me with mace and shield

Arms and weapons are soon to follow.
I am also hunting the internet for a suitably menacing and good looking model for my leader. The warband is in development, and I want it ready for our first play test night @ redclaw.

Bard

Carnival of Chaos

While I start working on my new warbands, here is what I will use for the play testing for the new website at  http://www.mordheimrevivalproject.com/ .

I had originally called it "Uncle Tom's Circus"

                                                               Uncle Tom himself!

New Project

I've been away from the hobby for a long time. I hope that is about to change and that my latest en-devour breathes some new life into the hobby for me. My friend, Brahm  has agreed to partner up with me in order to recreate the excitement we are missing in the hobby. And so, Mordheim will be my new pursuit. You can find our new website at http://www.mordheimrevivalproject.com/  . I love the fact that I can paint small batches of models and not experience the burnout I experience when painting full armies. I love the customization I get to practice as I make each character unique.
And so, if anyone still visits my little corner of the interweb, you will see new life breathed into this blog as I keep track of my projects.
....
Now, what warband do I decide to play???

cheers, and thanks for still following,
Bard

Giant Blow Fly ~ Part 3

Another round of painting on the Giant blow Fly. I have begun to appreciate the appearance of the model even more as the legs are now 1/2 on. Its going to be a beast beside some of the smaller models in my collection. The model has also got me thinking about a suitable base. I'm leaning towards a corpse laden battle field to work with the description found on the Zealot miniatures website. I was also thinking that they need to put together a set of legs as a kit for the fly to allow you to field it in a flying pose.
Anyway...the blow fly:

Skin. Three steps on each side.1) Midlund Flesh. 2) Purple wash. 3) Reapply Midlund Flesh on raised areas. 4) Midlund Flesh and white for final highlight.

Carapace areas. A dark grey (Model color basalt Grey). Edges have Light grey (Model Color Light Grey). I tried to pull the light grey along any raised edges. Made up a few raised edges too, just to maintain a uniform edge.

Badab Black wash was then applied on all the carapace areas.

One of my favorites, (Model Color Smoke) was then applied in deep cracks and under plates to give the appearance of shadows.

Found these Fly eyes for inspiration online.

Started with a base of yellow for the eyes.

Added a red wash. The last 2 pictures have had double red washes applied to the eyes, as well as smoke and black added along the bottom for shadow (Like in the model picture)

 The right side legs have been glued on. The had been primed and painted grey.

 Lastly, legs have received their highlight and the wash. Things are starting to come together! Next will be the last set of legs, which I am debating painting completely before gluing them on, as well as the face area. You will also notice that the stomach area has had a little bit of red wash applied in places as I wanted it to make look like the stomach was distended and the skin irritated.

Cheers, B

Giant Blow Fly ~ Part 2

Zealot - Giant blow fly

Arrived in the mail. In great condition! (got 2 of them!)

Grey primer and a layer of P3 Midlund Flesh

 A closer look at the legs

 Leviathan Purple wash on the flesh

Highlighting with Midlund Flesh

 Added highlight of Midlund mixed with white. 2:1 ratio

Zealot - Giant Bloat Fly

My hobby vacation has begun to slowly wind down the last few months. I had been painting my Nurgle army prior to my leave, and wished beyond all hope that there were some nurgle flies to become part of my force. So I started to hunt the inter-web in order to find a company that either already made model flies, or would be willing to take it on as a project.

This brings me to ZEALOT MINIATURES. I started by sending my idea to the miniatures company and was promptly answered. They thought my idea was a good one and Lo and behold, several months later, the GIANT BLOAT FLY has come to be! 

Anyway...I ordered a few of these cute little fellas and will be painting them up shortly. I wanted to also let everyone know of the quality of the models that I received in the mail. Firstly, they were mailed to me in a quick manner and took very little time to arrive. The shipping was also in good shape when it arrived. So far so good! The models are nothing short of awesome quality! Unlike the Failcast models that I have struggled with over the years, these resin models were in fantastic shape and required very little clean up. The details are very crisp and there are virtually no mold lines to scrape away which would destroy some of the great details.

I will keeping a log of my progress with this model.

Talk to you soon,

B

Tick Tock, time has passed me by

What a horribly long absense, and I am sure my post here is just a short return. Work has been wonderfully chaotic as I have gone through some major changes including location and new work team.
My little girl is now a very busy 15 month old and as soon as I get home from work, thats where my attention goes. Of course a person does not want to ignore their better half either, and so as soon as little person is in bed, some time is spent with the wife. Then you suddenly realize there isnt much time left to your evening.
The small amount of hobby time I have managed to squeeze in between life, a new Ipad, friends etc has netted me a couple of things though...

1) I have managed to paint a bit more for my small nurgle demon force. I will be creating a painting guide for them as soon as I have the oppertunity. I have several demons waiting for a spary of primer and these will make perfect candidates for a step by step photo shoot.

2) The release of 40K had me brush some dust off old figures. I was pretty excited (less so now after reading the chaos codex) and wanted to see what I had in the shelves. Turns out I had alot! Almost 160 unassembled Imperial Guard models and a fair bit of chaos marines.
I decided fairly early on that I would revist chaos by getting my guard ready to visit the dark side and the perfect compliment would be a force of Alpha Legion space marines. Models were prepped and painting guides were downloaded, and I did a test model. I will post some pictures of the model, but as it didnt look like the step by step of the guide for some reason, I became a bit less enthusiastic.
As soon as my enthusiasm withered in that direction, I rediscovered some of my old half painted Plague marines. I repainted some of them in browns and not my typical green. I like them and they might prove to be the motivation I need to keep plugging away at this time.

Anyway, less chatter and a few pictures...

Alpha Legion WIP

Rot and nuts

Still plugging away at the rot, and now I am going nuts with work going into full swing once again.

 

Bard 

Plague Bearers x5

The first 5 Plague Bearers are done. There are always things to touch up and things you realize you miss afterwards, but Ill get to them later. For now, enjoy and please feel free to critique/comment. Suggestions often lead to interesting discoveries in painting.
Bard

Unit Champion. It turned out a bit darker from all the washes applied to cover the liquid green stuff patches on the sides.

 

Almost there, almost there...

Plague bearer one is almost done...want to add some reds and purples to the mouth, and rust up the sword, but more or less done. Four seperate angles comming at you.

Bard 

Plague Bearer Progress

Hello again, and welcome back to "Painting models with a proper Primer". Thats right, the models already look so much better than previously, that I didn't wait to compare with the old primer but have stripped the primer and paint from ALL the models.
For those of you that have never tried to strip paint from a model, its fairly easy. Use SIMPLE GREEN! This marvelous product can even be accelerated through the use of an old toothbrush. Most of the models that had only primer on took around 2-3 hours to strip and the ones coated in paint took over night. I am very happy with the results.
So far, 15 of the models have been put together and primed. 12 of those also have a layer of my yellow green. 8 of them have a coating of sepia yellow wash on them. And if a train leaves from NewYork travelling at 60MPH....
Enjoy,
Bard

Close up of a couple of the properly primed "Beauties"

 

White Primer Hates Me

Here I was all excited to start painting! I assembled 10 of the awesome new demons and made some nice bases for them and then primed them with a brand new can of white. Needless to say, after you look at the pictures, you will understand why they are in a vat of "simple green" getting a bath to strip the primer.
Here is what I did to start, and will continue with when I re-start the models with a surefire army painter bone colour primer later this week.

New Bases. A darker stone to contrast with the yellows of the plaguebearers.

More later in the post. Including colour choice pictures and the mounting frustration that comes from trying to paint using a garbage primer. I wonder why so many issues have come from using these primers? Was it too humid? Was this simply another garbage can of primer? If anyone has any ideas i'd love to hear them. 

Preparing the rot

Not sure why, but I am a bit jazzed for the new Nurgle Demons being released by GW later this month. I have a very modest number of the old plague bearers and have never been overly keen on collecting more of the static pose troopers. The new plastics however, have revived a desire to finish up an all Nurgle themed list.

My color test model

Games Workshops new Plastic Plague Bearers

                                       
I am considering a conservative start of 20. It will act as a nice break between undead (which I seem to be burning out on). It would also allow me the chance to play with my airbrush.
Now what else would I need to get a force of 1000 points up and off the ground pronto?

Bard

A finished Dragon Prince...errr Blood Knight

Ok he is done. I am not overly happy about how he looks up close (aka in photographs) but he looks ok in person. The Spray primer has been thrown away as it continued to spray little pebbles of paint on all proceeding tests I did in the backyard.
Next project will be either some grave guard or another bloodknight. I have already trimmed down a few chaos knight helms to fit the look. The leader of the unit will use the helm from the new zombie dragon kit.
I also would like to paint up another of my Dark-Age miniatures, as I wanted to get my war band done this summer.
On a personal note, my family and I just came back from a little holiday. We ended up driving for around 6 hours each way with an 11.5 month old. She was very good, but even so, needed to stop every 45 min to an hour or we didnt hear the end of it. She also experienced her first Zoo while on the trip, and loved the two big Grizzly bears! Stuffed toys come to life??
Hope everyone is having a great summer!
Bard

Blood Knights 1/5 WIP

Having recently painted a Wight King as a gift, I found myself burned out. Not wanting to pursue the hobby to any extent and instead focusing on playing with my daughter and other computer games along with my new IPad. Yesterday I got some motivation back into me and started a Blood Knight. As I refuse to pay $120ish dollars for the official ones (for a box of 5 models WTF!?!) I put together a Dragon Prince and altered him a bit, and am satisfied with the start. I am not happy with the Primer that pebbled my model however. If by the end I am not happy, I may strip the model and start anew.

Cheers, Bard

Browns vs Greens

I tried two different colour schemes on the Wight king's collar piece. I started off with a khaki faded to white followed by a camo green faded to white edges. I think the green offers more contrast with the skull AND gives that clasic paiting useage of three spots of interest for balance.
I'll let you be the judge though.

Wight King WIP 2

A bit more done in between work, company, and family. I have the hood area to do, but this model is starting to get closer to the done stage. I hesitate on the hood though...should I paint it green like the cloak or stick with the beige/brown colour of the under skirt??

Oh, and this little morsel of goodness! Thank you D!

Bard

Wight King WIP

I have been working on a character model for the Vampire Counts army in my spare time this week. (when I am not playing Diablo 3)

 I am going for an eventual "earth tone" look. Things are still in the early stages and are bright and clean...that will change.
Check out the progress.
Bard

Thursday Musings

I don’t know about you, but I had a busy week. A nine month old daughter, visiting family and a hectic work week all added up to one tiered guy. On the bright side I did squeeze in the Avengers with a friend and enjoyed it tremendously! I went in to it with the Hulk being one of my least favorite characters and leaving with the big green guy being one of my favorites. I even felt sorry for several of the baddies that had run ins with him…those had to hurt!!