The old man of the sea

Hey everyone,

I know it's only been a couple of days since the last post, but really wanted to get this post on.

This one started out as an experimental piece to try out some new colour theories and actually ended up quite nice. I picked the figure up in the recent Black Scorpion metal overstock sale at a real bargain price. It's a cracking figure with bags of character and seemed like a good piece to try this technique out on.

The figure has so much character, you can practically hear the wind howling and see the rain chucking down. The theory was to use a pallette of three main paints (plus a metallic) and use them all to mix the various tones across the model.

The model was based on a resin scenic base before applying a sprayed Chaos Black undercoat. Using the airbrush, the figure was then basecoated Stegadon Scale Green (SSG). The rest of the palette was comprised of Rakarth Flesh (RF), Scorched Brown (SB) and Tin Bitz (TB), which is essentially metallic Scorched Brown. (Although Astronomican Grey is pictured, it wasn't used :D )

This is the model at the basecoat stage. The outer jacket and hat remained neat SSG; the boots, rifle, hair and inner clothing were 50:50 SSG and SB. The sword, telescope and other metallic areas were straight TB. The face, hands and skull were approx 30:70 SSG and RF. The base had the same mix, but was subsequently re-painted SSG.

The figure was then washed with Asurman Blue. As an aside, from time to time there are some hobby products that stink a bit (Citadel Skull White spray, for example). Asurman Blue from the old wash range really chucks up.... the smell is un-godly!

Once the wash was dry, each area was re-layered up. All mix ratios from this point on are really just guidelines (much like the pirate code...) and the mixing process was quite fluid, changing tones as it was applied.

The inner clothing, boots and hair were layered with the initial 50:50 mix of SSG and SB, with straight SB highlighting. A little RF was mixed in for a final highlight. 

The jacket and hat were layered first with SSG and then with a little RF mixed into the SSG. The metallics had another coat of TB and a final highlight with a little RF mixed into the TB. The flesh areas were re-layered with 50:50 SSG and RF, with a highlight stage adding more RF to the mix. The skull had a further stage with more Rakarth Flesh added in.

This is the figure at about 90% complete. The telescope lens was SSG with a layer of SSG and RF and a spot highlight of straight Rakarth Flesh. The base (having been re-painted SSG) had a water effect applied by mixing increasing amounts of RF to SSG and highlighting up the rock surfaces to simulate water frothing around the base.

Anyway, hope you like the finished piece. I'm really stoked with the way the final piece turned out.

Laters all

Avast!

Hey all,

Thought I'd put up a quick pic of a one-off piece I finished a while back. I picked this up in the recent Black Scorpion metal overstock sale and ended up letting my lad Jake have 'ownership' in return for having his hair cut, or something like that..... :P

Black Scorpion is one of my favourite 'indie' games companies and produce some cracking pieces. The Privateer is from the non-fantasy-pirate range and packs bags of character. Jake chose the colour palette and it was a relatively quick figure to paint, as the large cloth areas make up the majority of the piece. As usual, once the basecoat was applied, I washed the whole figure with Ogryn Flesh to shade and generally tone down the colours. Highlights were re-applied with the respective colours and the base finished in a sandy beach-type effect with a highland tuft applied for a little extra interest.

Hope you like the results. The intention is to raise a warband to play the Legends of the High Seas game rules, published by Warhammer Historical.... we'll see....

Cheers all

The indies

Hey folks, having posted examples of my GW figures over the past week, I thought I'd do something a little different today and put up some examples of minis from some of the independants.

Whilst Games Workshop is, by and large, the recognised establishment in the wargaming world, here in the UK, there are some fine alternatives if you're looking around for a bit of a change. I've always referred to them as the indies, but they are great figure manufacturers in their own rights, and here are a few examples.

This was a freebie miniature given to the first 4,000 through the gates at Salute in 2010. Salute is a cracking show put on by the South London Warlords each year, and recently it has grown to such a size that it's been hosted at ExCel in London's docklands. This year's event is on the 21st April and you can find out more about it on the Salute website. The model itself was sculpted by one of the guys over at Black Scorpion Miniatures who have a great range.

These cowboys also come from Black Scorpion as part of the excellent 'Tombstone' series. I'll feature my Mexican bandito posse over the next few days.

Next up are the guys at Hasslefree Miniatures. I love these figures; the quality of the sculpts has always been excellent and the castings very clean. Head on over to their site and have a browse around, there are some really great, slightly quirky models on there and are normally less than £3.50 each, which I think is cracking, considering the excellent quality of the pieces. The adventurer on the left of the picture is sold with a 'mystery (right) arm option' and was very pleased to find it was actually Hellboy, which, coincidentally, I'd been trying to find a figure for, for some time.

All the figures in the range are full of character...

These were another great find and a lot of fun to paint. If you're on the HF site looking for them (or Hellboy) they're not listed under the official character names, obviously for copyright purposes; I just interpreted them in the paint schemes you see them in...

 

This guy is a figure which, I believe, HF bought the rights to, rather than design from scratch, although a couple of tweaks were made as the original scabbard caused issues tearing the casting molds. Still a great figure and produced to the normal high standard of the rest of the HF range.

 

Last up is this bloke from Heresy Miniatures' trenchcoat gang range. A while back when we were looking at running a Necromunda campaign at the club, several of us looked at these as alternatives to the figures available from GW. Ultimately, I kit-bashed a gang together (I'll pop these on a future post) as I wanted something unique that would be a talking point. However, this is a great range with some really characterful pieces and the Heresy site is well worth a look as well. If there are any Doctor Who fans reading, Heresy produce several incarnations of your favourite time lord.

Well, that's it for the day. Laters!