Rise of the Dragons

Howdy space cowboys, welcome to another installment of my distraction from painting.

In my last post I promised some upcoming blog post and I apologize for delinquency there, both on my part and the other artists.... $H!* has been really crazy for all of us lately. I recently moved into a new space only to have the place flood and am now in a very bad living situation and looking for a new space. My work will be picking up speed dramatically just as soon as I find a new home for my workspace - pinkyswear! I have a total of 6 painting commissions, 2 pro assemblies and a conversion on my plate right now, with more coming soon...

That being said, and before we get into the meat of the content here I would like to put out a call for new projects for my new artists. In my last post I mentioned Arthur had joined the studio, he is now wrapping up his task list and looking for new projects.

The Meatgrinder...
So in my last post I promised to post something soon about the Rish Dragon I painted for AGM. If youère still living under a rock or refuse to take notice of anything other than 40K, or Warmachine, or whatever you may not be aware but Vancouver is now host to a new miniatures manufacturer and the studio does a lot of work for them. I am responsible for Painting the Rish force(among other things), Gord handles the Garrick and Arthur heads up the Saan force.

Recently I painted up this bad boy for their product demo shots and box art.

Click for the kickstarter update

Now if you HAVE been following Drake, you`ll notice that this miniature has actually been painted before, and that this rendition looks rather different from the previous rendition. Well the previous rendition was a pre-production model produced for gameplay videos earlier in the year, painted by non other than Chad Lascelles. Well a number of changes have been made to refine the sculpt and it needed to be repainted. 

This is now a big challenge in a way, right from the get-go. The bulk of the audience has already seen the previous version, but the paint-job still had to be what people defined as the Rish Dragon from here forward. Another challenge set by AGM was that while paintjobs had to look hot, they still had to be something anyone could replicate to a fair likeness, no matter their skill level. The paintjobs will at some stage be repeated with painting tutorials as far as I know, but now I'm just going to comment on the approach, theory and major steps...

So obviously the first stage was the cleanup and assembly, which went pretty smoothly, as the parting was done pretty damn well (minor gaps to fill, good fit on the parts, little to no pinning - I pinned the wings). Usually on a model I would do all the basing first, but as the model(like all Drake Dragons) has a scenic base, I skipped basing and primed, airbrushed a base colour and basecoated the base with Cardon Granite. 

There were a few things I really wanted to have on the model:

• I wanted it lighter than the previous version;
• I wanted, belly or palms or the ``vulnerable`` spots to be a different colour;
• I wanted the metal to be a bit more interesting than `fresh off the assembly line`;
• I wanted a lot of pop from colour contrast; 
• I wanted him to work well with the other dragons while still being unique; and
• I wanted to enhance the wings, as they are a bit lacking in detail.

The base was first drybrushed with a khaki colour, then washed once with agrax and once with sepia. it was then drybrushed with cryx bane highlight, then washeed with a watered down mix of sepia, agrax and nuln oil. I like to get any drybrushing and uncontrolled (or heavy) washing out of the way first.

So being that I wanted the colou 'pop' and the dragon is blue, I went with a sort-of 'roughly hewn' kind of metal for the armour. I didn't want to to look new or clean, but I didn't want it to look beat-up and damaged, the Rish take their armour seriously. So I started off by mixing boltgun or something with thamar black at 1:1, with a dark brown and a fox brown at a full mix ratio of 12:12:1:1. I then washed over the model twice with agrax earthshade to really dirty it up and darken into the creases. That gave me something looking like this...

So as you can see, I have a metal tone that doesn't look rusty, but doesn't look new. Then I went over the dragons skin with a mid-tone blue with a touch into the green spectrum, stegadon blue, i thought it would contrast nicely with the mix of kantor and hawk i would use for the upper-highlights. moving forward I used a very dark brown for the leather armour and took that up through snakebite for added contrast. The leather had to pop against the blue of the flesh and the red of the armour, so I took it closer to a yellow tone.

The wings, palms and areas of the mouth were done using a dark grey for a base and going up through P3`s cryx bane highlight. Despite seeming to be a grey, it`s a great paint for subtlety, as it has undertones of the yellow spectrum and can actually be quite bright(it`s good for shading and dirtying white too). I then based and washed the mouth and did out the horns spikes and claws with my standard 'dirty teeth' technique - Dragons do NOT floss. At this stage it looked like the picture above. Moving forward I wanted to pop the wings a bit more and start getting some level of shading into the armour. the wings were given a bit of shading into the recesses, which was emphasised on the under side and repeated to add shading to the shape of the wings. The wings were then given a blotchy effect to transition from the blue flesh into the wing membrane, remembering to add a few random bloches here and there to give it a bit more of an organic feel. I did my first highlights on the metal with boltgun and then pig iron, to give us something that looked a bit like this...

I thought that the detail elements of the model lacked in variation and I knew I really wanted to get more out of the model. So, calling in to the office for the go-ahead, I added gold to the model on the rings binding the straps and armour together. According the lore, metal is something that was fairly rare and hard to come by in the world of Dara, so I just wanted to make sure it fit that there was gold being used.

So to really make this model pop I came back over everything again for a second round of highlights. The gold and the metal were highlighted up using vallejo air metals, while giving washes and glazes into crevices to darken those and add to the zenithful lighting. the flesh was given a once-over with a mix of kanot and something very pale at 3:1, and the teeth and claws were given a final pop of pure white. I then added a ring of black to the base and we end up with...

Before I go, I just want to give a little bit more eye-candy and talk about a personal project. My ongoing effort into the highly technical dark eldar. Here's a shot my vehicles; note that I'm using directional lighting and a 2-tone paint effect. Please also admire the blending, this is all freehand(no airbrush). I hope to do a blog on thes, once the vehicles and a full unit are completed. I'm currently painting all models in the army simultaneously and it's painfully slow. As soon as the armour is done thing will be split by units for the detail sections.

Here's a shot of a completed infantry model that i did as a test...

...and here's the previous version of the scheme. The previous version didn't have as much green tones or take highlights as close to white as the new scheme. I also don't like the desert basing so much any more, with the scheme being so 'clean and shiny new' I wanted the chance to show off some weathering, corrosion and customization, so I'm switching the base to match my terrain at home - city ruins. I might get some work done on that soon or hire Nathan to help me out and start blogging about that too.

Thats about it for now. Hopefully Gord will throw something up here soon. I know he's just wrapped up a couple of projects. I have some other things to talk about too, so maybe we can get into a rhythm and get out a post a day next week. 

Stay tuned, there's more coming.

Something wicked this way comes...

Hi there readers, Lee here with a long overdue update.

Yes I know, outta the blue right? Where did we go?

Well the Beautiful Warfare team has been on a "working hiatus" and has been advancing the business in new ways. One of the major setbacks I've had is the profitability of miniature painting full-time. Or the lack thereof. I've had to take up part-time employment, which consequently also failed me temporarily and I had to take a 3rd line of income above that. This of course leaves little time for painting and less time for blogging, and all the other tertiary activities of running the business, but that's not to say we haven't been busy.

THE PROJECTS...

Myself and Gord have been working on some advance orders for a client who went away on vacation for a number of months, about 20 models. We've also been busy with a few personal projects and I painted up some Menoth figures for another client, but had to hand the project back incomplete(at no charge) as I just had to bring immediate cash in to pay the bills. I`m still working on my Dark Eldar, which are starting to make headway after finalizing the scheme on a model I painted up as a test and won GW`s UHC contest with. I`ve also scrapped my Menoth and Tyranid schemes and re-primed all the models for updated lists....
...anyone got some rending claws and scything talons? I need 3 of each!

OTHER WORK...

If you're on some of the Facebook groups we frequent, you may have noticed one or two posts with some models you don't recognize from any shelf in any store. I have been working with Action Games Miniatures Ltd for quite some time on their game Drake, and now with shipping deadlines around the corner, Gord has joined me on the painting team and we're working on their box art and product demo models. I`m taking on the Rish force and Gord is handling the Garrick figures, there may be some cross-pollination in the future, but for now, for continuity`s sake we`re keeping to factions. Arthur Nicholson is handling the Saan faction, and together we make up the official panting department(for now). I've also been helping the guys down there at the studio to clean up mold masters and rescue detail lost in the reduction and 3D printing stages.

AWARDS...

In the last few competitions we`ve been facing ever-stiffer competition and much bigger turnouts, making the placements that much harder to achieve and so very much more rewarding. Kelly Kim and Arthur Nicholson, have both been entering a lot more, and I must admit these are painters I very much respect, who`s work I always enjoy seeing. To be voted and placed along-side these painters is something that makes me proud.

• Paintapalooza 40K Single figure 1st place - Gord (March)
• Paintapalooza 40K Large Figure 2nd place - Lee (March)
• Trumpeter Best Painted - Gord
• UHC 1st place - Lee (July)
• Paintapalooza Fantasy Squad 1st place - Gord (August)
• Paintapalooza 40K Large Figure 2nd place - Lee (August)

NEW DIRECTION...

So we are going to be taking Beautiful Warfare in a slightly new direction. We are now going to branding not so much as a professional studio, but rather as an exclusive studio. It`s not pomp or bluster driving me to head this way though. What I mean when I say `exclusive`, is that we will be only taking on projects of interest and merrit, and the focus will be on pro and studio quality work with slightly higher fees, standardized minimum orders (within reason and allowing for those odd exceptions), etc. As part of this new direction we are now also seeking new artists, and the studio will function as a collective. We will be sharing out the work based on strengths, specialization, interest in the project and the time available of each artist to ensure the studio produces the highest caliber of work.

So our first new artist on the line-up is Arthur Nicholson. If you play in Vancouver you probably know him or have seen his work. He manages the Vancouver Elite Miniature Painters group on facebook, has written for Hand-Cannon' and is also notable for some recent awards. Most recently taking awards at the August Paintapalooza, Arthur also took a 1st place and numerous 'tokens' down at Lock and Load. As I mentioned above, he is also part of the Drake painting department.

We are still seeking new artist, priorities being for:

• Quality of work - ....
• Adaptability - Ok this one I think I may need to explain, we want people who are going to be get excited about projects and be both inspired and inspiring. People who try new things and who`s models don`t all have the exact same feel.
• Personality - as a functioning collective the group needs to get along and have a shared vision, we're not looking for employees we're looking for partners(though I will still had up the lion's share of the business end)
• Notoriety - we're looking for people who are a part of the community, or have blogs, or regularly compete at painting competitions.
• Category - tarrain specialist, mass production specialist, sculpt specialist, etc.

There will be a few things that I ask of the new artists, such as to contribute to the blog, write a bio for the website, let us include some shots of your work in the gallery, don't charge less than the minimums, etc. etc. but it`s very much going to be a work-together kind-of thang.


Thats about it for the update folks. I know, it`s a miniatures blog post and I didn`t post a single picture. it was an update of the studio, not the models. Just keep reading, We`ll be throwing up some posts about the drake stuff really soon. Comissions and personal pieces will be following shortly, but right now, with limited time that seems to be the focus. I`m going to be adding Arthur to the blog as a writer, so he may come in talk about some of his recent work.

Hang on! wait.....

....there. Better?

Current projects: Orks and Tau!

Hello all Gord here.
Just a quick update on some of my current projects.


I'm changing up some things in my Ork list and trying some new things in preparation for the next tournament, the Wet Coast GT.

So I'm building more Zapp guns and adding some big bombs for my deff koptas.

I found my deff koptas were tricky to fit into the carrying case so I ripped all the rotors off and started magnetizing them. I'm also magnetizing the new big bombs.

Also here's a little sneak peak of a commission I'm working on. Still haven't done the base or or any weathering powders.

Until next time.

New Projects and Announcements

Lee here with another update from the Beautiful Warfare team...

So today's post is going to be a three part blog consisting of a couple of announcements, a sneak peak at my next project as a bit of a tip for Zenith priming and a look at my latest completed project, mostly as a distraction from beginning to paint as I`m not 100% sure as to what I want to do on this next mini...

So first and foremost; the website is LIVE! yes, we now have our site up as a gallery, list of services and partnerships and a request form. The site is still in Beta stage, with a glitch or two, but for now it serves it`s purpose and looks pretty damn cool - thanks Liam! Check it out www.beautifulwarfare.ca

The second announcement is that we now have a deal with OneStopShopCardsAndGames for great rates on the Warmachine & Hordes, and potentially Malifaux. We are able to offer the lowest price on those lines of figures for anyone wanting any services, from pro-assembly through paints. The partnership is non-exclusive, and I would love to have a partnership with any other store able to offer me a token discount on any other lines of product - We are not store biased, and shop for product and play at various stores depending on product, availability and local community.

Speaking of community, One-Stop is hosting a Privateer Cup, a free weekend long tournament with tonnes of prizes! Check out the event details here. Saturday is round-robin, with one elimination from each group. Sunday is single elimination, so a potential 8 games, and a chance of prizes no matter where you are in the standings with door prizes and raffles.

Ok, ok, back to miniatures, as I said I would post a sneak peak of my next project. Excellent timing too, as the figure is featured on the CMON homepage today. As promised I`ll post a bit of a tutorial, more like a tip, on zenith priming. But first here`s a pic of the model...

Anima Tactics - Legacy of Solomon

I`m not 100% sure of the scheme I want to use yet, I do know I don`t want to use NMM, though I do want to use some similar techniques, I was thinking something along these lines, but more towards the purple tone used in the image above, or a darker blue - I know he wants it to look dark if possible. There`s also going to be some rather advanced water effects on the model, which i`m not entirely looking forward to doing, but will certainly look awesome(it takes a long time and means a lot of down time).

I`m not sure I want to do the cracked effect, it`s more the tones and feel of the shading to look at.

So looking at the schemes and techniques I've primed the model black, and given it a wide Zenith. So why use this technique? most of you probably use this technique or have tried it and understand it. Some of you probably found it not worth the extra effort, when you can probably get a base-coat down for one of the colours in roughly the same amount of time. Well I think that in a lot of cases, people have the technique in practice without really using it well. So I've given another figure a typical bad zenith...

Yeah ok it's not a great shot, all of todays pic from my table are from my phone, care of my DSLR being out of battery from the photo shoot. But if you enlarge that image it'll be pretty clear that the prime is a bit spotty, has not touched a lot of areas where the technique would help to give a bit more pop on the underside areas, and is probably a bit too heavy on the top surfaces. These are all because of one simple thing I did MAJORLY wrong. For this one, I simply held the model at an angle and gave a couple of very light dusts of white from directly above.

So why's this bad? Well you should by now know that when you're priming you don't want to hold the can still and spray at the model. To get a really nice thin, smooth prime you want to hold the can at a bit of an angle and sweep across the figure in very light coats. That's why i got the spotty effect! This of course ruins a  lot of the purpose of the technique. This also has the effect of pooling the primer too heavily in one area and risking some finer detail.

Another thing about this execution was that when you look at the way that light acts on an object and what we`re trying to do, it just isn`t accurate, and it doesn`t help on a lot of the surfaces it`d be really useful for. when you paint zenith, you`ve got to lie a little and drop that highlighting outwards from the zenith just a touch, otherwise the gradient doesn`t look right and the lighting seems a bit stark and unnatural. Think of it this way, it`s a sunny day outside, if you look at the sky, you can see that light from the sun is being refracted in the atmosphere and all other points in the sky are sending light towards you, concentrating towards the suns position.

So here`s how to do it. prime the mini black - WELL, remember the upper surfaces are going to get a few extra hits of prime so keep it light. Hold the model at an angle of about 70 degrees and sweep very quickly one way and then the other with the white, to give a very light dusting. Rotate the model about 45 degrees and repeat. Keep going, making sure the dustings are very light, the true zenith will eventually build to be the most brightly lit. Here`s an example...

So the last piece in the puzzle is scale. The larger the object you`re painting, the more you want to drop that angle down to being a side-on, to at most about 45 degrees. about 80-85 degrees is good for something ``man-sized`` and about 50-60 for something like a tank, 45 for a very large building(just enough for a shadow under window sills). I hope you all find this verbose little tip quite helpful, if not you can always send me a request to paint it for you.

Right, as promised here`s some more eye candy....

The model had every connection pinned to ensure the pose would not be damaged.

Latest completed project was done as a commission, the scheme was set to reflect the codex `flyer` image, where the model fades from light to dark. So having said that I didn`t want to fade it too heavily, and on the lower extreme`s a I used colour-matching rob contrast rather than actually fade the model int black. It`s a feature piece in the army, a caster always is, so I wanted it bright, having said that I didn`t want the basework to steal too much attention from the actual figure, so I painted that quite dark, with very few contrasting hues within the base - contr4asts were the base coat(blue) and the washes(sepia and dark brown). I also painted the small tree you can see on the lower left side of the base very drab tones so as not to pop too much against the base and mini. I think the most imortant step I did was to go back over the whole model and put an extreme shadow of purple into all the deepest creases and edges between the gold trim and red armour. It helped to make the shadows appear very dark without over darkening the figure and got a lof clean edges in between the fine detail.

Khador Commission and then some....

Hi it's Lee again with the latest update from my painting table...

This weekend I completed and handed off the Khador commission I've been working on. If you know me on Facebook, or are part of the Warmachine Hordes Vancouver group then you might have seen a WIP shot a week or so back. I have some pics of the mini's at near completion, one or two at completion and a group shot that is now the header of the blog. I'm really sorry I couldn't get the timing better to actually get shots of all the models once completed. The weekend was insane, with finishing the commission, going to meet the client, doing the photo shoot for our website gallery and the Drake release party(amongst other things) there just wasn't the option.

I now have the photo booth set up and the settings can be ported on the camera, so that won't be an issue for future projects. Today I won't really be going off track too much, but tomorrow I'll do a fluff post (not that kind of fluff) with some upcoming events, new commissions, etc.

Project Brief...
To pin and restructure the arms of 5 Berserker models and Kherchev The Terrible, preventing them from drooping and to lengthen the arms slightly. To pose Kherchev in a highly animated pose to show his manoeuvrability as a caster by posing him leaping off a wrecked jack. To paint the models in a snow-cammo scheme that allowed for a great amount of contrast without being inconceivable as a real warfare scheme.

The scheme...
The scheme set with the client was for an off-white blue/green/purple/what-have-you snow-cammo, with little to no battle damage and weathering. The idea being that white is too bland and leaves littel to no pop, and that the original Khador scheme makes absolutely no sense for an army running around in the snowy mountain wastes (unless maybe your caster is following Winston Churchill's lead with daylight bombing runs). Everything else was pretty much left to my idea as to make the scheme work. The client has a lot more work for me so I wanted to try to avoid using mixed colours, being that replacing paints could cause issues maintaining the scheme later on.

Shot of a completed model.

So I went with the blue for the off-white, I like the tones and leaves for lots of options for contrast through the model. I also chose to run the bulk of the metal tones on the silver side of things, rather than going with too much brass, bronze and gold which I felt would have been too "noticeable in the snow". Still wanting to have a fairly high degree of contrast, the complimenting tones are mostly subtly placed.

The project started with re-structuring the upper-arm sections of all the figures. The client wanted them replaced as the arms tended to droop and bend away from their original posing and was tired of that(it also causes metal fatigue and would lead to them breaking eventually anyway). Looking at the size of the parts, it was apparent that pinning would be an issue if I wanted to keep the detail of the original parts, so I removed the upper arm sections almost entirely, only keeping the wider parts of the pistons. at this point the detail that needed to be drilled into was going to be very thin, and wouldn't very strong as a standard pin. There was also the issue of loosing some of the detail if I used a pin too wide. So I did a compound pin on the arm sections, using a very thin durable inner pin to connect the parts and an outer pin in-between them, adding more glue surface area and a higher degree of durability.

Here's a shot of one of the pinned arms....

The added advantage of the compound pinning was that I could make all the arm pistons the same length and ensure I didn't end up with some models having longer arms than others.

So Kherchev was an interesting model to assemble, I must admit the khador stuff is wonderful for posing in general, as a menoth / cryx player I'm used to very little in the way of posing options. being that the figure needed to have a very animated pose and be leaping off an object a bit of restructuring was needed in other areas, so I snapped the glue on the torso joint, right shoulder and right hip joint. The torso was simply posed turned a touch more to the right and the should reposed accordingly to have the model posed with it's axe brought back for a swing. The right hip joint was pinned, glued and then encased in putty to add structure to the joint that would hold the entire model's weight. I think the pose came out really nicely...

Kherchev's final pose.

The primary contrasting hues were placed in the metals and the basework. I painted the base a very red brown, highlighting up to rather drab tone, I felt that highlighting too much, though effective for contrast on the basework would otherwise rob out the overall appearance and bring too much focus away from the figure. I also didn't want to cover up the red tones too much. To add to the effect I went a little overboard on the rust effect on the scrap parts on the base, each base has some element of metal, be it a cog, gear, weapon or rail track that could be rusted, and took that all the way up to a bright orange more-so than I would on anoth rust element. Being that I planned to cover the bases in a fairly large volume of snow I wanted as much colour in the basework underlay as possible.

Kherchev's Base as an example of tones used on the dirt of the bases.

The metals of the model were more subtly done, being that there was the mandate of having little-to no battle damage and weathering, I wanted that crisp appearance, so kept the contrasting hues of those areas rather subtle, starting with a 50/50 mix of boltgun and black, then washing with an undiluted agryx shade and then a wash of 50% - 75% diluted sepia. After the washes dried I brought the mid-tone up to boltgun's new compliment and then went right in to mithril highlights. The copper smokestacks did allow for a lot of red, so I went with a base of warplock, going up through screaming bell into dwarf copper and then a copper/ mithril mix. The smokestacks were later glazed very roughly with a mix of black and a dark brown to give a sooty effect. The gold area were based with warplock, shaded with molten bronze and then highlighted with a 30/30/20/20 mix of rhulic gold, mithril, pealescent silver ink and pealescent gold ink.

You can see good examples of all the various metals in this shot, and how the warm tones are prevalent throughout the metal sections to aid in contrast.

The armour itself was done quite easily, starting with a base of russ grey I shaded the armour into it's mid-tone and highlight with spacewolf grey(P3's frostbite will replace this later on). The extreme highlights were then gone over with white scar to give the mini pop and annunciate the edges. I really didn't want to shade all the way up to white on this as part of the gradient because I wanted those edges nice and sharp. The accents were done with a base of stegadon blue(because it has a nice little hit of green to balance things out) then shaded with troolblood base, edged with spacewolf and then hit at the extreme points and zenith edges with white scar for a little extra edge and to define those edges from the main armour sections.

This model actually ended up with another 2 layers of snow after this picture was taken, because I thought the pose was apt for him to be trudging through ankle-deep powder.

The snow basing was done in muliple layers to build up  a bit of a puffy appearance, and to fill in sections where I wanted the snow to be deeper between crevices and so on. To give the models each a sense of individuality the snow was done in varying depths on each base.

All in all I'm quite happy with the scheme, there are a few changes I'd like to make on future models, but that will come when I get the next job for the army... you\ll see. and because we're talking about mini's here's some more photos.

 

Here are a couple shots of Kherchev almost completed, he got a few extra highlights and some shading here and there that you probably wouldn't notice. 

...and one more group shot....

Ok thats it for me today, I've got huge amounts of work to do, including 2 more unique projects and a website to write for... oh, no, I'm not going into it - I'll blog it tomorrow.

1 Day Pro-paint, Pre-production Yeeve 3D print

Hello hello,

It`s Lee here with another update on my activity. Today`s post covers an 'emergency' 1-day Pro-paint of a pre-production mini for action games miniatures. The game they produce, Drake, is currently shattering it's Kickstarter goals and will be launching soon. As part of their campaign they were putting together a rules video, to demonstrate gameplay.

You can view the video here: Drake Rules Video

Ben gave me a call on Sunday saying the mini's would arrive by courier Tuesday and the video was shoot was set to start on Wednesday 10 am. I didn't realize it at the time, butt I would actually be painting a pre-production 3D print of the model. They have a lot of their lineup currently already in pre-production metal casts, but this mini is not one of them; but I digress... I was to paint the Yeev of the Rish force.

So the project was something really exciting for me as there were 3 models going in for the painting to 3 different artist, one by Nick from Else-Where games, who I will be mentioning at a later date. The other model was headed off to Chad Lascelles, who's work you will see all over the Infinity line. I was very excited to see how my work would stack up to a well-known international painter's, seriously his work is awesome.

So here's a shot of what I received at 1pm after a discussion about scheme:

I know it's really hard to see much detail from the shots above, but most of the mini is covered in a very strange texture that just wouldn't fille or sand off, and of course I had to be gentle with the prototype, as there wouldn't be time to get another one shipped from Texas in time for the next days video shoot.

The above picture shows the primed and based mini. I primed the model black and then hit it with white to help a little with some zenithful lighting. The mini had to have a lot of contrast for use in video as the shots wouldn`t be closeups. After the prime, I took the airbrush to it with a custom dark blue, I can`t remember what I used for the airbrush basecoat. The scheme needed a dark blue back and a grey belly with some flesh tone worked in, so I used the flesh on the wings, and based the wings on both sides with the same colour. Now I mentioned the texture of the printbefore at this point the texture started impacting upon my stress level as it would just suck paint up and leave exposed areas with a stippling, stripey effect, so layer after layer, after layers, after layer were applied in rapid succession to get coverage in clog up a bit of the texture to even the surface out somewhat(i know, but you totally can`t tell on the final result).

to make the wings shading I used different washes in series over the creases in the folds of the wings, Sepia on top and ogryn flesh, sepia & agryx shade on the underside, tapering towards the exposed sections. The base was primed with a very watered down Cardon granite, which is wonderful as it fills in between the gaps, gives full coverage, but doesn`t clog up detail. The horns and teeth were done with my darkest brown, with a transition to desert yellow, then hit with a heavy dose of agryx shade, tapering away from the base of the horn or tooth. The belly was painted a dark grey.

The mid-tone and highlight stages were a nightmare, moving between techniques to get around the texture issue, from a standard transparent layering technique to a brutalised version of wet-blending and then combining to ensure nice clean transitions and clean edges. at this stage I started transitioning the grey belly into the blue hide and shading the inside of the legs, feet, throat, etc. 

The highlights on the hide were brought all the way up through blues and into white, then hit over with a very watered down blue to ensure that the blue tone wasn't lost. The horns and teeth got a hit of menoth base, then brought up to full white with white scar. the grey was highlighted up using a standard layering technique with exceptionally watered down paint to ensure that little errors wouldn't show.... at this point I'd vowed never to paint a 3D print without having at least a day to fix the texture before painting... the tail was hit with an additional stage of white and then a cover of blue to make sure it stood out, as the video was going to be mostly top-down shots.

The wings were brought up through flesh tones from the GW line, then washed again, then given another watered-down hit of a very bright flesh tone in multiple layers transitioning into the extreme highlights. I think i used a watered down ulthan grey as the highlight on the belly, just picking out the edges and a giving a freehand bit of transition through the shoulder to give the impression of musculature.

The base was finished off using various mid-tone browns as dry-brushes and overpaints with a light hit of a watered down sepia wash to add a touch of red contrast to the base. The rock base was a quick effect i use on rocks all the time, using heavy Agryx shade and sepia washes in opposite directions over a grey basecoat, then dryrushed very very lightly with the grey and then highlighted lightly with a watered down white. I spent a bit of extra time adding the static grass and flock to make sure the base didn't look like a hack job.

And here's a terrible shot of the final model.

The next day I went down to the set, to help and meet the rest of the team. Unfortunately I didn't get to meet Chad, but I did get to put his work side by side with mine, here's another aweful shot from my phone:

I was very happy with myself for producing something, that was not only very comparable quality(obviously his is a little better, but they are very, very close), but that matched his scheme so closely with absolutely no direct communication, which I think definitely paid off for the video, here's a better shot of the whole army.

So I have been on here too long talking about the Yeev for too long and have to get back to my Khador commission, but I'll find some time to post about that this week before I hand the models over to the client. I have one finalised and I'm down to the details on each of the other minis and will be painting a mini a day at this point (yee-pa!) So stay tuned for that and some more from Gord. We have our next projects and will be posting in updates on those as well.

Comments always welcome, if you like our work, please share the blog, and tell your friends we are accepting new projects!

Orks Update: Trumpeter Salute 40k Tournament

Hey guys Gord here again with an update of my favorite boyz. The Orks.
This last weekend I took them to a local tournament. The Trumpeter Salute 40k tournament. It was good times with lots of good people. The event was TOed by Lee Baxter. Thanks Lee for putting on a fun event.
Not super competitive. But that didn't stop me from losing two of my three games. :P Anyways I didn't come home empty handed as I won one of the raffle prizes. One of the GW 40k Trench Lines Terrain boxes.
I also won the best painted trophy. Yay me!

So I was up until 1:00ish the night before trying to get my objectives and Defense Line finished up. Here's a couple shots of my army.

As you can see in the front I used the Citadel Urban Barricades and Walls as a defense line. If you chop two of them in half then it all comes out to the same size as the Aegis Defense Line. Four long pieces and four short pieces.

Here's a close up on the defense line and you can sort of see the Objective markers in the back. I used the little markers you get in the Munitorum dice set only I chopped the Servo Skulls of the top and built some totems from plasticard and random Orky bits I had laying around.

So now I'm adding to the army and changing some things around that I find didn't work so well in preparation for a larger tournament in a couple months. I've also got a possible commission coming up so I'll post up progress shots and finished shots of those. Until then.

Exciting times; new Commissions

Hi, it's Lee here with another update from my side of things...

I did promise to upload some shots of the final Kara Sloan project and my Protectorate of Menoth list, but I have to delay that for a while.Firstly, I can't find my cable for my camera(my fiance's shoes cover most of our house and thankfully haven't invaded my studio yet), and I've had to sideline the Menoth for now as I've had some new work come in. Positives on that point, I have finally obtained and stripped all the last few models needed for this list and am hoping to get in a game to test out the list later this week - will report.

What I've been doing:
So first off I've got another commission I'm doing for a Khador player, cool little battle group of Kherchev the terrible and 5 Berserkers, all done out in an off-whit blue winter scheme. The project started off with some customisation and this little bit of work turned into a monster project as for some reason my drill bits kept snapping. Now that's only ever happened to me once so to have this happen to me 6 times is a big wake-up call on which products to buy and from where.

Here's the story on the customization:
So for everyone thats not aware of the berserker model, you can find it here:
http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery/khador/warjacks/berserker

if you look at the arms, the "biceps" are basically a few thin pieces of material connecting some rather large weapon arms and the clients were constantly bending during play, so he wanted me to come up with something to make sure that the pose was more stable and droop effect came to a halt. now the biceps are essentially 2 pistons and a strut. I've reduced that for effect, to simply being 2 pistons, which i felt gave a greater look of this being something animated.

The next customization was to repose Kherchev to be leaping off a cast wreck marker, so I rotated the whole lower body, re-pinned the hip joint and raised the leading leg.

Just a note, I have also since changed the pose so he doesn't lean so far forward, it's actually a really nice pose you can see in the group shot below. So I've also given myself a massive headache by not wanting to wait to buy white primer, and simply priming black to help the metal shading, bad move, it made the basecoats turn into a 5-coat affair. but I now have the basecoats and shaded mid-tones down on most of the models. leaving a lot of the detail areas unpainted for now, those will be quick fill-ins once the armour is complete.

I still also have to put all the snow down on the bases, but I figured this would be a good chance to show off the colours of the base. Since the final result of the armour is going to be a very subtly blue white, I've made the bases a very subtly red shade of brown dirt.

SO, what else is going on?

Well I've been speaking with a local manufacturer and we're looking me spearheading coordination of the product from renders to casts, which is awesome! I get to bring the mini's to life, what a cool gig! Also they have some new models coming in from the casts tomorrow and have a promo video to shoot the very next day so I will be putting the Khador aside for a 1 day pro-speed-paint. Thats a real push for me, but I think I can handle it as the model isn't oo complex and will be exceptionally cast if it's anything as well cast as the last model I painted for him.

So I have a million and one things to do tonight, including a work-order with the the chief over there and finish off this mid-tone tonight, tomorrow is going to be insane, so I'll leave you all for now, and promise to upload some shots of that work when I'm allowed.

Please comment if you found Gord's rust tutorial helpful, I'm thinking of putting up a complimentary tutorial, being that I do rust the exact opposite way Gord does it anyone interested in seeing a different side of rust and being able to have a bit more of a transition into unspoiled metal?

Or how about you tell me what you want a tutorial of and I'll put one together, I have a couple cool tricks coming, up I'm just waiting for the chemistry to happen.

Commenting is good for the environment and creates employment opportunities for artists with too much work to do, please comment and support your local professional artist.

Orks: Quick and Dirty

Hey guys. Long delay but here's that post about fast but nice table top quality weathering that I promised.

I was putting together some custom Lootas and thought it would be a perfect chance to get some shots for showing off the process.

Now this process uses washes and a couple other techniques that I won't go over in detail as I hope you already know how to do washing. If there is a demand for some basic techniques I might do up a future post on the subject. For now I'm going to gloss over those things generally.

So first off I customized my guys with plasticard and extra bits I had so that they would fit with the other lootas.

When I prime my Orks I like to give it a shot of black from the bottom and then hit it with some Army Painter Leather Brown from the top. It gives it a god brown base to start from and also lightens up the final product a bit on the top while giving the bottom an extra bit of shadow. (it also makes them look like chocolate) ;) If you don't have brown primer it's no big deal. It just means a tiny bit more work on the next step.

After the priming I like to hit the whole model with a big brush and get some warm dark brown all over it to start the rust base. Sometimes you can add a tiny bit of water to help get more coverage easier. If you didn't have a brown primer then at this point you would want to put a bit more work into getting the whole thing browned up. If you did have the brown primer you can half ass it a lot and not worry about full coverage as the primer would just show through.
After the deep brown I would use the same big old brush to lightly splotch on some reddish and browny oranges to give it the look of super rusted metal. You don't need to focus on places that won't be rusted later on like flesh and what not. Though it's nice when it's on clothe and straps and such so later on you could even leave some straps and pants this way and it could look fine with nothing but a wash.

Now we do the chipped paint. This is probably the trickiest part because we want it to look like naturally peeling and rusting paint. I use a regular sized brush and sometimes an older brush that's starting to split and fray a bit. When applying the paint try to get it in the crevasses and deep areas where stuff wouldn't bump into it and scrape it off. if there are rivets and bolts on the model sometimes you can put some paint on it and then use your finger to wipe it off the outer edges. Don't worry about how dirt and grime will collect on the surfaces right now. That's what washes are for. You just want to apply the paint in areas that you don't think it would have rusted or been scraped off yet. I'll also just do a bit of a dry/wet brushing on any bare metal parts that I don't think would be fully rusted yet.

After that we just paint any clothe and straps and what not and give everything a nice liberal brown wash. this will add some shadow and dirt to the plates and clothe and leather. When painting the chipped paint and clothe I try to use a lighter colour so I can just wash it and skip any highlighting. It saves you lots of time on loads of table top quality guys and looks almost as good.

Now we add the metal scratches. The quickest way to do this is to use a fine sponge. Like the ones you used to get in old blister packs or you can get flat pointy ones attached to sticks at a local hobby shop.
When using a sponge I like to dab it straight on the paint and then dab most of it onto a paper towel so you can spread the paint around on the sponge a bit before applying it to the model. Like when using a paintbrush you don't want to much paint on your sponge or you'll end up slapping too much onto the model.
Now you could start with a dull silver first and then do a brighter silver after or to save time you can skip straight to the brighter silver. It just depends on how much time you want to save and how nice you want them to look in the end.
After doing the sponging you can use a brush to hit any hard to reach areas or spots that you think could use more metal scratches.

Here I also did the skin but you can really do that any time you want. If you do it earlier you just have to be careful not to get any silver on it.

And here's the final product after adding some weathering powder to the base and doing the eyes and face paint and base trim. Good enough for the table top and in good time yet without being sloppy and unfinished looking.

Final Thoughts: Now remember that these guys are just table top quality. There's a few things you can do if you want to spend more time to make your models a bit more showy. The only highlights I did was the metal scratches. If you wanted a display piece you could highlight the chipped paint and the leather and clothing before and after the washes. I would put a lot more work into the skin. Their skin just received a single base and wash again like the rest of them. highlights and colour variation on lips and elbows and such would greatly enhance them. You could also do the hairspray technique for the chipped paint but that might be a bit of overkill on rank and files guys.
Well that's it for now. Hope this helps some people. I'd love to hear some feed back and find out what people think and what I could improve so please comment.
Until next time.