Posts Tagged ‘From the painting desk’

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From the painting desk #35 – Flamboyant George

October 4, 2015

Reinforcing my pirates is a colourful individual I named Flamboyant George. He’s loosely inspired by Robert de Niro in the movie Stardust (and this scene especially). After the previous pirate’s toned-down palette, I wanted to paint something with a bit more colour, and found the idea of a pirate with a penchant for matching accessories delightful. He’s prepared to mercilessly cut down anyone for their hat or boots. The miniature is from Foundry.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

The mini was also a chance to use purple, which I rarely do for some reason. I painted his hat, belt and boots as matching and threw in red details in the form of the band around his hat, the eyepatch and his socks. The yellow scarf works well with the purple shirt in my opinion – unsurprising as they are opposite colours. I like how the overall colours turned out and how the pirate still manages to look fairly menacing. While the concept stems mostly from just me wanting to have some fun, it’s not without historical merit, as pirates sometimes used the fancy clothes and the like that they stole or bought.

Flamboyant George is this year’s 20th painted miniature.

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates | Tagged , | 3 Comments »

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From the painting desk #34 – Weary old pirate

August 4, 2015

Another painted pirate! I wanted a change from painting to ship, so went for something smaller. He’s a Black Scorpion miniature, and very Long John Silver-ish with his missing leg and crutch. I painted him as a weather-beaten, wiry older pirate. I think the end result is suitably nasty looking individual, definitely up to no good.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

For the base I used a grass tuft from Army Painter. It was my first time using basing tufts, and I’m in love! Expect plenty of tufts in the future, and give them a go if you haven’t already.

This was the 19th mini I’ve painted in 2015, so better speed it up a little. Comments welcome!

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates | Tagged , | 4 Comments »

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From the painting desk #33 – Another pirate

May 26, 2015

As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m painting pirates. Here’s another one from Foundry, my 12th painted model of the year.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

It’s funny that I said in the previous post that the pirate project is letting me use all my bright colours, as this one mostly had fairly muted colours. I couldn’t help it, as he just looked like a shabby individual even unpainted. I did give him a purple scarf though, so at least some extra colour was added. One thing I’m liking a lot in this project is that a pirate crew is a perfect chance to throw together a group of models without regard for uniformity. In my opinion the muted palette works on this model, and he’s a fine addition to my crew.  Feedback welcome as always!

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates | Tagged , | 3 Comments »

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From the painting desk #32 – Captain, my captain

May 20, 2015

This year’s 11th miniature is a pirate from Black Scorpion. He’s actually the reason for my huge surge of interest for pirates. Once I saw him at the Black Scorpion stand at Salute, I just had to buy the pack and the rest is (very current) history. Seriously, that pose has to be one of the coolest I’ve ever seen, and the miniature all in all is everything I expect from a Pirates of the Caribbean inspired sea dog. He’ll definitely be the captain of my pirate crew.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

I painted his coat a bright red but made the white detailing a bit grimy – he is a pirate after all! I think he’s also the first resin miniature I’ve ever painted. The quality was mainly good, although there was a strange deformity on his right hand. I fixed it somewhat by disguising part of it as a ring. The basing represents a sandy fantasy-Caribbean beach and fits in with the previous pirate.

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates | Tagged , | 4 Comments »

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From the painting desk #31 – Cutthroats

May 4, 2015

A couple of newly painted miniatures, both nicely fitting under the “cutthroat” definition. They bring this year’s painted miniatures count to 10.

The first one is a pirate by Foundry.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

 

A lovely, characterful mini that (unsurprisingly for Foundry) suffered from poor casting. The barrel of his gun was so misaligned that I replaced it with a plastic one from a GW set. I didn’t bother to smooth the join over with putty, but I think it looks decent. This pirate heralds one of my two new projects inspired by Salute, so expect plenty more pirates in the future. It’s really fun to paint these bright colours!

The second mini here is a half-orc assassin type from Reaper’s Bones II set. We bought the entire set for our regular RPG crew, and spent yesterday painting models for our upcoming characters.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Anyone who knows me (or has read this blog a bit) should know that I hate cleaning up models. The Bones material is quite nice, but can be insanely awful to clean up as you can’t really scrape it. As we were making minis less for viewing and more to be used as playing pieces, I simply left some sections uncleaned. Yes, it looks awful yet it doesn’t look to bad at the same time – the worst parts are luckily hidden by the photo angle. This was a familiar palette with browns and greys, and I think he turned out very decent. We had a great time painting, and I’ll be sure to share the rest of the minis once they’re finished.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to be painting again. Feels like coming home after a while.

 

Posted in 18th century, Fantasy, Miniatures, Pirates | Tagged , , | 5 Comments »

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From the painting desk #30 – Goblin

February 10, 2015

This is my 300th post as well as #30 in the From the painting desk series. It’s somehow appropriate that the mini in question is not some fancy-pants resin wonder, but rather a simple, humble goblin that I bought ages ago from Orc’s nest. The miniature itself is from 1995, so it’s a youthful 20. It’s part of my ongoing mini project, which you can check out in my two previous posts.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

I’m really happy with the mini. It’s a very clean sculpt and was a wonder to paint. I spent more time on layering than usual (even if the photo doesn’t quite show it). The self-sculpted flagstone base turned out fine too, and I added some flock to represent moss creeping in between the stones.

I don’t know how many goblins I’ve painted green during my WHFB days, so painting one yellow was a welcome change. He turned out looking suitably nasty and dirty in that good old D&D goblin way. I look forward to finishing the rest of the band of misfits.

 

Posted in Fantasy, Miniatures | Tagged , | 6 Comments »

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From the painting desk #29 – Old lead

January 19, 2015
Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

As you can see, I finished my second miniature of 2015, the facehugger attack from Leading Edge’s old Colonists’ Last Stand. I freshened up my layering work, and the end result is a little less drybrush heavy than my previous effort. I painted the base to match the rest of my Alien-inspired scenery, and to make the egg and the colonist the focal points of the scene. I painted some of the tendrils on the base the same colour as the egg to better tie them together, and I’m fairly happy with how it turned out. I picked the fleshy colour of Aliens instead of the more yellow one of Alien for the facehugger.

I’m really happy that I finally finished the model. Not only is it a great sculpt, brilliantly capturing an iconic event in the Alien franchise, but it’s also a miniature from 1992. Just think about that for a while. When this model was popped out of its mould, I was ten years old. It was the year the Cold War officially ended, the European Union was founded, Yugoslavia fell apart, Denmark won the football European Championship and Bill Clinton was elected president. Neymar was born, Isaac Asimov died.

It’s now 23 years later, the world’s a different place, I’m all grown up and that miniature is finally painted. There’s something really cool about that.

 

Posted in Miniatures, Sci-Fi | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

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From the painting desk #28 – The Witcher

January 9, 2015

In my previous post I showed off my Witcher conversion, and a mere four days later he is fully painted! Much like the conversion, this was a fairly quick and rough job, mainly to ease me back into painting and to produce a painted miniature in a decent amount of time.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

I kept the palette quite muted, as Geralt (as the witcher character is called) is depicted as a sombre, battle-worn character. For the same reason I drybrushed the clothing fairly roughly to make them appear a bit more worn and dusty.

The eyes were a special case. The fiction reports that witchers – the mutants that they are – have reptilian eyes. Surprisingly I got the eyes painted on the first try, so better knock on wood! Naturally I don’t have the camera to show it off, so you’ll just have to trust me. I added some stubble and scars as per most descriptions of the character.

All in all, it’s not the prettiest of paintjobs, but still very serviceable. Seeing as he’s the first mini I’ve painted in some eight months, I’m happy enough with the plastic White Wolf of Rivia.

Posted in Fantasy, Miniatures | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

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From the painting desk #27 – Knifehead

May 3, 2014

After painting two jaegers, it was time to tackle a kaiju – they obviously need someone to fight. The first mini in my monster queue was Knifehead, a kaiju from the Pacific Rim movie.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

The miniature for it is a Pacific Rim Heroclix one. I forgot to photograph it before painting, but here’s a catalog image:

knifehead

Painting Knifehead was very different from painting the jaegers. The machines are all straight lines, flat surfaces and clean, bright colours, whereas the kaiju has plenty of texture and organic shapes. This was sort of reflected in my painting of him, as I went for a more irregular layering (read: not as neat), did some drybrushing and used several washes. The end result is very different from the jaegers both stylistically and in feel, and I think it was a good call as it accentuates the whole organic vs. mechanical setup. It also had the benefit of being super fast – the whole mini probably took me a few hours from start to finish.

While I liked the colour scheme of Knifehead and the rest of the kaiju in Pacific Rim, I wasn’t too fond of all the bioluminescent markings, so I did away with them. Instead I went for a blue-green scheme, almost looking like verdigris. In fact, in it’s early stages the model looked a lot like a statue. Again, the tones are very different from the jaegers’. While obviously straying far and white from the canon (schmanon), the end result was worth in my opinion.

As you may know, I like my bases very simple. This time, however, I added a little extra touch in the form of a tiny tank. Instead of completely flipping it over, I just positioned it at an angle that suggests its toylike insignificance compared to the kaiju.

You might have noticed that I seem pretty happy with Knifehead. I am! I was very sceptical of it at first, it being a clix repaint, but I was happily surprised with the end result. There are some awful, awful mould lines there, which I didn’t clean (“Come on, it’s a vinyl clix mini, not worth the hassle, let’s just get it on the table”) but even those don’t show up too badly.

 

 

Posted in Giant monsters, Miniatures, Sci-Fi | Tagged , , | 8 Comments »

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From the painting desk #26 – Seeing red

April 30, 2014

Another miniature done! Not completely happy with my previous jaeger, I decided to pick a colour I was much more comfortable with – red. I went to work on another Reaper CAV miniature, Hawk. I wasn’t originally too impressed with the mini. I thought it was boring and looked like a generic Transformer. Nevertheless, I started painting it and slowly it grew on me. Now that it’s finished, I’m really happy with it. I spent more time than usual on layering and washes, and I hope it shows!

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Inspiration for the colour scheme was another jaeger from Pacific Rim, Crimson Typhoon:

crimsontyphoon

While I would’ve loved to add some fancy freehand detailing, I’m simply rubbish at it. I settled for a few yellow transfers that I painted over a little and added a few dots to make it more interesting, and I think it doesn’t look bad at all. This also stylistically ties it together with the first jaeger I painted. I would’ve loved to paint on some weathering, but in my game setting the kaiju action is only just beginning, and the jaegers have yet to face any – hence no battle damage.

With the first two jaegers painted, it’s time to tackle the first kaiju. Comments and constructive criticism always welcome!

Posted in Giant monsters, Miniatures, Sci-Fi | Tagged , , | 5 Comments »

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