A First for me...Some Fimir!!

 Hi all,

Back with a quick post to share with you some classic Fimir that I recently painted as part of a small commission that I've been working on.

These are the first Fimir that I have had the pleasure of painting and I have to say that they are just excellent sculpts...the "alien" anatomy of them is completely believable.  I used a slightly modified version of my Goblin skin paint recipe to achieve their pale green skin.

Here is the unit of four...and below are individual shots of each member.  The client will be taking care of the bases...hence their unfinished nature.

Individuals...

Cheers for now!!

Blue

The Orks are Coming!!!

Last week I received a nice big, heavy box of minis back from the UK.  This box contained the first figures that I have ever commissioned someone else to paint for me.  With the ever growing mountain of lead I'm constantly fighting I decided it was time to exploit the labor of others to put a dent in it.  When Vidpui of Mini Splodges offered a reduced rate for his talents I jumped at the chance.  I've "known" Vid for several years starting over at Bugman's Brewery where he dazzled us all with his fantastic Old School Dwarf Army so I was quite confident that he would produce some fine results on my figures...and he did not disappoint!

Being the types that is concerned that my armies have the same conhesive "feel" and painting "style" applied to them I chose a faction for which I had painted very few figures...this way the entire force would have a consistent feel.  With my relatively new addiction to RT I have a large number of unpainted factions...so I chose a couple of squads of Orks and a small command element to send to Vid.  Not only is Vid a talented painter...but he is FAST!  (Something I will never claim to be...:) ) Once he was able to start he finished this whole lot in less than a week!

Lets take a look at the troops!

Here is the Command section.  This warband is commanded by Narblaz the Nasty, well known for the atrocities he and his troops committed during the sacking of Burglingten on the surface of Putney Prime.

This image of Narblaz was retrieved from an Imperial Recon Drone...he is accompanied by his drummer and standard bearer...

 This fearsome warlord leads two powerful squads of Orks who are ready to raid any vessel, settlement or space station that they land on.

Johann Complete!

As promised here is a quick post to show you the final results of the painting I was finishing up on Johann...the fantastic Chaos Dwarf Sculpt by John Pickford...and in fact this figure was painted for John himself! (I hope he likes it!)  I think I have said all the wonderful things that need to be said about this great model...it really is something special...particularly the shield which inspires me to try something new each time I look at it.

Anyway...blah blah...here are the pictures...and below I will include pictures of my personal version to which I have added a Green stuff beard.

I believe that these are still available through Clam's Ewal Dvergar Range of figures...so contact him and get you one....and some of his other wonderful figures as well.

Here is John's Johann...

Johann II ...Update 1...Shield Work

Howdy all,

I've been plugging along with the variety of models that I previewed in my last post.  My main effort has been focused on finishing up a copy of Johann from the Ewal Dvergar Range that Clam has graced us with.

I've had this miniature for way too long...mostly because I've had a hard time figuring out what color to paint him.  Obviously I painted my copy Blue...but I couldn't decide what would look good on this copy.  Finally I decided to go with Dark Green armor with Copper/Gold and Grey accents.  To this end I set in on Johann's armor first and then got to the base coats on the wood, metallic, and grey areas....

Here is how he looks right now...

Not looking particularly stellar yet...but once I start to highlight everything else up it will improve greatly....

...However...I really put a lot of work into his shield.  As I mentioned when I painted my own version of this figure the Shield is one of the best parts...John Pickford really seems to have enjoyed making this fantastic face.  With looking at the design of the shield ...and the fairly tame colors of the armor that I chose for Johann... I decided to go a little wild with the shield colors.  In really staring at the shield for quite awhile I really started to see how it looked like flame...

...perhaps this is a demonic piece of armor containing a fire daemon of some sort? ...forced by one of the Chaos Lords to protect Johann from harm....

...thats right...FLAME SHIELD!!! :)

This turned out to be a lot of fun to paint...and it took a TON of layers to make it look convincing.  Having never really attempted to paint flame before I'm pretty happy with the results.  The main portion of the shield is orange flame while the eyes and tongue are meant to look like blue flame.

Here is a quick look at the final product....followed by a short movie showing the steps of the process.

Yes...he has a Gold tooth...my daughter suggested it...who am I to deny her...?

For those who are curious about such things...here are the paints that I used to achieve the flame effect...

I'm not really sure what the Orange paint is...some old citadel color...?  Blood Angel perhaps?

And here is a shot of my wet pallet showing all the different layers that I created with these paints and their sequence (ignore the green...that's from the armor).

I think that is going to look pretty sweet on that green armored model...so...

I better get back to it!

Cheers,

Blue

The Rest of Averland...Part VI...the end....finally

In my last post I alluded to another commission that I was finally able to finish up...lets take a look... 

This one was a really joy to work on because it included so many really fantastic classic figures.  I am of course speaking of the group of Averlander's that I have been working on for thebinman for far too long.

I've discussed this group in some detail elsewhere so lets just get into the pictures.

First off is the group that has been completed the longest...a wonderful combination of races that makes for a very evocative little group.

A Touch of the Chaos...

So...if you follow the blog you will have noticed a rather dramatic drop off in posts about painting.  There is a very obvious reason for this...my painting mojo has left the building!  I have  been extremely short on time this summer and when I have had a few minutes I just can't bring myself to paint for some reason.

...that is until this last week!  After seeing all the wonderful pictures from the BOYL event I've started to get really excited about the Oldahmmer in the NewWorld event coming up this fall.  So I've been back in the saddle for a few nights and it feels good to be waving the hairy wand again!

The first thing on my plate was to finish up a couple of commissions ...pieces of which you have seen pop up on this blog and in various forum over the last year or more.  Well...I've completed two of them and managed to get some decent pictures before shipping them back to their rightful owners.

The first commission was a group of five chaos figures for my most patient client Hashut's Lil Helper (HlH).  You may remember that I have been painting a series of Chaos warriors for HlH that match his already painted MM90s.  Well in the last batch of figures he included 5 additional figures for me to paint as well.  These included one more Chaos Warrior and four Citadel chaos dwarfs.

Lets take a look at the group first and then each of them individually.

LPL Round 7: thebinman's Surprise

Howdy all,

Just a quick update...the summer is really starting to ramp up and the painting schedule is taking a hit.  for the seventh round of the LPL I had to compromise....basically there was no way I was going to be able to get a new team painted in time...but I wanted to have an interesting and compelling entry even if the figures weren't "new" ...so I opted to fall back on the the Averlanders that I have been painting up for thebinman...a fellow lead head from the LAF.  So I did a little touch up and finished a couple of shields that had been lack and then set them all up on my Photo board for their moment in the sun.

Here they are:

LPL Round 5: Sea Peoples Raiding Party

Well...I've managed to make it to the mid point of this years LPL...man how time flies!  One of the great things about the LPL is that it sometimes forces you to paint outside your comfort zone.  For Round 5 the theme was: Ancients....

...now as you are well aware I have a mass of lead in my man cave...but it does not contain a single "Ancients" miniature.  BBBuuuttt...as luck would have it I just concluded an agreement with a kind gentleman from the Oldhammer Forum to paint some figures that fit the bill quite nicely.  LadAsbestos sent me a great group of miniatures to work on and among them were these five Sea Peoples Warriors...I beleive they are from Foundry.  They turned out to be a joy to paint...here they are!

LPL Round 4: Chaos Comes to Town...

Howdy all,

Time for the weekly update on the LPL.  The last weeks "competition" has been the closest contest I have ever been involved in....and is perhaps the closest in recent LPL history.  When I last checked nearly 500 votes had been cast and the two teams were still within 3 votes of each other.  As of Friday ...midday...we were tied!  My team was up against that of Professor Witchheimer...who I consider one of the best painters and photographers in the LPL...his entries are consistently of VERY high quality....so I'm quite happy that my team is even holding its own against such talent.

Anyway...on with the show.  This was a un-themed round...so I dug into some work that I've been meaning to do for many months...some more Chaos figures for my CDO compatriot Hashuts Little Helper (HlH).  The three chaos warriors in this team are a continuation of some painting I did for HlH more than a year ago ...where he sent me some painted Marauder MM90 Chaos dwarfs and I painted the Chaos Warriors that inspired them...in colors similar to his MM90 color choices.  The two citadel chaos dwarfs on this team are a part of a small batch of a few other figures I agreed to paint for HlH.

Anyway...here they are as a team...

Now let's look at the three warriors and their corresponding MM90s...

First up are the copper twins...

Here I stuck very close to the "source material" that HlH sent to me...even down to shield selection.  Luckily this is a CW that can pull off the smaller shield....which comes from the Marauder chaos/undead sprue.

Next we have the Blue meanies...

Again I tried to mimic the color of the CD fairly closely....and again I turned to my stash of marauder shields to give this guy a bit of protection.  I picked this particular shield because I felt that the bull skull motif mirrored the shape of the horns on the warrior helmet...also this CW can handle a much larger shield than the copper one.

Finally we have the Pinks...

As you can see HlH used metallic pink for his CD...and I did some experimenting with making my own pink metallic paint....and those experiments didn't go well.   

So after consulting with HlH I went for a non metallic finish for the armor.  Still I was quite nervous about trying to pull off this much pink as it was not a color I have used much in the past.  And right up till the final layer I was convinced that I was going to have to start over...but something about that final highlight pulled the whole paint job together.  Now I can't wait to try this color again on a few of my own figures!

The two citadel chaos dwarfs on this team also deserve some mention as they are both great figures in their own right.  

This guy just looks like a loony!

And this guy just looks....well...awesome....the leather thigh high leggings and the big glaive thingie make him one of my new favorite chaos dwarf sculpts.

So they they are....Team four....they've done me right this week no matter who finally comes out with the most votes.

Cheers for now!

Four A Miniatures... Chaos Dwarfs II: "Thats 'Mister Tower Head' to You!"

Hello all!

Another of the fantastic miniatures that John P. asked me to paint for him is the other Chaos Dwarf that Four A Minaitures will be releasing in the future...a figure that John and I have been referring to as "Tower Head" (though I understand that another name may be forth coming...).

Four A Miniatures...Chaos Dwarfs I

Hi all,

Over the previous summer I was contacted by the sculptor John Pickford who was interested in having me paint a couple of pieces for him that he had recently sculpted for Four A miniatures.  I was obviously very humbled to have a man of his talent ask me to "pretty up" his sculpts for him so I gladly accepted. (it had nothing to do with the other lead he offered me as payment...I swear!) :)

A couple of weeks after our initial discussions a box full of goodies arrived from John in my mail box.  Amongst the assorted treasures therein were three brand new Chaos Dwarf sculpts... Though these aren't you normal chaos dwarfs...more of a kind of blend of Chaos Dwarf and Beastman/Werewolf.  Suffice to say they looked fantastic and I couldn't wait to get down to work on them.  But as you know the last summer was a rough one for old Blue....that whole broken ankle thing threw a monkey wrench into many of my plans.  So they weren't really finished until well into the fall.  As the release date for these figures is now drawing nigh (they should be out toward the end of February) I thought it would be a good time to post up some detailed pictures of them.

First up lets look at them as a group and then we can talk about them each in more detail....

The Rest of Averland...Part V

Howdy all!

So ...just to show that I haven't been completely ignoring my other obligations I wanted to take the chance to post up a picture of the Averlanders I've been working on for months now.  At this point I'm just left with the niggling details, a couple of shields and, of course, the bases to complete.  Since our last installment I have highlighted and washed all the "white" metal.  Highlighted the leather and brown bits.  Added wood grain to the wood....and most obviously given these guys some hair/beard colors.

Lets take a look...

The Rest of Averland...Part IV

Though illness and the Thanksgiving holiday have made my painting time somewhat scarce over the last week I have made some modest progress on the Averlanders.  I've highlighted up the the yellow to completion and started in on the white cloth....which will get just one more highlight before it is complete.  With the major areas of cloth being nearly complete the figures are starting to look pretty good...there is still plenty to do but its nice to see them coming along. 

Here are some pictures.

And just for fun...and to assure that the current figures will match with those that I painted early last spring...here is a picture with a mix of the finished figures and some of the WIP pieces...

It looks like they are going to fit right in!

Next I will be finishing up the white highlights then move on to choosing beard and hair colors and starting in on the leather and other brown pieces.

Cheers,

Blue

The Rest Of Averland III ...Black Cloth Walk through

While I was working through the process of highlighting the black cloth portions of the Averland Commission I thought I would document my process and share it with you.

First I must give credit where it is due.  I did a ton of online research looking for different techniques of highlighting Black...most of which are complete crap that at best give you a model that is more Grey than black.  Eventually I stumbled onto a youtube video that displayed a "technique" that I thought was worth giving a try.  While this video shows a painter working on a rather large figure ... the techniques he employs work very well on 28mm minis as well.  Take a look and see what you think... (warning the music is terrible (IMO) but you don't need to listen to see what he's doing)

The Rest of Averland ...Part II

Alright...lets carry on with thebinman's Averlanders.

Some of this batch of figures really require an additional color beyond the black, yellow, and white...figures that seem more like peasant that have "rough" cloth on as well as figures representing a Game keeper...and an archer that looks a lot like Robin Hood who pretty much demanded green clothing,  So this series of pictures shows the whole group with all the additional base colors in place.  I've also had time to highlight the flesh areas on all the figures up to near completion...I'll go back and do a final highlight as one of my last tasks.

Here are the group shots...

The Rest of Averland...:)

Howdy all,

As I mentioned once many moons ago while I was in the throes of the Lead Painters League...and before I shattered my ankle and ruined my summer...I was asked by LAF member thebinman to paint up a skirmish warband for him.  The figures he chose to send me include some of the all time great sculpts from the early years of Citadel and Marauder.  The start of this commission were the 5 figures I painted for the LPL seen here:

LPL Round 9: Averland's Best

Late last winter I was approached by a fellow member of the Lead Adventure Forum about a small painting commission.  thebinman had a group of old empire figures that he wanted me to paint up for him as a Mordhiem warband from Averland.  Since he offered to compensate me in old lead I had no choice but to accept....:)

...I had hoped to complete two teams of thebinman's figures for LPL teams but as things worked out with RL I was only able to get one completed before the contest ended.....this team was my Round 9 entry.  I picked my 5 favorite figures from this commission and went to town!  Among the group of figures that thebinman sent along were many classics and the choice was difficult but these five seemed to fit well together with their strong Puff and Slash style...plus the variety of heights/races made for an interesting team.

Anyway...here is my entry photo

This is a hastily taken iPhone picture...the camera does pretty well!

Loverly figures all!

As I have been laid up with my ankle, one of the tasks I've managed to complete is the basing on these guys...I also took proper pictures with my better camera...so lets look at each figure in detail with those photos.

On the left here we have a classic Marauder Halfling.  Just a wonderful face on this guy...I stupidly sold my complete unit of Marauder halflings when I got back into the hobby a few years ago and after painting this guy they have gone back on the acquire list!

 Next to him is "Piers," (...'cause he has a crossbow see?! haha...very clever) a venerable model from the early Citadel Empire range.  I like the figure overall...the look on his face is a bit odd...but still fun to paint.

In the middle we have one of the absolutely wonderful Marauder Puff and Slash Ogres...and one I hadn't painted before! I tackled most of this small range for a previous LPL entry but this guy was new to me and that made him particularly fun to paint.  I was a little perplexed about the severed head between his legs (see the picture of the back of the figure)...to me it was unclear what type of head it was....shrunken head trophy?  Head of another Ogre? Troll? so I went with a flesh color that could be interpreted a number of ways...:)

Next up is another bad ass figure... Smiorgan Baldhead from the Eternal Champion Personalities range...I figure I covet very much!  ...love the wicked scar on his face!

And last...but certainly not least....one of the absolute best dwarf miniatures....Ever!  The Marauder MM15 Zweihandler Figure.  My copy of this figure is still untouched....its one of those ones that I'm kind of intimidated by...so having another to work on in a completely different color scheme was really a pleasure.  His beard gave me fits...and still might get one more highlight...but overall my appreciation for this figure was only increased by having painted it....Now I'm itching to get to mine!

The Yellow and Black color scheme proved to be a fun challenge as well....both of these are colors that I tend to avoid doing large areas of if possible.  Black in particular has always been one I've avoided...I had to do a lot of internet research on different techniques before I found one I was willing to try...and over all I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Anyway....gotta get back to the couch and put my leg on a bag of ice!

Cheers for now...

Blue

LPL Round 1: Command Group....DAK

Howdy all,

So the first week of the LPL just wrapped up and the second started...so now I can share the picture of my first entry.  The special theme for round 1 was: Command Element.  So for a team to earn the bonus points it had to include some sort of identifiable command and control figures.  Luckily this theme fit perfectly with a group of figures I painted up as part of a small commission I did for DD-Chris over on the LAF.  I worked up a group of Battle Honors 25mm DAK figures for him to use in his pulp gaming.  This group included a Lt. type and an radio operator....sounds like a command element to me!

Here they are...I hope you are putting them to good use DD-Chris!

For 25mm figures these are nicely detailed and quite fun to paint....them seemed quite small in comparison to my normal 28mm heroic scale figures but I enjoyed them and they are very cost effective.

Cheers!  Back to the Painting desk...

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

Chaos...the BIG and the small Part 5

Well its only been 6 months since my last update on the Chaos project that I've been working on...so lets get to it!

To remind everyone what I'm talking about...I've been working on a 12 figure commission for a mate from CDO (HlH) who wanted me to paint some of his classic Chaos warriors to match his already painted MM90 Chaos Dwarfs....the sculpts of which were inspired by the corresponding warriors.

So this post brings this project to a close...it took much longer than I expected to complete these and I must applaud HlH for his patience with me while I finished these off for him...he has been very gracious.

Anyway...enough jibber jabber...lets look at the minis!

First up we have this guy who is wearing the skin of some sort of saber toothed cat over his Chaos Armor...here we see him with the corresponding MM90.  Keep in mind the HlH will be taking care of the bases and shields so that they match his existing figures.

As you can see I mixed things up just a little....instead of painting the pelt tan like on the MM90 I chose to use the grey of the dwarfs beard for the Warrior pelt....I felt this contrasted with the Bronze armor a bit better.

Here are the detailed shots of the Warrior...

Next up are my favorite pair of this group....the Skull Face boys.  I love both the MM90 and the Chaos warrior versions of this sculpt.  The fact that the warrior version is an uncataloged release just makes it more interesting...it took me quite awhile to get ahold of a copy of this one for my own collection.  I was not even aware that he existed until HlH mailed me his copy to paint.

Paint job wise this one is fairly faithful copy of the MM90 supplied.

Here is the individual shot of the Chaos Warrior.

Alrighty then....that brings us to the final figure....the Mage!  I must say that this one intimidated me the most...for a couple of reasons.  First of all the two sculpts, while similiar, have more differences than the previous pairs.  Secondly the MM90 Mage is by far the coolest dfigure in that range...and that is saying something!  And lastly HlH's PJ on the MM90 version had a lot of bright color that I feared trying to duplicate.  But as my Dad used to say "there ain't nothin' to it but to do it!" So...in this case I tried to stick with the same color pallete to get a similiar feel... but did not try to slavishly follow the mini-me version.  Here they are side by side.

And here is the Chaos Wizard (Amon Dul) Solo...

And just for fun...here are all 12 of the comission pieces together in one group.

This has been a fun project...and these were hard to package up and send away...but they are gone now and I can get on with trying to collect my own copies of them....hehehe.

Cheers,

Blue