Sloppity Bilepiper Part 2

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again ‘I don’t enjoy painting sub-assemblies’. The problems that can crop up, when glueing and filling already painted parts, play on my nerves. However, there are times when painting a model in sub-assemblies is the best solution. It’s something I’ll do when it’s the only way to get clear access to areas of a mini that, although partly covered or obscured by the addition of other parts, will be visible on the finished piece.

The Sloppity Bilepiper is an example of this scenario. On first inspection I thought it would be possible to assemble the entire mini before painting. However, I realised that the upper torso and the area featuring the pipes would be tricky to get at and might, as a result, look a little under painted. Although these difficult areas are often in the shadows I would rather paint them as such by choice rather than omission.

With the decision made to work in sub-assemblies, I first painted the head and the main body separately before I glued the head onto the body. The next element to deal with was the bag of the ‘gutpipes’ and the arm holding them. This was all fairly straightforward as the only visible seam was in the crease between the upper arm and shoulder.

All of the seams, visible or otherwise, on the sub-assemblies were filled with a 50/50 mix of water and PVA woodworking glue. I’ve used this mix before when dealing with a visible seam between painted elements of a mini, most notably on my Megaboss. It can take a few applications to fill even a small gap as the mix shrinks when it dries. However it’s worth the effort as it dries to a semi transparent matt finish that camouflages visible seams most effectively!

When I talk about PVA wood glue this is the stuff I'm reffering to.
It's been a stapel item in my toolbox since I was in my teens and
I've used it in one way or another on almost all of my projects!

My troubles started when I turned my attention to the pipes! I base coated the pipes and then applied a wash and highlight before glueing them in place. This meant that any really tricky areas already had a ‘basic’ paintjob. While no part of the pipes proved inaccessible they were extremely fiddly to paint.

I rapidly found this part of the mini very frustrating. A problem made worse by boredom. I’ve never been very good at painting multiples of the same things because I quickly get bored and once I’ve painted something I like to move on and paint something different. It’s an issue I have to deal with on most projects at some point. A typical example would be the soul stones found on GW’s Aelves and Aeldari minis.The pipes really shouldn’t have been that much of a problem, but they very nearly got the better of me and I very quickly began to hate them!

In truth my frustrations were more to do with the upheaval and disruption following Mark’s stay in hospital and his ongoing recovery. As we tend to take things on a day-by-day basis I’ve not been able to establish a regular and consistent routine. I’ve come to realise just how much I like to plan ahead and organise my days and weeks. It’s going to take a while to get everything back to ‘normal’ in the mean time I’ve had to work my way through a tricky patch and remember not to dwell on problems and frustrations. After all mini painting is my hobby, not my job, and I do it for pleasure!

Once the pipes were (finally) painted things took a definite turn for the better. I’ve been able to get back into the habit of painting every day. Even if it’s only for a short time it’s made a huge difference and I feel like I’m making steady progress. Better still I’m really enjoying the project again and I’m feeling pleased with what I’m achieving. The Sloppity Bilepiper is a mini with great potential and I’m beginning to think that I might now be able to do it justice!

Sloppity Bilepiper Part 1

After all the upset and upheaval that happened over the summer it feels very good to be painting minis again! I’ve not been able to establish a regular routine for my painting as yet but that’s to be expected. With Mark at home recovering (and not yet fully able to enjoy his retirement) life is still a bit topsy-turvy for us both.

Bearing this in mind I decided to start a ‘fun’ project that would not require too much concentration and time. Horticulus Slimux and Mulch most certainly will and I’ll need to be fully back up-to-speed before I return to them. As it happens I already had a Sloppity Bilepiper assembled and base coated because I’d intended to paint him before the Isharan Tidecaster grabbed my attention. The Sloppity Bilepiper is the perfect mini for my current needs.

As well as being a fun miniature it hads the advantage of providing me with some familiar Nurgley subject matter. That meant that I could just dive right in and get painting. I’ve used the same techniques on the Bilepiper’s flesh tones as I used on all my other Plaguebearers. The only real difference is in the colour palette I’ve used. Instead of featuring green as the dominant colour I’ve experimented with a yellow flesh tone. Yellow can be used as a happy cheerful colour and it somehow seemed appropriate for a creature infected with the comedic fever of the Chortling Murrain!

In practice the colours used vary little from the combination of red/pink, blue and yellow over a Rakarth Flesh base that I’ve used before for my ‘human’ flesh tones (see below). The difference is in the proportions of those colours. I’ve built up a series of glazes going from yellow (Games Workshop Iyanden Darksun) through red (Scale Colour Antares Red) to a dark brown (Scale Colour Black Leather). This gave me my global shadows and colours. I then built up the highlights over the glazes using a combination of Iyanden Darksun and Flayed One Flesh (Games Workshop). In addition to the highlights this stage is where I build up the textures.

With the bulk of the highlights and shading done I then went back to fine tune everything with further glazes and highlighting. At this point I’ve use a little of the red from the Scale Colour Inktense range to increase the saturation in some of the shadows and mid-tones.

Fingers crossed this project will help ease me back into a more regular painting routine and serve as a stepping stone to my bigger projects.

Horticulus Slimux – Part 4

Apart from the odd pimple all of Slimux’s flesh tones are all painted. It’s been worth the effort to achieve the finished effect but it’s been a very hard slog. I’ve had to spend a lot of time going back and forth between the various tones and in a few places the paint was beginning to build up. That’s a problem I’ve not encountered for many years.

When paint begins to build up on a mini it can result in a rough grainy surface that detracts from, and spoils, the finished result. It’s the reason I started working with increasingly dilute paint mixes and up until now that has avoided the problem. Avoiding heavy paint build up is by far the best option but if it does occur there are a couple of solutions I fall back on.

The first is to burnish the painted surface and flatten out any lumps and bumps. This needs to be done with a clean smooth surface for example the end of a paintbrush handle or, my favourite, the rounded end of a sculpting tool. This all needs to be done with extreme care as it can damage the painted surface and cause bigger problems than those you are trying to fix. However, when it goes well it can work like a dream!

My second solution is to apply several layers of varnish to the rough area. Each layer needs to dry thoroughly before the next is applied. Once again great care is needed as it’s all too easy to build up a lumpy surface but that may be less distracting than a rough grainy one!

Thankfully a combination of these techniques has fixed Slimux’s flesh and now the surface textures are as I want them!

At the same time as I’ve been painting Slimux I’ve been building Mulch. I now have enough of him put together to be able to start work on a base. This is something I prefer to do as an integrated part of the project in order that the model and the base work together as an overall composition. It’s early days yet, but I’m pleased with how things are coming together.

I’ve a good feeling about this project but it’s increasingly clear that it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to complete Horticulous Slimux and Mulch to the standard I expect from myself. As soon as I started this project I began to suspect that it probably wouldn’t be ready in time for the Golden Demon Classic in May and I’m OK with that!

I feel that over the last couple of years I’ve begun to fall into the habit of chasing deadlines. A deadline is not in itself a bad thing and I’ve always found that competitions are a great way of giving my painting year some structure and goals. But over the last year I’ve felt increasingly that my painting schedule was getting out of control and competition deadlines are a part of the reason.

When I’ve done my best work it’s always been because I’ve taken as long as I needed to do it. It’s time to dig my heels in and reassert my identity as a painter because I refuse to compromise the quality or the experience of my painting. I’m going with the flow and enjoying my painting for it's own sake!

Horticulous Slimux - Part 3

The eyes have it!

I’ve been painting minis for the best part of 37 years now and I get the same pleasure and satisfaction from it at the age of 51 as I did when I started at 14! I like to think that, as I’ve grown in experience, I’ve been able to develop and refine my technique to the point where my painting skills are the best they have ever been.

However not everything gets better with age alas! I’ve gradually been finding it increasingly difficult to hold focus on my minis as I paint them. I first noticed it while I was painting my Plague Marine but recently it’s become a serious obstacle to my painting of Horticulous Slimux! Put simply after a short time painting my focus slips and I can’t see what I’m doing. Oh the joys of being middle aged!

Thankfully the remedy is simple enough. I’ve had to admit to myself that I’m no longer 25 and get a stronger pair of painting glasses. Much relieved, I can now focus on the mini for long enough to refine the textures and colour transitions to my satisfaction.

As a result of all this, and the fact that it’s half term, I’ve not made a massive amount of progress this last week. However I’m very pleased with what I have achieved. I’ve refined the green plant growth on Horticulous and painted the flesh tones on one of his legs. I’ve also been able, now I can see them, to go back and refine those areas I’d already painted.

Although my colour palette is very different, my technique for painting the flesh tones is a more polished version of the one I used for my Plague Bearers. I paint a base coat of Rakarth flesh then I glaze over this with my mid tone and shade colours. These colours provide an element of saturation to the, otherwise neutral, flesh tones and glazing over a light base colour gives them a feeling of depth and luminosity. The result is colorful but messy.

I then build my highlights up, with a series of dilute layers, over the glazed layer. These are created using my neutral flesh tones. Although I’ve used Ivory for the extreme highlights the majority of the highlighting is created using Flayed One Flesh. This has a warmer yellower tone than the ivory and gives a softer look to the flesh. It’s during the highlighting stage that I create the texture by building up areas of stippling and, in this case, wrinkles.

At the same time as I build up the highlights, I glaze the red, yellow and blue tones back in, if an area becomes too pale or the highlights too harsh. This is a very organic process with a lot of going back and forth between glazes and highlights until I’m satisfied with the result.

Coming back to the topic of eyes, I’ve had a lot of requests for a tutorial on Horticulous Slimux’s blind eye. But I’m not going to do one as such! The reason being that the technique really doesn’t merit it. The eye was painted with very basic glazes of desaturated blue/grey and red/grey tones. The pupil was then glazed on with a darker grey tone making sure to keep it soft and undefined. The whole thing was then finished off with a strong white highlight on the top surface and a softer highlight along the bottom edge.

The real secret to painting the blind eye was that I found good reference material. In the end an image of the old faun from the film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ gave me what I needed. The trick with using reference material is not to simply copy without thinking, but rather to study and then apply what you have observed to your mini. In the case of the eye, I looked at the overall colour and transparency of the eye paying attention to how the light reflected off the surface while also penetrating partway into that surface. I also studied the pupil and how it looked diffuse as a result of the cataract.

Using reference material to help inform you painting choices can make a huge difference to the final result. As I said in my first posting for Horticulous Slimux, I’ve sourced pictures of slugs, snails, frogs and caterpillars and I think they are going to be a great inspiration when I get round to painting Mulch!

Busy Times!

The last few weeks have provided an unusual experience with regards to my hobby as although I’m very busy I have little to show for it! As I predicted earlier this year I’m deeply involved in preparing for my Copenhagen workshop over the coming Easter weekend. Demo minis have been prepped and painted, notes have been written, a resourses folder compiled and minis selected for the trip. And jolly good fun it’s all been too but there’s nothing to show for it on this blog!

Apart from my workshop preparations, I’ve found a little more time to work on Akito and develop the flesh tones on her torso. I’ve found it especially challenging to achieve a realistic balance of smooth flesh tones and strong, but subtle, contrasts. Unlike painting monsterous flesh there is no way to hide any imperfections behind textures or special effects! But I feel that I’m getting there and just need to be patient and persistent.

The following weeks are also likely to be a bit of an odd time for me hobby wise. On the weekend after my Copenhagen workshop it’s Salute, at Excell in London, and I’ll finally get the chance to enter my Abalam bust into a painting comp. It will be interesting to see how he does as I feel I’m still something of a novice with regards to painting busts, and there is a lot for me to learn.

After that I’m going to be at Warhammer Southampton, on Saturday 29th April, where I’ll be showcasing my miniatures and running some demonstrations of the techniques I’ve used on my Golden Demon winners. I will also be judging a painting competition!

Looking further ahead still there is the Golden Demon Classic at Warhammer Fest on 28th May. My Megaboss is ready and waiting which is just as well because I don’t think I’m going to have spare time to get anything else painted ready for Golden Demon this year. That’s because I’ve two more painting workshops lined up for this Summer and I’ll be gearing up for the first of those pretty soon.

This will be at Element Games, in Stockport, on the 3rd and 4th June. The subject of the workshop will be aged and distressed non-metallic metal armour, like that painted on my Megaboss. There will be a focus on using Scale colour paints and the workshop model will be the Abyssal Warlord by Scale 75.

And there’s more because on the weekend of August 5th and 6th, I will be in Hull for the Weekend Workshop. I will be breaking out the Plaguebearers again for a weekend of painting monster flesh. Expect microbeads, baking soda and slime effects to feature!

2016 Looking back... and forward.

Some years stand out more in the memory than others and 2016 certainly made an impact! Many sad, disturbing and sometimes terrible things have happened in the world at large and it feels negligent not to acknowledge that. However, this blog is always written from my own personal perspective and for me 2016 brought many things for which I’m very grateful.

I went into 2016 with the intention of making it a ‘big’ year not least because in July I turned 50 and celebrated the tenth anniversary of my civil partnership. Winning another Slayer Sword would be the icing on the cake – or so I thought.

I can now look back on a year where I not only won two Slayer Swords but also, In September, took early retirement from work. Neither of these things seemed even remotely possible this time last year!

I may not have had the most productive year in terms of the number of miniatures I painted, but it’s been a year of achievements nevertheless.

So what does the future hold? In the shorter term I’m focused on April, which is going to be a very busy month. There is my workshop in Copenhagen and the Salute painting competition. Beyond that there is the next classic Golden Demon in May, and I’m planning to do some more workshops this year.

The big adventure for 2017 is exploring what it means for me to be a full time hobbyist. I’ve a growing backlog of unpainted miniatures (who hasn’t in this hobby?) and some exciting painting projects planned.

I now have the opportunity to take my hobby and run with it!

Summer 2016

The past month was, as I predicted, an extremely busy time for me. Despite that, and my inability to update this blog for a while, mini painting has never been far from my thoughts.

I took a holiday in Italy this year and, as I was based in Sorrento, the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum were within easy reach. I’ve been to both sites before but had a strong desire to return and explore them in greater detail. One of the things that always stands out to me when visiting Roman sites is the predominance of brick built structures. This is in strong contrast to the Hollywood vision of gleaming white marble everywhere!

While exploring Herculaneum it stuck me that these Roman buildings were an excellent source of inspiration for miniature basing. Many of the walls showed evidence of repairs and alterations. The resulting patchwork was a mixture of different types and styles of brickwork and stone blocks. Using these walls as a source of inspiration would add a lot of visual interest, and a touch of narrative, to any brickwork on a scenic base.

Once back from my holiday I had just over a week to finish preparations for my Weekend Workshop in Cambridge. I’d decided to push the group a little harder this time. On the Saturday I introduced the group to my style of painting flesh. This involved the, what was to many, a new painting technique with a fair bit of supporting theory. I’d set the group a challenging task, but everyone got stuck in with admirable dedication to the task.

Sunday was devoted to consolidating and building upon what had been learned the day before. The rust, slime and drip elements of the course come towards the end as you need a painted mini to work on; but it’s also a fun way to round off the weekend’s painting. Throughout the day everyone continued to make steady progress and many of the plaguebearers reached a fairly advanced stage of completion. Considering the limited time this was no mean feat in itself.

Still more gratifying was the way that everyone worked through the challenges of embracing something new. The final crop of plaguebearers all clearly showed the progress that had been made.

Grandfather Nurgle would be impressed – I certainly was!

In the days following the workshop I’ve been getting myself sorted out ready to resume a regular painting schedule. I’m itching to get back to painting my Megaboss and seeing him finished.

Work in progress?

My mini painting schedule hasn’t quite worked out how I planned it this summer! The Megaboss is an absolute joy to paint and I’m very happy with how he is turning out, but progress has been slow. That’s because I’ve had a lot on my plate recently and time for mini painting is limited. If you follow me on Facebook you may have read how that’s all going to change at the end of September when I take early retirement from work to become a full time hobbyist! 

In the meantime, however, it’s a bit of a slog. So I’ve put the Megaboss onto the back burner as in the coming weeks I’ve a holiday to take in Italy and a Weekend Workshop in Cambridge. Which means, just when you thought I was done with Nurgle, I’m back to preparing Plaguebearers! 

Looking further ahead there are some exciting projects in the planning. First there is the Megaboss to finish. After that I’ve a not inconsiderable number of unpainted minis and busts demanding my attention. High on the list are the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower minis that I received as a birthday present and then there is a certain little mini I’ve treated myself to. 

Alarielle is going to be the first big project of my retirement and I already have plans for her, bringing together something old with something new.

I won’t be able to resume a regular painting schedule until mid August but I’ll be posting updates as and when I can. In the meantime have a great Summer. 

Golden Demon 2016

I started basing my Plaguebearer unit with two weeks to go before The Golden Demons. ‘Plenty of time’ you might think and you’d be right. Except I managed to make a thorough mess of things during the first week! Put simply, I made my usual mistake of starting an overly complicated basing scheme. I began working on a scenic base for the unit, but at least I had the sense to abandon it while there was still time to do the job properly. 

I’d been advised by my friend Lee (10 ball on cool mini) to base the minis up individually. Presenting them thus on a simple black plinth would allow the minis to shine out. He was dead right and I’m very glad I finally took his advice. 

I’d decided early on that I would feature some sort of barren desert terrain on my bases rather than an overtly Nurgle themed scheme. I wanted the bases to contrast and compliement the minis. I already had lots of Nurgleish details on the minis and repeating this on the bases would diminish the impact. I used the colour orange to create a visual link between the minis and the bases and to tie them together. I also used orange on the plinth’s label for the same reason. 

With a new plan of action in place things went far more smoothly during the second week; and I finished the unit on the Friday before Warhammer Fest! 

This is the second time that Warhammer Fest and the Golden Demons have been held at the Ricoh Arena and it has reinforced my view that the move to this venue was a good one! The Golden Demons were held on the top of three floors in a large and well-lit space. This was just as well because the crowds around the cabinet seemed to be more dense this year. As always a little patience pays off when viewing the miniatures. I prefer to make repeated visits to the cabinets and to take it all in a bit at a time. 

My overall impression was that the standard of the minis on display was very high, probably the best out of the three recent ‘classic’ Demons I’ve attended. By the early afternoon I was not feeling very confident about my chances! 

Mercifully there were plenty of distractions from the agony of awaiting the results. My personal favourites centred around the new Warhammer Quest Silver Tower miniatures. In addition to viewing the minis I attended one of the info pods by Max Faleij on ‘The colours of Tzeentch’. He explained how the studio painters had approached painting the Silver Tower miniatures and the reasoning behind their colour choices. Earlier I’d made up my mind to paint some of these minis myself and, as I’ve never painted any Tzeentch minis myself, Max’s talk has given me some great ideas on how to go about it. 

Eventually the waiting was over and the Gold, Silver and Bronze winning miniatures for each category were placed on the top shelves of their respective cabinets. At this stage there was no indication of which mini had won which trophy. Much speculation followed! 

I had high hopes for Gutrot, I think he is my best piece to date; but it’s very unwise to make any assumptions about competition results before they are announced! The Plaguebearer Unit was in unknown territory as the category was entirely new to me! 

Then the time came for the winning painters to gather in the winner’s enclosure. At previous Golden Demons the winners were queued up in a Bronze, Silver, Gold order ready to go on stage and collect their trophies. This meant you could work out what you’d won just prior to it being announced. This year we were just gathered together to await the announcements. This brought an added level of anticipation to the experience! 

Single Warhammer miniature was the first of my categories to come up and to my, obvious, delight Gutrot took the Gold. Then Warhammer Units followed and my Plaguebearers also took Gold. That’s something I’d never considered as a possibility when I started these minis as demonstration pieces for my Weekend Workshop in Cardiff last October! 

Winning two Golds meant I was in the running for the Slayer Sword so the anticipation wasn’t over. And then, finally, Alan Merrett announced Gutrot as the winner of the 2016 Slayer Sword! 

It’s an achievement that I feel very proud of and I had some personal reasons for wanting to win the sword this year. 2016 is a big year for me as it will see my 50th birthday and the tenth anniversary of my civil partnership. Winning the Slayer Sword makes it even more special! 

So what next? It’s straight back to the painting desk with an Orruk Mega Boss who’s been awaiting my attention. After that I want to go up in scale and paint more busts and there are those Silver Tower minis I so liked – I already have a few ideas for them.