So You Better Be Good...

For goodness sakes...

"Punish!"

I'm still trying to decide if I want a cheery slogan on his weapon or not.

Wargames Foundry's Bazooka Santa. Found him in a forgotten box o' miniatures and figured that this was the best time of year to paint him up. Knocked him out in two quick sessions - how could I not with his limited palette? Fun figure to paint, and he can be a part of the house's seasonal decor   ;)

The Things We Fight Over

I knocked out some terrain pieces a week or so ago; I kept coming across them while I was doing a clean-up of my hobby area and figured they were just asking to be done :)

Pegasus Hobbies buttresses formed into a Gothic Gazebo

These old 3rd edition 40K chestnuts - the other two corners are around here - somewhere...

LotR ruins and Armorcast rocks. Excitement!

Do try to ignore the many, many assembled miniatures off to the sides - as usual, I talk about hobbies that I want to start, but then go haring off after something else entirely. Of course, terrain is generally quick and easy to paint and look good once you have the process down, so I feel like working on this stuff was time well spent. (Not to mention it makes the games look 100% better too!)

Time to push some miniatures from that 95% completion stage to the 100%.

"Things That Can't Be Polished" For $200, Alex.

Here are a couple old Heritage sorceresses that I slapped paint on as a whim last week. For some odd reason I've been interested in pulling out old, rough sculpts from my youth and getting color on them lately.

1206b and 1206c, respectively

As I've whined about before - I'm no great painter, but it would be hard for anyone to make these crude gals look good. Poor 1206b has a particular case of "butter face" that only got worse the longer I messed with it. I didn't paint 1206c's eyes, as her pose and general appearance suggested to me that her eyes were closed as she worked her magics.

That's a damn heavy cloak...

All said, I'm still happy enough with them - there's something satisfying about finishing something that's been in your collection for 30-ish years. :)

On Top Ork

I finished this guy this past Thursday, but I haven't posted him since I generally don't get much hobby stuff done during my work "week" (Friday through Sunday, 12 hour shifts), plus I've been waiting to try photographing my minis outdoors in natural light.

Naturally, it has been raining all week here in Texas so that hasn't happened.

Just an old Rogue Trader-era Ork boy, that I've applied the darker skin tone to. I actually started him the same time that I did the Grenadier plastic Orcs, but finished him separately. I'm OK with the skin color, but I'll try to lighten it up on future Orcs. Most likely I'll be mixing skin tones within units anyway, as I'm sure they can vary from boy to boy, just like humies.

"On Top". 

Oops, looks like I'll need to paint his claws. It's always something.

Nothing fancy here - I'm kind of at the point where I just want to get miniatures painted without worrying about fancy blending techniques. I knocked this guy out pretty quickly (for me), and that's about as satisfying as getting a "perfect" paint job. Plus, he's an Ork. They're pretty scruffy-looking anyway. :)

Testing, 1, 2, 3...

Slapped some paint on the three different Orc sculpts from Grenadier's Fantasy Warriors game, partially to get myself into the swing of painting again, and partially to test out a different way to paint green Orc skin.

We is Orcs an' dat's no lie.

We make yoo skream an' make yoo cry.

Not the best sculpts by any stretch of the imagination (soft detail mostly, and the face on the spear orc is awful), but I have 51 of them, and I figure they'll do OK to fill in my Mordor and Isengard armies for GW's Lord of the Rings game. The best thing about them is that they are a type of HIPS plastic that is compatible with GW's, which will allow me to easily stick different weapons on them and change their poses a bit.

Honestly I don't hate these guys, really. They're not that bad for early plastic miniatures. It's just a shame that Mark Copplestone aped the Warhammer Orc look a little too closely.

Edit: And yeah, blurry pictures. One of these days I'll figure out this photography thing...

Projects, Ahoy

While I haven't really finished any painting projects in the past month or so, I have been prepping a few, so that I can jump right into them when I get the hobby mood in full swing again. This works well for me, as time and again I get tired of a project after the initial prepping, assembling and priming and then can't stand to look at it anymore. I figure that if I do the prep work for future projects that I don't intend to do right now, I won't have that stigma and will happily jump into them at some unknown, later date.

Makes sense? Not to me either, but hell, as long as I'm doing SOMEthing hobby-related I figure it's better than sitting on my hands, playing hours of Fallout 4 or whatever.

This is my madness, don't question it.

1. Arena Of Blood

So a little while ago, I dug up my copy of Arena of Blood that was published in White Dwarf number 229. For those that don't know, it's a game of arena combat involving six different Dark Eldar Wyches (Drukhari, to you young'uns), played on a hex board. Each combatant has their own mode of combat and weapons (splinter pistol and CCW, shardnet and impaler, etc. Yes, there is also a beastmaster and warpbeast, and a Hellion on their skyboard!). A fun, simple gladiator combat game that improves with the more players that join in.

Some people (namely Dr. Mathias) have the drive to actually make a freaking 3D board for the game. Follow the link for how he built the lovely thing.

Well, I used to have a Dark Eldar army back around '99 or '00, but ended up selling it when the newest models came out, as they just blew the old one completely away. Of course, I never actually did buy any of the new ones, and so that project went poof. I'm still amazed that I had a buyer for the old army - probably because it was actually mostly painted.

Now coincidentally enough I had quite a few extra Wyches that the buyer didn't want, and have been laying in wait for me to rediscover the AoB rules and fan the spark to get this project going. I easily had enough to cover one of each combatant type (except for the Hellion), as well as a few extra. Well, I reasoned, if I need to buy a Hellion off eBay I might as well buy enough of the others to fill out another group of Wyches - a second team, if you will. This got the idea in my head to see if the game will work if I have two Wych teams fighting each other, instead of a bunch of individuals. (But really, it was just an excuse to buy more miniatures.)

As you might have guessed, I'm using the circa 1999 metal miniatures. The new-ish plastics do look nice, but I'll admit that I'm pretty fond of the chunky old devils; plus, the new minis look kind of  generic compared to the old over-the-top ones. So now I have assembled and primed my Wyches, and will be painting them sometime this year - I'm actually looking forward to it.

Hellions aren't ready, though. Also, note the even boy-to-girl ratio.

I did need to re-purpose two Succubi to avoid repeats on the two teams. The one with the whip-shaped agoniser will function as a Beastmaster, while the second has been lightly converted to carry a razor snare and falchion. I have an extra female with hydra knives - maybe she'll be a referee or something ;)

I also discovered that I have an old copy of Lelith Hesperax and Kruellagh as well. I may make up rules for them at some point, to give a whole team something to be slaughtered by.

2. The Black Prince's Chariot of Fear (Ral Partha).

Bit of a cheat here - I started this one last year, but school got in the way and I never picked it back up. Well now I'm interested in at least finishing the prep work now.

I got this set back in the '80s, but was way too intimidated by it back then (as well as the terrifying Throne of Bone, which I may work on, some day). So about this time last year, I got to thinking about it and decided that my skill level was easily a match to complete the silly thing. Cleaning an assembly was going well, and then I ran into a point where gap-filling would be a must, as well as light sculpting. Ugh - that put the brakes on the project right quick. 

It's a tiny dude riding a chariot made up of a Balrog, which is in turn being pulled by two Balrogs. What's not to love?

At the beginning of the year, I did indeed do some green stuff work on the two Balrogs pulling the chariot - and then stalled out again. I'm now getting more and more determined to get this one finished off (and the sculpting ended up looking pretty good, if I say so), so I'll probably end up dragging this old chestnut out again this month to finish the prep work, and hopefully not be too sick of it to paint it. I even have the paint scheme figured out too - no bright red demons for me, I'm going to stick closer to the whole "shadow and flame" description (see the paint job on GWs LotR Balrog).

All the lovely parts.

Mock-up. You can tell this is an old pic, as my BB Rat Ogre is still unfinished in the background.

Sculpted flames under the wings. Give the demon a high-five!

3. Death Giant of the Undead Legion (Grenadier)

Not much to say about this one, as I just got a partly-painted one off eBay (for relatively cheap!) Big-assed giant skeleton sculpted in 1986 by Andrew Chernak, who sculpted some of the best damn skeletons I've ever seen, and this one is no different. I've wanted this model for a long, long time, but was never able to get it. Recently, I saw a partially painted one for sale for $40, and it came with a number of other old metal miniatures (including a frost giant). Yes indeed, I snapped it up. No pics of mine - he's currently soaking in Simple Green, awaiting cleaning and a slow assembly. I probably won't seriously get to working on this guy until the end of the year, but it's project that I'm excited to be working on.

This guy. As bad-ass as they come.

Getting him means I have three of the six "Masterpiece Editions" undead sets. I just need the dragon, mastodon with catapult and the always awesome rhinoceros captive transport. Fortunately, Mirliton still makes them so I'll be able to get them at my leisure.

Now, I just need to step away from Fallout :)

Lazy Summer

Damn, I have really lost my painting mojo again. Personally, I blame the heat of the Texas summer and (as always) video games. To give my inspiration a little kick, I assembled and primed several random miniatures from the Pile, all to no avail. So now I have a dozen or more miniatures on my desk giving me the stink eye:

A regular Where's Waldo of the miniatures world...

Posting here has certainly given me a bit of momentum again. Let's slap a few colors on some of these guys and see how far we get.

Quick and Dirty Gandalf

No, that's not the title of my LotR slash fanfic. I just did a quick paintjob of my metal Gandalf from the original Games Workshop Fellowship of the Ring set:

"Friggin' Hobbits."

With all the grey on him, I got lazy and slapped the paint on. Overall he turned out ok, but I need to neaten up some of the highlights in his robes.

The photography is dodgier than usual, as my son stole one of my lights that I use for the task. It's ok though - he's been painting his own miniatures at his desk, so I happly lent it to him. Gotta keep the kids interested, even if it means crappier pictures for the blog.

On a Roll?

Productive (for me) night last night.

"Do you see this gun? Well, DO YOU?"

This is Reaper's Undead Outlaw miniature. I'm not much into Old West stuff, but this guy is pretty bad ass. I've had it for a few years without planning on doing anything with it, but last night I needed a "palate cleanser" from Skaven and he made it to the top of my list.

"How about you over there? Do YOU see my gun?"

Even more incredible, I actually finished it in one day - I haven't done that in quite a while (the Reaper Bones ratman from October doesn't count, as it sucks.)

Fairly random color scheme - the only "have to have" color is purple, as that has become my theme color for my undead. I was afraid that the sand color for the duster would be a bad choice next to his bony bits, but keeping it a warm tone to the cold tone of the bones fixed that. Pretty pleased with him overall.

"FINE. I'll find someone else who appreciates rusty-ass revolvers."

Cool miniature - actually makes me want to work on a Weird West project.

Cheatin' Scum!

Yep, tonight is another cheat. I got my hands on some of the nice new plastic bases that come with the latest edition of Necromunda recently (as well as some indifferent looking plastic gangers :P ), and wanted to see how they would look with one of my old Necro minis on it. As luck would have it, my faithful old Hive Scum ("Blondie") was in need of having his plasma pistol replaced, so I pushed him to the front of tonight's queue:

"In this world, there are two kinds of plasma pistols my friend..."

Like a large percentage of people who painted this guy, I immediately thought of Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" character and so painted him accordingly circa 1998. At the time, I lopped off his left hand and replaced it with a rather chunky plastic Ork plasma pistol, painted fire engine red (my preferred plasma weapon color back then). It never looked right throughout the years, so I snapped it off and replaced it with a Space Marine one. Still pretty chunky, but it looks better to me. I tried to find my old Confrontation pistol sprues to use a plasma pistol from there, but I think this one fits the Marauder Miniature ascetic pretty well. Said pistol is now a low-profile black, reasoning that Blondie doesn't want to call attention to the fact that he is probably carrying an illegal or stolen weapon.

As you can see, I attempted the cool kids method of painting glowy bits on the gun (no OSL though, I am not a Golden Daemon painter!). Probably needs to be brighter, but - eh.

I worked the base to look as nasty and gross as any floor as one would find on the Hive Bottom. Rust and paint chips show that the maintenance crew hasn't been this way for a few millennia...

In the end, I'm not a fan of adding to/painting parts of already painted miniatures. For some reason, I tend to rush through the work even faster than I would painting a miniature from scratch. The gun is pretty minimalistic (kind of the point, but I went a littl TOO much so), and the base looks too busy. In the future when I start adding my old Escher gangers to them, I'll probably skip the fancy hazard striping.

One Day I Will Paint Something That Isn't Skaven Bloodbowl Stuff...

...but today isn't that day.

L to R - Lineman, Catcher (Gutter Runner), Catcher (Gutter Runner), Kicker (demoted to Lineman)

New phone, new bad photos. To be fair, it's a quarter to 3 am here, and I'm on call this week (I was already called in four hours ago for a procedure that ended up not happening), so my photography is worse than usual. Glad to be done with these guys, they sat around too long.

Ze Butts.

Now that I feel settled into my shift, I have realized that I'm more open to spending large amounts of time painting - with four days off a week, I better be painting.

Mandatory team shot, with added Tilt-o-Vision!
Seven more to go.

Those two that I painted around 1990 are really starting to stand out, now that the rest of the team is getting finished. Doubt I'll do anything about it - I still like how they look, and it's a nice reminder on how my work looked back then.

Looks like I need a bigger backdrop too...

Unrepentant Mini Murderer

And here she is - the killer of the second skeletaur, showing absolutely no remorse...

Ferocious.

...Now where have I seen this before? Let me see...

Delusions of Grandeur.

The Dangers Of Comparison

Well - been a while. As I am the only person who sees this blog (seriously, my statistics page backs this claim up), I'm not too ashamed about not posting here for two months. Partially, my new job has been running me through my paces, but mostly I haven't felt like painting due to the mistake of comparing my work to others.

When I have time, I enjoy browsing the blogs of others to get ideas and inspiration. Unfortunately, I have been looking at the works of "Golden Daemon-level" painters as well and have been getting that annoying "why bother?" thought in the back of my mind. While I don't really think that I'm a bad painter, I'm not really an artsy-type either; I don't really feel the need to blend 10 layers for a shade, or work on my OSL or perfect my NMM (actually, I've never seriously tried NMM - I have my metallics RIGHT THERE).

The problem is that once doubt starts to creep into one's mind, it's tough to keep it out. While I was on my training schedule at work, I tended to be too exhausted to even want to pick up a paintbrush but now that I'm on my regular shift (three 12 hour days in a row, giving me 4 days off thankyouverymuch) I have been working to exorcise the demons of Doubt out of my brain and actually get shit painted.

Maybe with an Exorcist kitbash?

Eh, I'll get over it. I'll make sure to start putting those four days to good use (I spent the past three of those days just putting my hobby area in order - it was kind of a wreck after nearly two years of hobby indifference).

A skeletaur did get finished, though. One, that is. His buddy was attacked by a cat
and I haven't found the heart to fix him yet.

(Edit: Ooo, sorry about the harsh picture - I didn't feel like setting up my photo stuff. The mini looks better in real life, really. REALLY.)

If anything, I need to get back to work just to keep the Ghost of H.G. Wells happy. Can't have a sad ghost blubbering around the joint, can we?

Sinners Beware...

Well, I didn't have a week and a half long nap - I managed to jack up my back somehow which made painting nigh-impossible though. Being hardheaded, I tried to finish the skeletaurs anyway but all I managed to do was make then look terrible. My back's better now, so I'll try to fix them a little and be done with them.

I did manage to do other hobby-related things, however:

That's about 75% of my Adeptus Ministorum force, assembled and base-coated. This will most likely be my main 2018 project, now that 40K is reasonably playable again. I have about 17 Seraphim and a handful of characters (extra Sister Superiors and a couple of the older sculpts of the Cannoness, which will count as SS with combi-weapons). Once money starts flowing for me again, I'll hunt down 2-3 more old style Rhinos, a new-style Rhino body to go with the new-style Immolator bits that I have for some reason, and a metal Saint Celestine. I like the new plastic saint model, but the whole "I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe" ribbons put me off. More basic sisters would bee good too ;)

Here's how they'll eventually look. I painted these about 5 years ago, and then avoided the army because the red I wanted to use took several coats to get good coverage (Poly-S Rock Island Red, I think). Fast-forward to a year ago, when I discovered that Wal-Mart was selling spray cans of a Krylon primer that matched the Poly-S paint almost perfectly! Yes I bought them out, and true to form, WM never carried that color again. Fuckers.

Well, time to finish a couple crappy skeletaur paintjobs.

There Goes My Last "Good" Excuse!

Anyone who has visited here knows that for the past year(ish), I have been yammering on about how I didn't have the drive to paint due to Rad Tech school, and the fun of clinicals. Well, I've since graduated, got certified, am legal to practice in the state of Texas, and after one very happy phone call yesterday, I now have a job at the hospital that I really wanted to work at (pending their sift through my "sordid" past :D ). Can I feel settled enough now?

More interesting, I'm starting my shift Fri, Sat, Sun - 10am - 10pm, so four days to get paint in! No excuses except for my laziness, which is the strongest hurdle of all. I think I'll finish off those Grenadier skeletaurs that are sitting on my desk now!

I mean, after a nap, of course.... ;)

Everything Old Is New Again

Recently, Reaper Miniatures announced that they were sort of reviving the old Dungeon Dwellers line that they took over from Heritage. This has piqued my interest, as, when I was a tiny troll, my collection was primarily made up of Heritage and pre-slotta Citadel miniatures. Their first offering to the line is a new skelly sculpt named "Rictus the Undying" which does rather recall those old Heritage sculpts. In a wave of nostalgia, I managed to remember that I still had these old fellows:

Yes, five "Denizens of the Dungeon" plastic skellies from Heritage, in full '80s paint job glory. Sadly, (sort of sadly, anyways - these minis were pretty awful, but cheap) I only have these guys left, where once I had all four sets that were made. I especially miss the ogre that came in one of the boxes.

This nostalgia got me to digging around in the oldest of miniature vaults, in search of all the metal Heritage minis that I still have. Surprisingly enough, there are still quite a few lurking around so readers might be subjected to old "Eh" sculpts with my current painting skills in the coming months. Not these skeletons though - they get to stay this way forever.

But that's not the only reason I'm posting tonight...

While digging in the Deep Vaults, I came across an old conversion that I did in the late '80s or early '90s that I had somehow forgotten about. I remember that Warhammer 3rd Edition was fading out, but still the current ruleset. I believe that I was putting together a Khorne army from Slaves to Darkness, and wanted a unit or two of chaos dwarves. As I couldn't source any of the excellent metal ones that were out at the time, I decided to convert my own from the dwarves in the plastic Warhammer Regiments set (yes, the shockingly white plastic ones). Well, me being an ADD doofus, I only managed to convert about six or so (mostly head swaps, although I do recall giving one a skaven head and tail), and of that, only painted one.

But what a one he is.

May I present the standard bearer of "Da Bugeyez" - the best conversion of the lot:

Quite a sight, isn't he? Let's see - Warhammer Regiments dwarf with RTB01 space marine combat attachments in place of horns (why not), the ends of the cross piece of an early space marine back banner pole for eyestalks, and the lance of an early Roughrider for the banner pole (I think these pulled double duty for High Elf knight lances, as well).

God, I still love this little freak.

What the rest of the unit sees. Yes, that IS his picture on the back - he's a bit full of himself.

I don't think I ever got too far with the army overall - 40K kind of overshadowed Fantasy pretty quickly with the local gaming group. This guy still had work though - I had need of cultists, and at least one friend fielded Chaos Squats. 

Ah nostalgia! I think I'll put him in the display box for a while to scare the cats.

"Watchoo lookin' at?"