Alone

This week has been an exercise in painting models larger than 28mm scale. I have quite a few small busts from Mindworks which are a nice size to practice techniques without feeling like I've "wasted" a model trying something new. This range of busts are based on the work of Gerald Brom, a fabulous fantasy artist, and I wanted to create something that was undead, or at least not fully alive, but different to the pale grey tones of the original artwork.

The palette features no premixed green, it's all from the palette below with the darkest colour being the burnt umber on the right. 

I initially started with magenta underpainting and then ochre as the brightest colour, but felt it was too warm, and started to add some of the blue. From there it's a bit of freestyling and just playing with the colours to create contrast. A fun challenge considering the size of the piece.

 How small? Well, here's an English penny for size. comparison

 

 

Count Binface

Ah, Binface. For those unfamiliar, a quick primer here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Binface) of someone carrying on a fine British tradition of fringe political candidates.

But let's think of the character, the noble leader of the Recyclons from the planet Sigma IX. I'd like to imagine upon leaving our planet, this noble warrior's outfit reverts to true colours; the gentle waft of a galaxy's hues passing across the once dull costume and imbuing it with a luminosity hitherto unseen.

Or ... perhaps, just enjoy me painting with colour and fun when anyone else painting the miniature is painting it in black and silver.

For the metallics, I started with a grey mixed from Vallejo Off White, Monument Coal Black and Ice Vallejo Yellow. In the brighter areas there's Scale75 Caribbean Blue and more Ice Yellow, and in the darker areas some Scale75 African Shadow to bring in reddish tones, then blue and black to make it darker.

Crux Terminatus

My blogging has been sporadic over certain years, and a few of my favourite, older projects have been missed out entirely. As I try to keep this site as my reference point for completed work, I felt I should remedy that and this beauty is one of those.

I bought this back in 2020 and painted it during 2023. It's a lovely, resin Crux Terminatus based on the insignia put on a Space Marine's shoulder to indicate they've earned the right to wear Terminator armour. The image on the front of White Dwarf 112 by Wayne England is a favourite cover of mine and was a great reference piece. The insignias aren't a perfect match, but they're enough to give me plenty of references for my own, and I feel the finished version has a high contrast value as indicated in the greyscale photo.

It's a large piece, without a lot of texture, so I was generous on my stippling and drybrushing to create the effect of a stone surface. Undiluted paint, a big feathery brush and a lot of stabbing to make it pretty.

Dungeon Saga heroes: Rordin, Orlaf, Saulion & Svereg

Summer break is over, and it's back to the painting mines. We've been playing a lot of Dungeon Saga Origins recently. It's fun, well thought out and a good upgrade on the concept of HeroQuest, and worth checking out (https://www.manticgames.com/dice-board-games/dungeon-crawler-board-games/). For the current campaign we've settled on four models who are frankly ill-suited to work as a unit and it's proving embarassing but amusing as we're ineffectually waft our way through the missions, surviving by only a thread. It's tabletop adventures like this which enthuse me to paint the wayward adventurers.

Orlaf, Human Barbarian

Svereg, Dwarf Ranger

Rordin, Dwarf Fighter

Saulion, Human Paladin

 

As usual when painting a small group of models, it's the same palette across the four but evidently different application. I've tried to think about the impression it gives on the tabletop rather than being precise.