Long time no post… again…

1 year and 1 day has passed since my last update. The time has come to pretend I will update this blog regularly once again. A lot has changed in my life in the past year, but I have still been getting a lot of painting and gaming done. Just haven't had the mojo to update the blog.

Messy desk means lots of work right?...

I left my job at Battlefront Miniatures at the beginning of the year, which for the blog means taking decent photos isn't as easy. However it just means I'll book in photo sessions and do alot of photos in bulk rather than as I finish a project/model.

Lots of exciting models I'm really pleased with to show off, so my aim is to post once a week and see how that goes. 

To start things off, here is my character for a DnD campaign we played to try out 5th edition.

Chad Riffburner!

I decided to play a Bard for a few reasons. Mostly because I never had before in either tabletop or computer screen, but also because it was a way to use spells without being a fragile wizard or something. I could still whip out a rapier and get in the rough and tumble.

Unfortunately I found the problem was the spells weren't as effective as the rapier, so I ended up being more of a sub-par fighter, but maybe I just chose the wrong spells. He did offer a lot of cool roleplaying moments out of combat though, and this made the character very satisfying and a nice change from my normally combat orientated characters.

Chad was a lot of fun to paint, especially the base, for which I used a mix of textured plasticard and individual bricks.

My friend James made the Guitar/Lute for me from plasticard and thin wires, and another friend Evan sculpted the strap. I tried to paint a mother of pearl effect on the edges of the gat, but it didn't really turn out how I hoped. Really pleased with the face though, which is mostly thanks to the detail of the sculpt.

One new trick I tried (which I stole from James) is for the rapier blade, I used a knife to scrape away my undercoat and polish up the metal, which gives it a super shiny effect. Not something I would do for all blades but it worked really well for such a thin weapon where shading with metallic paints wouldn't have been very effective.

-V-

Back in the game!

Well to say it's been a while since I last did a blog post would be an understatement. It wasn't due to a lack of content, it just dropped off as a priority. But now I've got lots of stuff backed up that I'd like to take photos of, so it makes sense to blog about them too.

For the next little while I'll be posting things I've painted or worked on over the last year and a half. By the time I've caught up I should then have current projects I can show and hopefully not have a long break again, but no promises.

I'll start with some Iron Kingdoms RPG figures for my Character in a campaign we ran, which has since ended (we've moved on to DnD 5e).

These two were a lot of fun to paint, and I'm really glad with how well they match and look like a team. I discovered freehand isn't so daunting when you have a decent brush!

I have a few more figures to go along with these guys, and will eventually have my own party with 2 more characters and 1 more 'Jack.

-V-

Not so Purple Worm

I painted this a month or two ago for work. GF9 is releasing Dungeons and Dragons figures soon, and this model is in the first wave. 

We painted up some examples of our own to show off what you can do with them. I went for a desert theme using scorpions and snakes as inspiration.

I wanted to use this little project as a chance to get some practice in with the airbrush. I haven't used one much before, and never for blending/gradients. The intention was to go from beige on the bottom/belly, to a very dark brown along the back.

The model has dings and scratches sculpted on it where it's been previously attacked or stabbed. I made these into current wounds by adding arrows. I got the idea from this blog post, http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/tutorial-creating-realistic-arrows.html (awesome blog BTW), but instead I just used thin brass rod and paper.

I added a little extra sand to the base and painted it similar to my Warmachine bases. For the mouth I use reddish browns and white mixes to highlight areas and the gloss varnish helps sell the effect.

This was a really fun mini to paint and a learned a lot. Not so scared of the airbrush now and look forward to using on my IKRPG Warjack.

-V-