Talarand Blackguard

From Reaper Miniatures, maybe it's already a classic, I dunno.

Talrand Blackguard

 

Snotling Blood Bowl

Those keeping up to date know that I failed the "wife's away do nothing but paint" painting challenge. But really, this is more about having fun and less about delivering on promises...

Snotlings Pt. 3

Clothes and mushrooms!

Snotling Progress

Day 1 of the Snotling BB team challenge.

So I put in a solid 8 hours. The first 30 min was spent sorting out the skin color.  To do this  I made a grid of yellows and blues, and blended them to see what happens.

While this was instructive I ultimately abandoned this approach; the test heads were deemed unacceptable. Instead I opted for a primary yellow a dark biege, light biege and Citadel's new contrast paint "Warp Lightening" green. The pigmentation can only be described as psychotic, and it's an awesome glaze.

I only focused on the skin for today, going with the batch paint approach.

 I also based the eyes in pure white, to help make them pop when the time comes.

Holy shit! Top left in the above! An escapee. FU@$!!!!

And here I thought I was done for today...

HMP

More Snotlings

Ssshhh, the boss is out of town! We're spray painting in the house.

SNOTLINGS!

We interrupt this fail to bring you important information. The Snotlings are coming...

The Grot Walker "Accidents Happen"

It's done. I wasn't sure it was finished, but I painted the base rim black, so it must be done (I think that's a rule or something). Proudly presenting "Accidents Happen". 

Our hero has commandeered an Imperial Guard Scout, he's had too much mushroom tea and it's got as heck of a blind spot...

Another Successful Orbit

I recently completed another orbit of our nearest star, and to celebrate I went shopping. 

Boar Riding Greenskin

I generally try and complete one project before embarking on another, but when inspiration strikes it's usually a good idea to embrace it. By jumping headlong into something that inspires you, it's possible to achieve results that you might otherwise think lie outside your skill set.

Case in point is the boar pictured above. I've been sitting on this model for a couple of years, and last night while taking over the kitchen table (the boss is away), inspiration struck!

I'm not an expert with green stuff, but before I knew it I had a Greenskin saddled up. He's a mishmash of parts, and the saddle was sculpted from GS and reaper chains for decoration.

In the beginning it was simple, crude if you will. I probably madden too much GS, but,live and learn.

Then it started to come together. A decorative chain wrap, aka. Ork bedazzling. 

I'm pretty excited. Some more bits here and there, and things should be good.

Keep hacking and tacking,

HMP

Improved Monday

I hope to improve Monday by simply having this post go live by then. Remember kids, aim low, meet your expectations, don't be disappointed.

I've begun the "paint chipping" in earnest. 

The process is relatively straightforward, especially since the model already has a number of washes. Coming back in with the base tone provides enough contrast, and then going inside that with a nice gray, makes ok chipping.  

Below is a "before" which is really just the side I haven't started yet. Going one panel at a time seems to make it easier to not miss too much.

And, after.

That's all for now. Respect others and wear a G-D mask... 

Cheers,

HMP

Grots Inside

Pretty £ucking great eh. Ya like that? Here's the jam.

As you read the following, hum M&M... You don't, want to £uck with Graw-ots, because Graw-ots, will £ucking kill you...

Haha. Getting closer. Next is chipping and weathering and grease grime, and, most importantly, Grotification. 

Cheers,

HMP

Lost is Found

That which was lost has been found! It was in a safe place.

Today, with said recovered item in hand, I labored, which was fitting, as it was Labor day... Recall the previous efforts had yielded the following, which while not terrible, failed to convey the madness required by the piece.

Enter the goggles. Goggles are a universal key to crazy. 

The appropriate level of crazy is essentially a free byproduct of simply donning them.

Just by looking at his face you can imagine the scream eminating from him. Totally oblivious to his trampled comrade, a combination of crazed bloodlust that is always accompanied by a 1000 yard stare, coupled with the seduction of far too much power for any one Grot to yield. He's the Joker of the 41st millennium...

"HE HE WHO HA HA, GET SOME, DAKKA-DAKKA, DAKKA?"

Lol,

HMP

I Lost My Head

I don't often lose stuff, in fact, I can't recall the last time I lost anything!  So you can understand my dismay when I failed to locate my Grot walker pilot's head this morning...

 I'm totally gutted. I had big plans for that head, I was hoping to paint the goggles a vibrant orange and go all out on the face. I really wanted the eyes to pop, contrasted against the green skin with the drab walker below. 

After reexamining all the heads I had left I chose this guy with a skull hat. I'm not sure that this face conveys the same feeling as the other, who looked crazy!

So I'm not sure what to do. 

I'm tempted to just buy another box of Grots, but maybe that's a bit extreme. I still have to do a more thorough search of my work area, but I'm not optimistic, since I don't recall the last time I saw it. I figured I had put it in a safe place. Sometimes my safe places end up being safe hiding places.

HMP

Armored Camo Fail?

I felt that the walker was looking a bit drab, so I thought I'd try out some camo to spice things up a bit. A quick google search of "German armor camo", yielded the following nugget of information (although the following images are potentially subject to copyright, it's historical information and I'm not making any money, so it should be fine).

I'm not much of an ancient history buff, and had no idea if this was real, but it turns out it is. Here is an example of the Elefant tank, which is some kind kind of mobile howitzer developed by the Germans 

Apparently they weighed 65 tonnes, were  armed with an 8.8 cm main cannon and powered by 2 Maybach engines, which in turn powered some monster electric motors (they had hybrids long before it was trendy, pretty dope).

Anyhow, the first attempt looked like this. 

Which my brother promptly likened to "gummie worms". This was probably the closest he's ever come to outright saying something sucked, but I'm clever enough to read between the lines. Further analysis of the reference material suggested that the worms shouldn't be of equal weight, so I set about rectifying the situation. Just 4 short hours later...

 

I arrived here.

I think it's a big improvement, but there's still room for more. It's getting hard to "see", and I feel it's a bit too busy now, but it is what it is and we're not going back. Also the choice to thicken the green was a fail because it will detract from the pilot, who's also going to be green, but after the washes and weathering it might still be fine. 

Cheers,

HMP

Skin Tones for Beastmen, Revisited

I have an unpainted Choas Blood Bowl team, which I'll get to eventually, but before I start I'd like to have a plan. With that in mind I painted one of my mini-taurs, again...

The pallet was very limited with black, white, Doombull Brown, and Rhinox Hide. The Doombull is very red, and it comes out really pink when you start adding white. I believe that with some blues and greens on the pallet one could make great human flesh tones (to be investigated due course). With what I had out he just ended up looking like a pig (pink).

 I didnt finish the piece, but it was a nice exercise. The leather, loincloth, horns and other bits were all Rhinox with different amounts of white. I ended up pulling out the blue to try and do some work on the sword, but got frustrated and called it a day. All in all it wasn't a total waste of time, but it certainly wasn't a win; I'm not convinced this is the color for my (or your) beastmen.

Cheers,

HMP

Grot Tanks

I've been having so much fun converting the Sentinel Scout into a captured piece of armor for tbe Grots, I figured I should make an entire armored division! Enter Airfix 1:76 scale tank kits. 

These things are too small for Space Marines, but they totally hit the mark for Grots. It should be a lot easier than building tanks from scratch, but they will still require heavy modifications. 

 

Reviews to come.

HMP

New Tools!

Some things arrived in the mail! New drill bits, and micro saw blades. The drill bits are sizes 61-80, which in practical terms, are small, to really really very small. The last set of bits that I ordered were from Amazon, and they turned out to be non-functional Chinese garbage. How these people are ever going to put someone on the moon... 

The other new treat, is a set of 5 micro saws. They are awesome. Unlike the Chinese "drill bits" (read twisted wire), they perform exactly how they should. They effortlessly glide through sprue like a hot knife through butter. The maiden cut, as it were, freed the sprue of its Lascannon, which, as every 40K fan boy will tell you, is the backbone of the Imperial Guard, and therefore the new primary armament for the Grot walker...

More to come,

HMP

Accidents Happen (Walker pt. 7)

More of a show and tell than a proper update (Ed. Thus is a stupid opening line, all blogs are show and tell, it's not fine litereture). I further developed the "TP-mache" lump, and applied a bunch of texture. Some grays on the rocks and bits, and Doom Bull brown on the "dirt". A whiff of Agrax here and there, and things were looking pretty good. There was some gentle drybrushing, probably with Zandri Dust.

The addition of the squashed comrade was either pure genius, or pure stupidity. To quite Bob Ross, "we dont make mistakes, we have happy accidents". Which brings us to the title of today's post, "Accidents Happen". Keen observers will notice that Dobby has been squished while facing the walker, but in he should have been charging the enemy... perhaps he heard a noise and turned, only in time to see the cause of his gristly death

I'm fairly certain that this is the perfect title for this piece. The reasons for this are twofold; 1) it correctly depicts the scene, and 2) it's how we arrived at the situation we currently find ourselves in.

Regardless of whether he should have been coming or going, he's not moving now. 

So that about sums it up. Until next time. Dont miss good while looking for perfect. DMGWLFP

Hack

Grot Walker Pt. 6

Last night, while my spouse sought inner peace and tranquility through guided human pretzel-fication/chakra alignment, I sought inner peace by working on death and destruction in the 41st millennium. 

I began by planning where the walkers legs were going to be positioned and then I started gluing bits of cork to the base with Modge-Podge.

After the initial application I added more of the goop, and then 1 single square of TP. Using a damp paint brush I gently worked the TP into the base, added another layer of goop, then repeated the whole process. 

After cleaning up the edges I let the base dry overnight. The next morning this was the result. 

Pretty impressive, right? I was quite pleased with my discovery, until I realized that I was and old man playing with what amounts to papier mache. Not much of a discovery...

Sometimes it's the journey that matters, while other times it's the destination. This is a fine example of the latter; a natural looking randomly uneven surface upon which more materials can be applied. 

HMP

Grot Walker Pt. 5

It sort of looks like something the cat dragged in, so maybe we should recap and see how we got into this mess

I watched way too many of Nightshift's youtube videos, and now "boys and girls", I use way too much Tamiya putty and there are flame cuts and weld lines everywhere.

The texturing looks good, just dont get too stupid with it. Same with the flame cuts.

The flame cuts are hard to see, but it does make a difference. I kinda buggered up the weld lines. They were done with 2 part epoxy (Army Painter green stuff), but really where I went wrong was not making them small enough, and I turned bolted panels into bolted and welded panels (oops).

The smoke stacks were super fat and ugly, and instead of drilling them out I chopped them off and then drilled out the heat shroud. The shroud is kinda stupid, it reads "occupational safety"... whatever. Anyhow the new stack tips are parts of a BICcpen held in with epoxy. I'm not sold on them, as the shroud is still too thick and I'd like it better if the holes were real... so I'll be looking to chop all that off in due course. 

The whole thing looks like a hot mess because no one part is complete, and I keep priming, adding puty and sanding, but all at the same time. 

The next big decision is what the primary weapon will be...

HMP