Dankhold Troggboss

This was an experiment in using primary colours from Instar (https://shop.instarpaint.com/) as a test of their paint range, as Mr Instar was giving away packs of the primaries at Salute 2021 (or was it 2020, both work!) and I thought it only right to give them a good workout on their own merit.

The paints are too satin for my personal taste, as it's hard to see what you're doing under lights, but a quick hit of matte varnish and the result is pretty great. Well worth a look, and if you like glazing then I think the composition will be of interest.

This time I did remember to take a lot of WIP photos, so I hope these are useful.

 

Ho, ho, ho

One of the kids bought low budget Santa decoration, and on closer inspection was VERY unhappy with the painting quality. She asked me to fix the face, as she was annoyed that the painted on eyes weren't even in the right place. I started repainting the eyes and ... well, it escalated and the whole figure really needed a do-over.

 If you want to try your own, then it's only £1 from here (https://www.theworks.co.uk/p/craft-embellishments/santa-resin-embellishment/5052089301177.html).

With hindsight I would have primed it and repainted, rather than a series of items painted on top of the original, but all in all it was only two hours. I reglossed the boots and belt, as I was informed that Santa always keeps his shoes shiny.

Merry Christmas!

Pilots Helena van Gaal & Freeman Liste

The best for last, in my opinion at least. I love the contrast of sculpts between the slim and chunky, but then the no-nonsense "I've got my helmet, and ready to go" versus "I can't travel without my snidey pet". The face on Helena was great fun to paint, really characterful.

 

Port Admin Adjunct Gilda Citlax & Street Vendor Lazlo Zhao

 The space version of Cut My Own Throat Dibbler, and his delicious tentacle-based treats. Good fun to paint a face in partial shadow. But underneath the Devo-esque glasses are painted, I promise.

For the Port Admin I nearly went for a lizard green, but thought it would be more fun to paint it human and expose the "ugly" nature of the character.

 

Tech Trader Dronk Henkman & Courier Jak Fenwick

Trader Dronk's sculpt is a curious one. I looked at the official version and didn't like how the eyes had been painted on - so painted him with his eyes closed in a "I'm so pleased with this" expression, and like the result.

I may as well call the courier "Handsome" Jak, as when I saw the sculpt it demanded a metallic paintjob like the Borderlands character. One of the most fun sculpts I've painted in a while. Some WIP shots at the end, to highlight how small these models are and a close-up of the face - it's not pretty zoomed in, but gives an idea of the sculpt quality.

Ludo, Socialites Syra & Ustina

Whenever I paint skin, it tends to be caucasian tones. On this project I wanted to add a bit more variety, and that didn't just mean non-caucasian but also adding robots because we're in the future and there'll be robots right?

 I wanted Ludo to feel lost and small. Putting them on a base alone didn't do that, so I dug out another piece of random scenery and stuck them behind it and added some anti-robot graffiti.

The socialites are painted in pastels, then I used the greys to create different effects - a more shiny metallic on him, and a softer fabric on her.

Nan-O-Bot, Botcot, Karlston & ZoZu

Let's start with the little guy, Karlston. He's very, very tiny. That's a 25mm base and he's dwarfed by it.

I thought it would be fun to throw a camo jacket on him, but make it look like he's lost and has been crying - looking around for his designated adult. There's track marks left in the dusty surface from him dragging the robot, so it's clearly heavier than it looks.

Meanwhile, at the fancier end of society someone has been able to afford a robot nanny to push their delightfully creepy baby around. I started painting her in metallics but realise that was a bit boring and gave her a swinging sixties shiny dress front to go with the fantastic hairdo. Perfectly normal, right?

Familiars

 As part of the Kickstarter, they threw in a number of smaller miniatures under the heading of "Familiars". But I liked the idea of them being more akin to scavengers in my little colony. While Ambulatory Fungoid and Horned Urz Cub are big enough to merit a base on their own, the others didn't and I wanted to create a little diorama for them.

So here's the Owl Shrews, Squippet, Homungulid, Testudo Bird and Feathered Hopper in a single scene. Should have taken more WIP shots, but there are a couple at the bottom of this post. It's an old resin barrel, a backpack of papers then I printed a load of fake posters, rolled them up and bundled them in a disorganised fashion.

Some of the WIP shots and a sense of scale for the bear against a Primaris Space Marine.
 

 

 

Colony 87 third wave

A single project through November - I finished off the Colony 87 third wave models from a Kickstarter project by Crooked Dice. Felt it was appropriate as I've just backed the fourth wave and wanted these out the backlog before the new ones arrive in January. 

To complicate matters, I tried to paint everything using a Zorn palette - essentially black, white, red and yellow ochre. That's it. Nothing else. Mix your tones from there. YOu can see how a proper artist does it here  (https://www.anderszorn.org/biography.html). My interpretation is just creating the tones and using those as colours for things, then a highlight and a shadow, nothing more complex.

I will post more close-up shots over the next week or two but here's the group shot.

 I'm a sucker for sci-fi civilian sculpts, as you'll see through the next year or two ...

Gun

It's Orktober, so I remembered to get my annual contribution completed in time. I think we all know the inspiration for this sculpt, right?

 As I keep forgetting to share WIP shots, here's a few from the early stages of painting.

At this point I thought I'd really nailed the skin. But then you take a look at the picture and realise it's a stinking mess and requires so much more work to be presentable. Lazy, splodgy painting required significant tidying up.

Reiterpallasch

A one hour test piece for Bloodborne before I think about opening the other 100 figures from the game. Firmly tabletop quality painting, but a surprisingly well detailed sculpt. Black ink was my friend to get recesses painted, and then a little matte varnish on the fabrics to dampen the shine down.

 Not a project I'll complete this year, as there's too many other things on the painting desk, but gives me hope I can blitz it reasonably quickly next year as the reds and metallics came together fast enough.

 

Marshal Klint and K9

This was a nice pair of sculpts, with the marshal being somewhere between Cloud Strife and Clint Eastwood. It's also the second dog I've painted this month, after a number of years not painting them. Funny how synchronicity occurs, isn't it.

It's not painted in my normal style (hey, I have a style!) as I wanted to try something more traditional for these. So hello to actual metallics instead of NMM.

 The bases are unfinished as the models will be transferred to display bases for a larger project, so these are simply to hold them in place until that happens.

 Look at that adorable, tiny face. I even painted a couple of teeth in just to break up the space.

 The eye's a little oversized, but at distance looks okay. Both characters used the same pupil colour because I thought that was more interesting than a dark colour on the dog.