Photo Setup Improvements

Finally got about to trialling a new setup for miniatures photography.  Took two desk lamps and replaced the bulbs with 'daylight' grade LED bulbs.  Massive increase in brightness and a bright white hue as well.

The result: a dramatic increase in brightness and proper colour.  Witness below, some Eldar models (three warlocks and a Bonesinger).  Much better colour than some previous photos.

This last one I cropped it a bit and touched the brightness up a hair, so there's room to improve.

Granted, still needs some work on tweaking the grey behind (it's actually a white page).  I have some references for setting the white balance on the camera, so that will be the next step.  This was a simple setup on the gaming table with the models on a bright white piece of paper, and two desk lights aimed at them camera A/B style.  Keeps the shadows to a minimum.

Some Reaper Miniatures minis had the same effect, though backing away a little and zooming in seemed to work a bit better.
A lovely rogue mini that just yelled 'red' at me when I was choosing the colour.

The photos are much better, you can see the green mildew at the base of the stone wall.

This Succubus was a tough one to paint.  Flesh tones, especially on a model that is little else, are harder than they look.  Turned out fairly well, though in my experimentation I found a slightly darker skin tone I can use in the future.  More of an olive-skinned look.

I'm going to have to revisit this guy's varnish a bit.  He's a bit shiny, and I'm not sure what happened there. The photo came out well though.

That went well, for some quick experimentation and a very quick setup.  More fiddling around is needed but I'm on a much better path than before.  This post is Ironclad-approved!

Painting progress

Over the last few weeks I've made some progress on painting.  First up is the finally-finished Eldar Hemlock Wraithfighter.  It's on the far right, and pictured with the 1000 points of Eldar I've been working on for the Warhammer 40k builder's league at our local game shop, Everything Games.

Doing this builder's league, for me at least, was a way to push more painting, and get more models done.  Given that the league is over, but I've managed to paint quite a few things, I'd call it a mixed success.

A closer look at the Hemlock, showing the painted cockpit.  This model fits together great, but those smooth, curvilinear surfaces take a LOT of coats of paint.  Will have to use an airbrush for future models like this one.  Still, it turned out rather nicely for the efforts.

However, there's still more to do to finish the 2000 points of models for the league (or, more appropriately, my own goal).

That whole shelf needs to be done, less some of the unprimed guys at the back.

However, for now I'm working on a bit of a palate cleanser, a mini for my D&D warlock character in the campaign we play weekly after work.

He's coming along nicely, and it's always refreshing to paint a model that is more 'freeform,' in that there's no uniform, no specific colour scheme, just a chance to play with colour choices and painting techniques.

After this guy, it's back to the grind with my team of Imperial Guard for the Kill Team game, as well as the ruined building terrain pieces (one of which is pictured behind them, sprayed grey for a basecoat).

After that, maybe back to a dragon I had started before the builders' leagues took all my painting time.

She'll be a green dragon, though I've always liked the Larry Elmore style contrasting belly scales, so I went with a nice, deep yellow.  The base and wings are in front, separate so as to get all the hidden areas.

Along with all that, there's the Age of Sigmar builder's league, so I've got a bunch of Seraphon to paint up for that one...

Reconditioning Terrain - Part One

As a side project while on leave, I decided to recondition some old wargaming terrain I had lying about. These hills are decent, made about twenty years ago, but show their age.  They're a bit faded, and the grass covering and the way they are sculpted is very 1990s.  Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to update them and bring them into line with my more modern terrain collection.  This way everything will match and look cohesive.

As you can see, they're kind of squarish, and not that interesting.  Again, nothing wrong with them, but let's give them a nice, hard composite coating and update the paint to match the latest terrain boards, shall we?

First, get your materials together.  For this you'll need:

• White glue - I recommend Rona or Home Depot and get the big jug.  Not only will it last you the project you're working on, I've had my jug since 2007-ish
• Paintbrush (maybe more than one) - again, the building store.  You need a big one, and since it will handle glue, sand and paint it doesn't have to be high end.
• Builder's sand - I bought the 30lb bag years ago and I've still not made a dent in it, despite basing legions of models, making 40 square feet of terrain boards, as well as some miscellaneous hills and other features.
• Newspaper - lots and lots and lots of newspaper.  This WILL get messy.

Additionally, have a nice, open space to work on.  For me, the gaming table works well, but you could do it on the floor, outside, garage, large table, etc.

Don't forget the caffeine either.  

Make sure everything is laid out and you have plenty of room.  The newspaper should be double layer at minimum, quadruple layer is better.  This will get messy, and there's glue involved.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Next is to take as much white glue as you think you need (it's okay to be conservative, you can always mix up more) and mix it with about one fifth of water.  You can play around with it to check the consistency, but it should flow readily from the brush while staying exactly where you want on the workpiece.

It's hard to tell from a still photo but the glue is slightly more runny than you'd get straight out of the bottle.  I use an old sour cream or yogurt container to mix in.  The advantage is that you can put the lid back on if you have to stop or are doing multiple larger pieces over several days if you don't have the space to lay them out. In this case, it's only a few hills so no problem with keeping extra glue mix.

Now you apply to the surface of the item.  This initial layer makes the terrain piece 'sticky' so that when you put the sand on it it doesn't go scattering all over the place.  As an aside, I chose not to change the shape of the hills due to a mix of nostalgia, laziness and the fact that stepped hills make for easier model placement during a game.  

Here you can see the initial layer of glue:

Now, it's time to add the sand.  Just normal, everyday builders' sand.  As you can see, the 30lb bag lasts for a long time.  I've kept it in an old cat litter bucket for ease of handling.

I normally sprinkle a good amount of sand over the upper surface of whatever I'm working on, like so:

The next step is where the magic happens.  Actually, not so much magic, but materials engineering (yeah, I had to throw that in there).  Once you've got a good bit of sand on, you get some extra glue mix on the brush and you pat it down so that you have a glue and sand slurry over the object you're making.  As needed, add extra sand and pat that down too.  You want to have a thorough mixture and a good coating over the entire workpiece.

You can see how the glue and sand forms a mix on the surface.  Don't be afraid to adjust the mix.  More sand makes for a more rugged surface.  Less sand makes the 'dirt' a bit smoother.  Make sure, as in the case here, to run your mix down the sides.  That way the edges of the hills are thoroughly covered as well.  Watch out for brushstrokes in the surface, as that will make it look a bit odd.  If you have to move sand around with your brush use a circular motion or move the brush from several directions.

A big benefit of this method is that the terrain pieces will end up with a nice, hard coating of sand and glue mixture.  It makes them quite durable, and if you're reconditioning old pieces like I am here, it will pretty much cover any previous decoration.  In this case it was a type of modelling grass that was very stiff and scratchy, not as nice as static grass.  Once the composite is on, you would never know it had a previous covering.

Once you're done all the pieces you want to do, lay them up somewhere you can let them dry for a while. Sometimes that will be the table or workspace, such as a full terrain board. Normally, I let them dry overnight, that way the glue has lots of time to fully polymerize before you do anything else with it.  In this case, I had a shelf that is destined to be moved upstairs, but for now it's empty.  I laid out some newspaper, as well as some old blister pack blisters:

The reason to raise the hills above the paper is to keep them from getting glued down.  As the next photo shows, gravity always wins so you will tend to have a little bit of pooling at the lowest edge.  

To avoid this, I put some blisters from old miniature packaging underneath the centre of each piece.

These have been set to dry overnight.  In the case of large items, such as a full terrain board, I've found a small, desktop fan can help.  That said, even on 2'x4' boards 24 hours has generally been sufficient.  Once that's done, the hills will be ready for painting.  However, that's part two...

Fuegan, the Burning Lance

Another post with finished models.  While I didn't get much writing done in the last few days, I've been productive at the painting table.  Here's some shots of the Eldar Phoenix Lord I've been working on (by working on I mean that I did most of him a while ago, then finished the last few bits recently).

The photo setup isn't the greatest, but it seems to have worked with just a backdrop of white paper and the camera with flash.  I still need to trial some different methods of taking pictures of models, but for today it'll do as I've got a bunch of other things on my plate.

I'd say he looks pretty good.  For those who are interested, the main colour is P3 Khador Red Highlight.  The gun is P3 Blighted Gold (sweet colour for that ancient look) and the green trim is P3 Iosan Green.  It should be noted that the Space Marine helmet on the base is done in the colours of one of my most excellent foes, a Dark Angels successor chapter.  Fuegan has waded through many of those warriors, and it's a good way to 'poke' my friend, with whom I had a good narrative campaign going.  Also, the GW technical Blood Spatter paint makes for good blood dripping out of the helmet.

That's all for now.  More on the painting of a wizard character I have later.

Work in Progress (painting)

Here’s the latest work in progress for me.  It’s an Eldar Wave Serpent transport tank. 

I’m engaged in an escalation campaign for Warhammer 40000 (the miniatures wargame) with a friend of mine.  We did this to accelerate our painting, as we’ve included in our scenario rules penalties that apply to models that are unpainted.  Things like not being able to start on the table or other minor effects that encourage us to paint.  This way, hopefully, it continues to push our painting and I may one day actually have an army that I can field all-painted most of the time.  That would be nice, rather than this:

[sigh]

Yes, I have lots to paint.  Thankfully, now having finished with one training milestone, I can actually do some.  In between bouts of writing.  That way, my armies will eventually look entirely like this:

Work continues.