Batch Painting I Part...whatever...can't keep track! :)

Just a quick note today.  I'm in the throes of LPL painting and sadly can't show work-in-progress photos of my current work...but I can share some shots of a couple more of the Bretonnian "Squires with Bows" that I have been slogging through...these I used for a submission of last months Brush Slave League on CDO.  I will be using these as scouts for my Bret/Empire force.  I'm quite happy with these...the kneeling guy in particular has a wonderful face to paint....those Perry boys really know their business.  Here they are...

You can tell I was in a hurry to get this entry in because the bases aren't really done and the photo cropping is crap...but I got it in and that is what counts...

Cheers for now!

Blue

Whoops...forgot... and Batch Painting II Part 1

I completely forgot to include this in my last post.....I meant to include a picture of all the the complete Bretonnians archers that I have at this point...this small "unit" includes the 5 I painted for the LPL last year as well as the 3 I just completed for the BSL.

Here they are:

They will be joined by their 10 comrades very soon!

Also...I started in on the Bret Spearman unit that I'm painting up for the Bugman's Brewery Unit painting challenge.  Last night I got the base coat of the flesh areas taken care of on all 16 figures.

Using my new "handles" for these guys...nice!

...and so it begins again!

More soon!

Cheers,

Blue

Batch Painting Update and MORE!

Greeting all.  Time for a bit of an update.  The long slog thru my group of 36 minis continues...I'm happy to report that I put the finishing touches on 10 of them last night.  The rest are a few good long painting sessions away from being complete.  And while I can't show you the whole lot of finished archers here are a selection of 3 that I used for my latest entry in the Brush Slave League over on CDO.  These will give you a good idea what the rest of the unit looks like.

I think they came out quite nice...am I saving time by painting so many at a time? ....the jury is still out on that.  I will certainly work on smaller groups in the future...maybe 10-15 models at a time.

I will probably have to pause on the the rest of the big batch I have been working on and shift gears to working on a small unit of Bret spearman (10-16 strong) that I have committed to completing before the end of March for the Unit painting Challenge over on Bugman's Brewery...I run the contest so it will be embarrassing if I don't have a unit to submit!  Luckily I'll be able to follow the progress of that unit a bit more closely with blog posts so I will (hopefully) be posting a bit more frequently going forward.

On another front I recently received some new Puff and Slash goodness from Lead Adventure Miniatures (LAM).  The latest Brugelburg release from LAM included a few Arquibusiers that I had to add to my collection.  Sadly there are only four sculpts at this point...not nearly enough to make an independent unit...so I ordered them on the hopes that I could mix them in with my current unit of handgunners which is made up of the Empire figures that were released at the tail end of the 3rd edition.  These are also excellent figures but they could use a bit more diversity of sculpts...particularly in firing poses.  Luckily the LAM release includes 3 unique firing poses.  Much to my joy when I mixed them in they look right at home.  The LAM boys are a tad stockier and more elaboratly decorated but I think they will blend in nicely when the unit is painted up.

Here is the before unit picture

Obviously I need to convert that damaged Halberd into a standard...

And here it is with the LAM gunners mixed in

And here are a few side by side photos of the individual figures (alternating between citadel and LAM)

Really fantastic figures all around...the Brugelburg forces just keep getting better and better.

Other than that my hobby time has been mostly adsorbed with buying/selling and trading little hunks of lead!  Its been a busy month or so with lots of small packages coming and going to all parts of the world.  I'm getting really close to reaching my initial collecting goals...just trying to plug the last few gaps in some units and am now focusing on the details likes identifying and procuring shields and bases for all my units.  Also since we are having a brief warm spell here in the NE US I've been getting a lot of figures primed and ready to paint.

So...that's whats happening in my slice of the Hobby world....more soon!

Brush Slave II Entry...Batch Painting Continues!

Hello all,

As I am still in the midst of my batch painting madness I didn't come up with anything really original for this Brush Slave Entry but rather pulled three of my partially painted figures out of the batch and finished them off for the contest.

As you will recall I'm currently working through a group of about 35 figures that comprise a good chunk of the missile troops from my Bretonian based force...including a group of Squires with Bows, Mounted Squires and  Armored Bowmen.  I painted up a group of the Bowmen as one of my entries for the LPL last year and I've been using their color scheme as the basis for the scheme for my entire force...lets take a look at them...

As you can see their uniforms are based on a fairly dark blue and a deep green with a tertiary color for their unit...in this case a tan/yellow.  I will try to continue the blue and green theme across all the non-knight units of this force...but I will try to vary the Tertiary color with each unit.

So...for the unit of Squires with Bows...which in my army will be the scouts...I chose to try a burnt orange color as their unit specific color.  As I have not worked with orange a huge amount I saw the Brush Slave deadline as a chance to crank through three figures with this color scheme allowing me to iron out the wrinkles with the color before I tried it with the other 15 figures.

And here are the results...

Not bad...the Orange is Ok...I think they will look better en mass than as a small group like this.

Overall the Batch painting is going very well and I'm making progress on this group.  At this point I have all the base colors on all the figures...and all flesh tones have been highlighted to completion.  Next I will knock out the highlights on the blue and green on all the figures.  Then I will break the big batch into smaller groups for each of the respective units to complete their tertiary color highlights and the fiddly bits on each figure.  Basing I may do as a bog batch again at the end. 

I am certainly seeing the efficiencies in this type of painting as I've gotten a lot of figures a lot further along in a relatively short amount of time compared to when I was painting 3-4 at a time.  Its does get tedious painting one color all night...but not enough to make me stop...when I have a couple of complete units at the end of it it will all have been worth it.

I would love to show a picture of the progress but I'm planning on using some of these figures as entries in future painting contests...many of which forbid showing figures before they "compete"  So once I narrow down which ones will be competitors in the future I'll show the "bench warmers" as examples of my progress.

Cheers for now!

Blue

December Brush Slave Entry...Something Different

Just another quick update from me today...life still has me by the short and curlies...though I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and hope to have more hobby time soon.

For the final monthly challenge over on CDO known as the Brush Slave League I opted to do something a little different.  Back in the 2011 during the Lead Painters League on LAF one of the themed rounds was "Africa" and I choose to paint a team of DAK soldiers.  In pulling this team together I purchased about 20 German infantry from Battle Honors Figures.  The unused figures have been languishing on my shelf sense then.  In an effort to move them along and make some money at the same time I agreed to paint up the rest for a Bloke on LAF who goes by the name of DD-Chris.  DD was kind enough to allow me to use some of the painted figures for the Brush Slave last month.  For 25mm figures they are well sculpted with decent detail.  There was a lot of flash to remove on some of them but still a very cost effective and good looking set of figures.

Here are the three I submitted for the contest.  A machine gun crew and an officer of the DAK.

Rommel's Ground Pounders

Next time I'll be back in more comfortable figure territory.

Cheers,

Blue

Golden Hat and Brush Slave Gobos

I finished up a decent sized group of goblins to cover two different painting contests over at CDO.  5 of these were used as my Golden Hat entry and the other 3 were used for the first round of the 2nd year of the Brush Slave League.  The plan was for the GH entry to be displayed and voted on before the BSL team made an appearance but due to some delays the GH pictures were actually posted after those from the BSL...so much for being an anonymous event...haha.  Anyway...on to the figures.

These are all from the Marauder MB4 Goblin Raiders Unit...perhaps the best goblins from the Marauder range.  It is an interesting unit...originally sold in a blister box of 12 figures...4 command, 4 warriors, and 4 archers.  As we all know a unit of 12 goblins is just asking for disaster on the table top so I have expanded my unit to 22....and I equip them as archers and just move the warriors to the front rank if they engage in melee.

here is the Golden hat entry which includes the musician from the unit

Front...not undead shields...also known as Bacardi shields

Here are some closeups of these guys

These three are my favorites of the bunch

And here are the Brush Slave boys...

And...All together now!

Thanks for looking!

Blue

Johann...nuff said!

Well I had wanted to wait a couple of days before posting this up....but I just can't!  this figure is just TOO good! This Chaos Dwarf which has been named Johann by Clam and the Sculptor, John Pickford, is a special one.  John Sculpted this figure on his own, just for fun, when Clam was just starting to contemplate the range which would become know as the Ewal Dvergar.  It didn't really fit with the multi-part Core Warrior range that Clam was interested in creating but when John shared the sculpt with him Clam couldn't pass up the chance to have it cast up....

...and I'm Glad he did. This is one of those figures that I fall in love with when I first hold it in my hands...figures like this are few and far between...the Ratnik Dwarf Minstrel...MM15 Dwarf with Arquebus...MM90 Mage and Skull face...are a few of the others that have stirred such feelings.  While this feeling can be great motivation...it can also create some anxiety for the painter.  I was intimidated by the figure...the level of detail is quite impressive...and I didn't want to FUCK it up!

...in fact, with Johann, this anxiety began even before that...with the Johann figure you have choices to make..before you paint!  The figure is cast as one piece and looks like this...

Note: Picture blatantly stolen from Clam's Blog (I hope you don't mind man!)

 Its very cool like this...look at that Breast Plate!  But since it is a dwarf, John felt obligated to include an option for the figure to have a beard...so he sculpted up this add-on piece...

Again...thanks Clam for the pic

Again...he looks very cool with that stylish beard...a beard which any self respecting dwarf...chaos or no...could appreciate.  But it covers up the exquisite sculpting on the breast plate...what to do...what to do?!



Well I couldn't decide....I wanted it both ways...so I took a risk and attempted to sculpt a GS beard onto the first figure that would look like a beard...but that could also be believable as hair for the face on the Chest too.

Here is what I ended up with...

This is actually my own picture....

Ok...hurdle one passed...now to figure out a color scheme for this figure....again I was paralyzed by the options...so much detail..particularly on the Shield, which we haven't even discussed yet, as well as the breast plate, and shoulder pads. What colors would suit them best?!  In the end I fell back on colors that I know well and love.  My typical blue and a nice medium gray for the highly detailed parts.  I felt that these colors  highlighted the best of the model without loosing any of its character with a motley of colors.  I tried to let the quality of the sculpt shine through.

Alright enough yammering from me...here are the detail shots...

Front...."You talkin to me?"

...Here comes the Shield!

There it is! So Sweet!

Alright that shield demands a special mention...it is like a complete sculpture of it own...just a remarkably expressive face...and the depth of the detail made it a joy to paint.  I tried to carry the Red eye theme through the shield, shoulder pads and Dwarf. 

There is a good teaser of the shoulder pads...

And a Detail of the Right Shoulder pad.

So there he his...Johann in all his glory.  You will notice that I based him on a 30mm Round lipped base...Thats because I don't see Johann joining a CD unit like the others...he is stand alone...in fact I might just find a pedestal I can put him on...so he can oversee work on my painting table.

Next up...something a little different...

Cheers,

Blue

Chaos Comes in Small Packages...Brush Slave 1 Round 8

The end of October saw the wrap up of the first Round of the inaugural year of the Brush Slave League over on CDO.  The theme for the Final round of this contest was "Thank You CDO"....so we were encouraged to paint a team that includes Chaos Dwarfs.  This was a great opportunity for me to paint up a couple more of Clam's Excellent Ewal Dvergar as well as a Marauder MM90.

As always with these figures they were a lot of fun to paint....Here is the team I painted up....the one in the middle is a very special case...more on him later

Clam CD on left, Johann in the middle and Marauder MM90 on the right

For this post I will focus on the figures on either side of this picture.  First the MM90.  This is a figure I picked up in a mixed lot of Chaos Dwarfs...and I got him fairly cheap...probably due to the fact that his horns have been clipped and modified...here is what the figure originally looked like

Original Catalog Image

And here are some close ups of my version of this particular figure.

My horns are bent but I'm still a mean Motha!

With the other two figures having fairly dark color armor I decided to use this figure with a much lighter yellow tan color...I like it!  I wasn't sure until the absolute final highlight but in the end I'm happy with the way it turned out.  You can see that I have employed one of the Goblin shields that came with the seperate icons...this one always struck me as more "chaos" than "goblin" plus its a great size for these figures. (BTW I could use about 8-10 more of these if anyone has extras!)

The next figure is one of Clam's excellent Ewal Dvergar.  This one went together very easily and needed no gap filling and only a little bit of clean-up.  I had painted one of the MM90s with a purple armor color more than a year ago and was never really happy with it...so this was a chance to redeem myself with this color.  Since that first figure I have acquired a couple of Vallejo Model Colors paints that cover the Purple range pretty well.  These seemed to have worked better than the Reaper Master Series purples I used on the previous figure.  Anyway...here he is.

I Love this guys Mace!

Here is this last guy with the other Ewal Dvergar I painted up a few months ago...they are looking tough!

You know I had originally thought of these guys as "add-ons" to my MM90 unit...but now I'm thinking that they might be their own group..:)

So...obviously this is only two of the three figures that was included in this Brush Slave Team....the third...Johann...well...he is worthy of his own blog post...so you will just have to wait a few days!

hehehehe.

Cheers,

Blue

Brush Slave League Entry #1

The beginning of March has seen the opening round of the Brush Slave League over on the Chaos Dwarfs Online Forum...and Once again the level of talent displayed by the members of that forum have really impressed me.  If you would like to have a look at this months entries please explore this link:

http://www.chaos-dwarfs.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=70

For my entry I submitted three green skins that are the first members of a skirmish band that I am putting together.  Once again I have chosen to use some of the classic Marauder Sculpts for this entry.  The Orc is from the MM20 range and the two goblins are from the MM30 series...the bat sheild is from the Marauder undead/chaos sprue.  The goblins in particular are personal favorites...the whole range is just full of character.

So without further delay...here they are:

Cheers for now!

Blue

The Leagues are Coming!!!

So…one of my favorite times of year is upon us.  The stress and hassle of the holidays has passed…leaving happy children and an extra 10 pounds on my waist…;)  And now….its League Season!  “What League” you ask….well painting Leagues of course!  This year I’ll be involved in two different painting leagues and I couldn’t be more excited about getting back to the painting desk and cranking out some minis.

 The Lead Painters League

For the sixth year the Lead Adventure Forum is hosting the Lead Painters League…a 10 week painting contest in which participants enter a new team of five painted/based figures each week…this team goes head-to-head against the team of another participant…points are awarded for each round and the participant with the most points at the end of the 10 weeks is declared the winner.  The contest is open to figures of any type and any scale…though 28mm are certainly the most common.  

To liven things up a bit there are also a number of Themed Rounds in which participants gain bonus points for meeting the theme.  In two of the three themed rounds you also get bonus points for creating a 5-figure team of opponents to your original team as well.  The theme rounds are a lot of fun and really push ones creativity as well as painting speed….ten figures in one week may not seem like a lot to some people but is a REAL stretch for me.

The first Round of the LPL will begin on March 3^rd…and is a themed round…Old Lead.  This theme requires that you use figures that were produced prior to 1991.  This seems to be causing difficulty for some members on the LAF…gladly almost my entire collection fits this category…so my difficulty will be deciding which old lead to paint!

With five weeks to go until the first team must be submitted I need to bear down and crank out as many teams as possible.  Last year I was constantly playing catch up because I didn’t get any teams “in the bag” before the contest actually started…that meant a lot of VERY late nights trying to frantically finish up my teams….I hope to avoid this fate this year.

The LPL is quite an endurance test…I survived last year but only just!  This contest is also interesting because it really pushes my photography and scenery skills.  Many participants place their teams in elaborate and effective scenes for photography.  Last year I relied on my painting skills alone…this year I hope to try my hand at creating a couple of “scenes.”   We’ll see how it goes….

The Brush Slave League

Over on CDO we have been conducting a monthly painting event called “Brush Slave” for the past year…it has been a very open and inviting format….but was beginning to feel a bit “stagnant.”  For 2012, event organizer Clam, decided to try a new model for the Brush Slave…and opted for a League style event.  The Brush Slave League is modeled off of the LPL but occurs over the course of a year…with a new round each month instead of each week…and employs smaller teams of three figures.  This will be a much more relaxed pace and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the participants over on CDO come up with for teams.  The members of that forum constantly impress me with their creativity and ability in converting, sculpting, and painting their figures.  

The Brush Slave League will also build in at least one Themed Round…just to keep things interesting.  This League kicks off on March 1st

Conclusion

So…its going to be a busy couple of months for Blue!  

 My goals for these leagues include:

1.       Entering a new team for each round of both contests.

2.       Attempting some Scenic Shots for some teams.

3.       Selecting Teams that will compete well…but also forward the completion of my armies.

4.       Getting ahead of the Curve team wise so I’m not freaking out at the last minute each week/month.

5.       Having Fun!

As far as the Blog goes…both leagues stipulate that the teams must not be shown off on the web until they have finished competing.  This means that it may be a bit quite around here until the Leagues really get rolling…but then there should be a steady stream of new models on the blog for awhile.

In the mean time I have a few more Chaos warriors/MM90s to show off…and…I actually played a short game of WFB with a couple of friends right before Christmas…so I’ll work up a post on that as well.

Cheers for now!

Blue