Friday, March 25, 2016

Painting Flesh...A walk through

Hi all,

The two of the most recent figures that I have shared with you have both been bare chested strapping types (don't get excited Crooksy!!) and have required me to really refine my technique for painting Caucasian flesh tones.  I'm speaking of course of our man Gaston from the Organ gun crew, and most recently the Chaos thug that I painted for my Frostgrave warband (and eventual WFB unit).



Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Frostgrave Warband...A Start...Chaos Thug

Hi all,

Here is yet another quick and dirty blog post.  This time I'm sharing the first figure that I have completed for my Frostgrave Warband which consists of classic Citadel Chaos models.  In this case...a Chaos Thug Archer.

This was a, somewhat, intimidating amount of bare flesh to have to tackle...but after finishing Gaston for my Bretonnian Organ Gun it seemed a natural task to tackle.

I should also mention that this is my first ever painted Chaos Thug.  While I have painted a fair number of Chaos Warriors and Choas Dwarfs I have never painted a thug...until now.

Here he is:


As a reminder here are the figures for the entire Warband...I'll delve into some more thugs in the near future.



Thats all for now!

Cheers,

Blue

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Bood Wargames Pony Mounted Dwarf

Hi all,

Another Quick post of some of my recent painting efforts.

I've been threatening to paint of the Bood Wargames mounted dwarfs for quite a while now...and I finally pulled it off.

If you are not familiar with the Bood Wargames dwarfs you are in for a treat!  They are great Dwarf sculpts by John Pickford in the late medieval style...very similiar to the classic Perry Brother sculpts that were done for Citadel in the Late 80's.  You may recall a recently posted unit that was a mix of Imperial dwarfs and Bood Dwarfs.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Chaos Boba Fett! My first Painted Chaos Renegade

Hi all!

Just a quick post to day to share my first ever painted Chaos Renegade.  Honestly I've been somewhat intimidated by these fantastic figures.  There is so much going on with each figure and so many options for color choices that I have been paralyzed by indecision.  

That all changed the other day when I was cataloging my Renegade collection and I noticed that one of the Heavy Weapon troopers had a helmet that was very similar in shape to Boba Fett's ...everyone's favorite Bounty Hunter from Star Wars.  

INSPIRATION!

A few minutes of Google Image searching later and I had some decent reference pics to work from.


Saturday, March 12, 2016

Organ Gun...Studio Shots

Welcome back!!

Thank you all for the kind response to the last post...you have certainly encouraged me to have more fun with scenic shots in the future.

Today I wanted to present to you the more formalized shots of the Organ gun and its crew.

This is the first war machine I have painted in many years (other than a swivel gun) and I had forgotten how much wood grain was involved!  I know many folks tend toward painting some of these old Bretonnian models as painted wood...and I was certainly tempted to do the same.  However my view of my Bret forces is that they are a hard fighting field army located on a land grant on the margins of the Empire...not those fancy parade armies you have back in the heart of Bretonnia...so I opted for unpainted wood.



I made a somewhat heretical decision with the wheels as well and went with these later edition spoked wheels rather than the solid ones this piece was originally sold with.  I've decided to keep my solid wheels for some of the heavier artillery...it seemed to me that this lighter piece could use the spoked wheels more "realistically"...and I like the way they look.

The crew are are a mixed bag.  Our shirtless friend Gaston is actually from the earlier Citadel Bombard release...but I had to use him.  The other two armored crew members are from the 3rd edition Bretonnian releases.


I was pretty conflicted on what to do about his shield.  My stash of Bretonnian shields is fairly small and reserved for my knights at this point.  So I opted for one of these 5th edition (??) Empire shields.  I've used a number of these on my mounted knights as well so it ties in on that level.


The gun and crew were really fantastic figures to work on.  My love of the Perry brothers sculpting increases with every one of their figures I paint.

Cheers for now!

Blue

Friday, March 11, 2016

Bretonnian Organ Gun...in Action!

Hello all,

Long time no see!

Well...I've finally had a stretch of painting time and will have a number of things to share with you over the coming week or so.  Last night I had the majority of the evening to myself as my lovely wife was dealing with the nibblers and various appointments.  So I gathered my newly painted minis together and started to set up my "photo studio."  My intention was to take my usual "documentary" images on blue gradient...but as often happens when I disappear into my hobby...I got distracted and ended up setting up a whole little scene and spent my evening happily taking pictures.  

The documentation pictures will just have to wait a bit...

My urge to actually make a more interesting scene probably stems from my lack of participation in the Lead Adventure League over on the LAF.  Long time readers will recall that this painting event used to be a major part of my hobby calendar every year.  I have now missed the last two iterations of the contest and the urge to take some creative pictures of my figures is getting to be irresistible.  

So here are some fun images of my newly completed 3rd ed Bretonnian organ gun and crew...well supported by some of my existing Bret army (5th ed models)...as they attempt to fight off a attack by a roaming warband of orcs and Goblins.

I'll start with some longer range shots to give you a feel for the whole set-up an then focus in on some of the more detailed photos that you can achieve with a rough set up like this.

Overview shot of set up...(click through for larger images)