***To the Gentleman Mike, who emailed me yesterday 19th, please could you get in touch again with an email address, the one sent does not work.***



And everyone else, apologies for the lack of updates, real life and no camera has very much slowed my blogging down to a glacial drip.

However, I have not been idle!

I am still working on the Khador with a full intention of doing almost the entire model range (a tad obsessive) and I still have a few side projects that will come out soon enough.

Til then, heres a sneak preview of the next update:

White Khador

This has been a long time coming.
About a year ago I got some khador in a trade and they were shelved until I wanted to use them. Well I feel that inspiration now and so have been painting them for a little while.

I started them in October before I had discovered airbrushing, and the thing about me is that I always try something new with each new project. So I tried blending white (yes, the colour most say is the hardest) to learn blending with.

Now it could have been nicer, but I don't think I did too badly to be honest.
The first pic is of Beast - 09.There is a fair bit of conversion work on him, his legs have been posed to be walking rather than looking like he's squatting.
He is bent in an advancing position. His axe was completely removed, his hands pinned and I gave him a weapon that looks like it has reach. (However, the comically thin brass rod is definitly not big enough, I'm about to order some thicker tubing)

Also, There is some greenstuff work on his hood to reflect the plastic 'jack sculpt shape and provide a nice sizable area to put the "09" on. His chimney stacks were then pulled farther back.

All in all, I'm very pleased with him.

 

Then came the airbrush. Since reading Wrath I've really liked the look of the warcaster Harkevich. The thing about Harkevich is that he wants Jacks that are good at both melee and shooting, so Behemoth, Spriggan (for stealth removal), and his character 'jack Black Ivan are all optimal choices.
So below is Black Ivan. Hi was primed black, very lightly airbrushed in Valljeo model air's Light Grey, this was neatened up with a brush, and then highlighted with white.
This chap is still very much a WIP, particularly on his base and his head, but I'm happy with results so far. I think the Khador army will be quite monotone, as I really like the army wide effect of monotone paint jobs.

 




















 Some of you may notice how his claw is not the proper one (don't worry, I won't be playing tournaments) I did this because I didn't like the square fist, imo it's much more in theme with the rest of the 'jacks to have round fists, so a little green stuff work allowed the claws to be on the main fist.

Next up is the devastator, again still a WIP. No conversion work here just the stock model, although there are a few very long strong pins in those arms.

One thing I have noticed is that the blending on the arm shields hasnt worked properly, I'm still teaching myself wet blending, it certainly seems tougher in white than in other colours, my attempt with red worked perfectly. I'll get there though.

The devastator was done similar to Ivan, but the grey was done heavier and then the white was done on the armour rather than edges. I'm really pleased with it so far.

 

As you can see, a lot of work still to do. I've been thinking about putting sandbags on the ground but I've tried making them and I...well I can't. Anyone know any good ones to purchase?

Cheers for reading!

Much quicker than I thought, I managed to take pictures :)

The model pictured is a Fennblade officer. He is not finished as yet however, as my airbrush compressor decided it had a leak on the underside of the air tank and so couldn't hold pressure. It will be completed once I get a new one (soon hopefully)

Step 1: The model was primed black, then primed a thin white from directly above him. This left a two tone black and white model that, when painted over in thin layers, allows a natural light source effect by giving shadows on the undersides of the model - where natural shadow would be.

Step 2: He was masked off leaving just his flesh visible and airbrushed vallejo's hexed lichen for the dark purple shadow to his skin.

Step 3: A layer of very thinned P3 Trollblood blue was airbrushed over an arc above the model. The result of this can be seen lower down this page.

Step 4: I next deal with the metals giving a zenithal treatment using dull silvers and black wash to keep the silver out of the eye catching brightness. (I want the flesh and the weapon to be the focus)

Step 5: I chose the colours for the sash cloth, went with green for the purple compliment and got to work with thin layers, starting at Citadel's Dark Angel green up to snot green and then highlighted with Goblin Green. The crystals on his skin got the same treatment too

Step 6: Next it was a matter of sorting the details, i.e. the eyes, gems, teeth/nails and leather.
It is my personal opinion that the teeth of the trolls should always be the same colour as their nails, I'm not sure why, but they bring each other out if this is the case, and look odd if the colours are different. I will put a special mention to the eyes though, they were a royal pain, and after the original artwork for Borka I'm a strong advocator of the belief that all trollkin, full blood trolls and dire trolls should be without a pupil. They simply dont have them, end of.

I do need to finish the model, there is the matter of the weapon of course, which will be experimented on. I also need to clean up the white glue rubbish on his feet.

The base needs some work too. I sculpted the base out of milliput and added a few items. The theme for this army will be trolls searching old trollkin temples for forgotten knowledge/weapons to use against the skorne etc.



However, I just ssaw Rok today, and I'm feeling that head is fantastic!
Maybe the trolls should be in an icy environment and all have beards? hmmm....

Ok, I admit it, the blog slipped my mind for a while.
This was for a number of reason, the first being I got a new job and was quite busy adjusting to a long commute, the second being christmas. It was my first christmas alone with my fiance and so a lot of effort was made.


That being said, I was been busy at work. I've recently started playing games again after a long quiet period and have developed a new colour scheme for a trollblood army.

This is a weird one because I've decided to sell all my trolls rather than strip them and start again. Then I'll concentrate on my white khador before returning to trolls at some point (after all, they are by far the best Hordes faction) :D

So, new year new ideas. I plan to post significantly more often, and with lots more pics.

Hopefully by the weekend I'll have some stuff to post

Cheers!

All quiet on the western front

It's been quiet, simply because Skyrim is out.

What can I say,  it's awesome ...and big. Very big. And therefore takes up lots of time.

Also worth mentioning is that it's funny too. One example is that I was trudging through the mountainous wilderness north of Markarth when a bloke runs up to me, possibly a Nord, Breton or Imperial.
Anyway, he stops me and says "Here take this, just for a bit. Dont take it yourself or I'll kill you"

I take it from him, wondering what the hell is going on, but a free item is a free item. He hands me an Orcish sword of cold...sweet.

Next, a hunter runs up and asks if I've seen a thief.

I see my opportunity here to play with people and answer "no".

Next, the hunter turns round and spots the thief who had taken to hiding at the side of the road in plain site of everyone. The hunter shouts and starts shooting, while the thief sits there and takes it.
Once the thief was dead, the hunter seems satisfied, turned around and walked away, apparently appeased.

All this time, I was stood in between the two brandishing my shiny new sword. Win :D

Anyway, a bit of p+m news. Airbrush gear has now arrived and I'm loving it. I got two crappy brushes with the compressor I'm planning on learning with and using for basic priming etc and a good brush for detail and better control spraying.

It was a good plan but didn't work. I used the good brush after priming with one of the poor ones, and clogged it with crappy thick GW paint. (well all the youtube vids and guides I've read mentioned the most important thing is to learn to thin paints, I now know why)
So for a couple of days it has sat in a bath of acetone, windowlene and airbrush cleaner while the liquid slowly turns more blue/purple.

Aside from this, I've learned a tonne in a very short space of time.
I have decided to repaint my entire collection of trollbloods in zenithal technique using primarily the airbrush. This obviously requires testers.

The scheme I've decided on is based on the storm troll artwork, I'm thinking purple shades in the skin tones built up to trollblood blue this contrasted with cold silvers, dark leathers, red/purple gems and maybe green tartan. The thing to really make it pop though will be that every model will have some degree of OSL on it, if only from their eyes which will be glowing arcane blue and possiby glowing tattoos (very similar colour to hawk turquoise)

I've grabbed a few unpainted testers, starting on a pyre troll, a bomber and a fennblade unit attachment. A couple of different types of models with a lot of skin on show so I can practice the skin tone which I'm rather excited about.

So, a black prime to start. With a spray of white from above to signify a light source allowing super thing paint to be shaded by the underneath as per the zenithal technique.

Heres a couple pics to show the two hours or so of testing.

On the left shows the underside in black, and on the right shows the white that falls in the places that the light would naturally hit (assuming a source of light from the top) All models start like that.

Fennblade UA. A couple of things to note of this mini. First, I am using crazy strong masking tape, I'll have to figure that one out XD
Also, this one shows the purple base and trollblood blue highlight. Overall, I am really pleased with the result, the blend is beautiful. I just hope I can do the rest of the mini justice.


That's it for now, feel free to comment etc.
There will be lots more to come soon.

Random update

It's not really an update per se, as there's nothing new here but, I have decided to start showing old stuff. This might end up being interesting to read because hopefully it'll show a growth and development in my skills as a painter. That and why the hell not?!

Also, I have recently been looking into airbrushing. I've done a lot of research, and watched many Youtube vids etc and reckon I'd be alright with that type of tool...so that's what I'm getting for Christmas courtesy of my lovely fiancee! XD

I have pretty much settled on the one I want and I've found a decent compressor that looks like it'll last a good long time and is reasonably quiet (something that can be a serious problem by the sounds of it).

Right now, I'm considering investing in one of the Badger line, as Les who does awesomepaintjob.com recommends them like crazy (and a lifetime guarantee is nothing to sniff at)  and after reading quite a bit on dakkadakka.com and other places it seems that the ps900 that is available on Ebay for $55 seems like one of the better ones despite the tiny price tag.
That along with the TC-20T compressor seems like a fantastic starter set up to really hone my skills and I mean really, I'll most likely do several hours a day and fly through models. (After all, I want to get good enough to get my Trollblood collection (276 points...almost everything in the Trollblood line with most units duplicated) repainted in a new skin tone which I'll explore later complete with NMM metals and really nice bases.

But that stuff is for another time :D

I decided that every time I post something I'll endeavour to post a pic, it makes the blog more shiny and significantly more interesting.
So, below we have an old Cygnar army I did. I did these a couple years ago and didn't really enjoy them too much, I think I abandoned them just after the field test had finished in favour the Retribution line that was coming out (I bought the entire line of Ret and decided I was bored of them two months later) :/

So, the army had very basic Shale bases with nothing more because I never got round to doing anything with them. The army itself was an experiment to push my skills, so the entire army was black, with a nice yellow trim. I chose black because it’s a challenging colour to paint and get right.

The army was fun to play with, but Cygnar's infantry feels like it lacks something, and eHaley, although an awesome caster, has a feat that makes your friends cry and stay home which got very tiresome in all honesty. Caine on the other hand...was the first model I did for Cygnar and I was dying to use him but could NEVER write a list that I liked, which is weird, because he doesn’t really need a decent list as he is a one man army on his own but I ended up never using him.

Anyway, enough talk...PICS!
epic Caine

epic Haley

Thunderhead

Thorn

Stormclad

A pair of hunters

Gun Mage unit

Black 13th

Solos
Left to right: Male Junior Warcaster, Squire and Arlan Strangeways

Aaaand the army shot :D

All in all I was quite proud of this army when I had done it. But it was done in one weekend and it is rather bland. I don't think I'd even heard of NMM back then.

Any comments appreciated :)

'Till next time folks!

Phil

Second day second post! We'll see how long this lasts...


Right now, I am finishing up a Blindwater army ready to sell it. The army consists of:

Bloody Barnabas
Calaban the Grave Walker
2x Converted Blackhide Wrastlers
2x Ironback Spitters
3x Bull Snappers
2x Full Gatorman Posses with custom weaponry
Wronge Eye and Snapjaw
3x Croak Hunters
1x Thrullg
1x Converted Totem Hunter.

The conversions are fairly extensive in some places and not so much in others.

The Blackhide Wrastlers for example are on the Snapjaw body (I hate the silly Wrastler pose and love the feral look of Snapjaw) so there's a Snapjaw with a shoulder plate and a Snapjaw with a Wrastler head and lots of green stuff work.

The Gatorman Posses all have different weaponry, this is because I thought they would most likely scavenge their weapons from felled enemies rather than forge their own. They are made using lots of bits from lots of kits.

Finally the Totem Hunter...isn't really a Totem Hunter, it's Wrong Eye given a butcher knife and a spear instead of a hook blade. Personally I like it better than a smooth alien thing in the gator army.

[Not sure why but this photo got lost somewhere] :/

But there are a few pics of the rest:

All in all there are 31 models coming in at 86 points.

They are a super competitive and fun army to play, the gator posse being arguably the best troops hordes has to offer (although I do like my Troll Champion brick best)

So yeah. These guys need a little detailing done on their eyes and the bases painted on the beasts and then theyll be on Ebay.
I'll send them off in custom cut Fehrerr Foam to keep them safe.

Cheers for looking!

Phil