Bank Holiday Assembly Blitz

So, I took advantage of the Bank Holiday to settle down to some serious assembly. And yes, I did work on more than four figures, but there's a bunch of other ones that are 'nearly done' so will have to wait for another post.

First up are some models from the Circle of Chaos Kickstarter. These arrived recently, and I'm trying to get things assembled and undercoated ready for paint as they come in now, rather than leaving them in boxes forever.

The long necked chap will be added to my slowly growing Chaos force, probably just as a rank and file warrior. This barbarian type will also be joining some thugs or marauders, depending on what else I find to go with him.

This weird chap, however, I have no real idea what to do with. I'll probably just keep him as a random model for use in AoS, or get inspired randomly at some point.

Another Arco Flagellant also got finished off. He'll join the pile of "prospective Inquisitorial Warband members" until I get some Inquisitors done and inspired for colour schemes...

Also coming up on the assembly table are finally getting the first five of the Chaos Forsaken ready for paint, a couple of strange wizards for a very particular Age of Sigmar hobby project, and another Chaos Warrior from a small manufacturer. Oh, and the rest of the Circle of Chaos figures, of course! It may be a while before you see them, as I have a few other blog post ideas in my head as well, but they'll be getting worked on while you see the last of the WarhammerFest content, and a few other musings...

Plodding along

 I took advantage of the Bank Holiday weekend over here to get a bit of painting and modelling done. I finished prepping and assembling a couple of goblins and got them undercoated, but didn't take a photo of that.

I completely swear by Vallejo Coarse Pumice and Sandy Paste for my basing, but I've noticed James Wappel really likes the Oxid Paste. So, I picked up a small jar of it to give it a go.

I used it around the edge of the base of the radical Inquisitor that Whiskey Priest sent me. Before it dried, it was hard to see what the texture was going to be.

I then painted it up with some Rhinox Hide, then a wash, and finally a light drybrushing of some other mid tone brown I had lying around. XV-88, maybe?

Once the wash was dry, I dropped in the last few details, and ticked the box on having at least finished something this weekend. An easy win, to be sure, but I'll take an easy win over nothing. ;)

Myth, my Tiefling, had his trousers re-coloured and the yellow slashes dropped in on his sleeves. I also added another layer to the yellow fastenings on his coat, as the first coat hadn't really properly covered things.

I also start blocking in colours on my last Malifaux Changeling proxy. (SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE: BUY STUFF FROM HERESY MINIATURES.) When this chap is done, I'll have a full 50 Soulstone list fully painted, and I'll move on to assembling and painting the rest of the models my current crew can use to start give me some flexibility in list building.

Finally, one of the Arco-Flagellants I was given for Christmas has been fully assembled. I fitted the trailing arm first, and pinned it, but the leading arm was then fine to forgo a pin. Happy to get him done, just a couple more to go!

Assembling some bits and pieces

Having had a bit of a problem with assembling Miss Ery, and with two days scheduled to actually play Malifaux (battle reports to follow), I thought it wise to take a little break from assembling Malifaux stuff, and do something different.

So, I went through the "to do" list and pulled up every easy to assemble single model listed, resulting in the impressive pile of stuff above (and actually not including Hasslefree Minature's "Blanche", which I found while digging through boxes for the others).

It's not all done - I had a pretty late start on Saturday, and Sunday was taken up with a little beginners Malifaux tournament over at Wayland Games. The intention isn't to paint all of these, just get them cleaned up, based and undercoated, so if I do get enthused about that particular figure, it's easy and ready to go.

I don't recall if I mentioned - I've now sorted my unpainted stuff into three clear lists. The first list is the "to do" list. This is anything I want to do myself, that I have a clear plan for. The second is the "for gaming" list, where I'm OK with painting it, but also happy sending it to a commission painter should the budget allow. Finally, there's the "Stash". That's stuff I haven't worked out what I want to do with yet, or don't have a plan for. Long term, the plan is to make the stash very very small...

Still, happy with Saturday's progress. There's a bunch of dudes (and ladies) closer to seeing paint!

Progress report from the Manufactorum

I have managed to get a few bits and bobs done.

Collodi is so finished I've put him away. I couldn't be bothered to get him out for a finished photo right now, so here's a picture of him with his last bunch of water effects drying.

The first batch of Imperial Beastmen are slowly but surely getting paint on them. They're currently still at the base coating stage, but soon there will be drybrushing, then washing, and then they will be done.

The Mk I Thunder Armour is now undercoated and ready for paint.

I'm also putting together a Lord Commissar for the Guard. At this rate, he may beat the Beastmen to the battlefield...

There was a massive hole in the sword arm, but I've green stuffed it over. I'm actually super pleased with myself about my sculpting - I've managed to line up the cuff and the folds in the jacket. This is quite a big step up for me in terms of competence and skill, and it might mean I try some new things in the future.

My brain seems to have settled well into having one project I'm clearing out of my backlog (Beastmen), and one project I'm doing for fun to keep my interest up (Mk I Power Armour). Although I'm not really sure which one of those the Commissar Lord is - really, he's part of the Hobby Progress Challenge I'm doing, and I'm trying to get him finished by the end of the month! I'll always try and have one figure I'm working on prepping while I'm painting something else, so I can jump between prep/assembly and painting, depending on my mood.

Learning water effects, and progress on a Herald and Collodi's crew

Having been listening to the Independent Characters podcast quite a bit recently, I decided to throw together my own Kanban board as well as my ongoing burndown chart / spreadsheet of everything ever.

Ah, so a lot of admin to tell me that I had far too many unfinished painting projects. Perhaps I should have worked that out myself?

So, as the thing that would take the longest to see the results in, I started out by trying to learn water effects.

So, lesson one. This stuff is very runny and can go everywhere. I was using GW's water effects, because that's what we had a bottle of already. I did three test bases of the corpse counters I'd already done. From top to bottom - just water effects on it's own, water effects mixed with Seraphim Sepia, and water effects mixed with Agrax Earthshade.

That grainy thing really, really had me worried. I had no idea how it was going to turn out. Twenty four hours later...

This is not a great photo, but the 'top to bottom' is now going left to right. Clear water effects are, well, clear water effects-y. The Sepia looks OK, if maybe a little dark, and the Agrax Earthshade is definitely way too dark for anything I'm trying with my swamp water. If you were wanting something really unpleasant without much detail showing through from underneath, though, you may want to consider it.

You'll also notice that the water has shrunk right down. That means I'm going to need to do a second layer. I'm also considering doing some other combinations, such as clear water effect, washing the top, then another clear layer - or sepia mixed with water effects, then clear in the second layer.

I am inordinately glad I'm experimenting with my corpse tokens, and not miniature bases with miniatures up to their ankles in water...

The Herald of Tzeentch is rocking along nicely now. He's a project for a friend. Here's his disk starting to get done. I tried Vallejo's Liquid Gold for the first time, and I will say, if you remember to shake it, this stuff is amazing. But it is alcohol based, so don't use your expensive brush, wash the brush thoroughly, and don't try and mix it with water - if you need it thinning, use white spirit.

You may also notice that the eyes are using the same trick I did on my Beastman - white base coat, yellow glaze, then orange wash. They've turned out very nicely. This one just needs a little ink to bring the gold back down again, touching up a few spots where paint has gone over the lines, and re-blend the underside of his tail where I managed to lose some of the work I'd already done with some over enthusiastic nonsense.

And here is our passenger, who is not as far advanced. He is ridiculously fragile, and a pain in the wossname. I had to ask my darling wife for some help in sorting out his finger, which she has now green stuffed a replacement for. There's also a pin inside that green stuff, so there's probably now more structural integrity in the hand than there is in his entire arm.

The staff has also been an absolute nightmare, and some of the stray fiddly bits there needed pinning to stop them making breaks for freedom. I do generally like Finecast as a material for larger pieces, but the Games Workshop obsession with ridiculous fiddly detail which is easy to break off is a grave mistake for models which will actually be used for gaming.

My wife is a saint and a genius, without whom I would probably have admitted defeat on this poor chap. She is awesome and I don't tell her this often enough.

Collodi and his crew are blocking up a big section of my Kanban painting column. I decided getting them over into the basing column would really free me up to get some other things done.

Here's the start of the first Marionette's wood being done. The green on all of them has now been completed, brought up to a much lighter tone closer to the box display.

That's all I got done this weekend - nothing is really finished, but the unrealistic targets at least motivated me to get a bunch further along. Here's hoping that the current pace continues somehow!

Tracking my painting progress

Some of you may recall a while ago I mentioned I was going to try and get involved in a painting competition over the Olympics.

So, how did that go?

Bother.

Anyhow, I think I have managed to use the time a little more productively:

As this floor is no longer waist deep in junk, I feel like I'm getting some progress! However, there is a pile of boxes as tall as I am around the corner to the left, and I still have to neaten the bookcase, plus a further bookcase downstairs. Still, I feel some sense of achievement.

I've also finally got a spreadsheet together to keep track of all my projects.

The way this works is that it doesn't simply count the number of models I still have to finish. Effectively, painting a single model to tabletop standard is one "point". Assembly, or prep work, similarly, take about the same amount of effort.

From then, anything more fiddly or awkward gets a proportionately larger amount of points - similarly, something I want to put a load more detail into gets a ton of points as well. The biggest painting job, points wise, is the Black Reach Ork Warboss I have which I want to paint up like the Eavy Metal Masterclass book. I'm skimping on the conversion work they did for the sake of my sanity, but I've assigned a couple of points per page of instructions in the book for a massive total of ten points - not to count the couple I've assigned to clear up, green stuff any gaps and undercoat him.

My total count comes to around 804 points, which is around 13 months work for me alone working at the pace I was at when prepping up for Throne of Skulls at the start of the year.

Lets just say I'm not at that pace yet. I have no idea how many models it is, but its a lot. I may want to think of some way of adding a model tracker as well, but that might also make me sad...

Still, my first goal is to start by trying to get more done than I buy, which I'm aiming for this month. The kitbash test models I picked up earlier in the month amount to 16 points. (Because the kitbash experiments will take time, and I also want to paint them up to a decent standard for the blog & the bits people I bought the parts from.)

In an effort to get my first point done, I've started work on an Empire Battle Wizard for my beloved wife. Well, I'm doing the prep work and assembly, in exchange for the rest of the bits in the kit. She got given it at the Golden Demon Masterclass she went to!

The wife painting, at GW in Nottingham.

Anyhow, they did freehand on the back of a wizard's cloak, but got given the box with the second wizard and all the bits.

I immediately coveted all the bits. Negotiation then occurred. I get the bits if I assemble the other one for her to paint for ebay.

The first one is still a work in progress, and I got sulked at when I asked if I could take a photo of the work in progress with my terrible photography skills and camera!

Here is a photo Sim took on the day, comparing her freehand to Joe's.

So, I have tried a little blu-tack to see what the second wizard would look like when assembled. I had the idea of using the potion bottle to make it look like something has just exploded in the wizard's face! However, I'm really not sure if the pose of the model will allow it, so I'm going to show it to Sim later and see what she thinks. I currently think the hand with the potion bottle is just too high and I can't incline the neck high enough to make it work...

Yeah, I'm not convinced...

So, finally, there is movement on the modelling / painting front, if epicly slow. Lets see if I can at least end the month with as much work as I started the month with...

Plans for the Olympics

Over the course of the Olympics, my dearly beloved wife is running a paint along through the forums of the lovely people at Darksphere.

The event runs from the flame being lit to the flame being extinguished, but assembly and preparation is totally allowed ahead of this. That means I really need to focus on getting that done!

Sim has picked out several categories to run. I'm not worrying about what I'm painting for the Marathon (paint as much as you can) too much - more about the other categories.

For the single miniature category, I've decided to go with GW's "Herald on Disk", who is the adorable sweetums I 'borrowed' to paint from my dear friend Becky when I went up to her house to help out with assembly a while back. I'm often very slack at completing projects, and given its someone else's model, I should really pull my finger out and actually paint him!

In the team event, it's time to get my Malifaux on! I still need to decide exactly how I'm painting Collodi and his adorable little minions. I want to put some nice detail onto them, but I'm absolutely stuck as to what exactly. I'm also really keen to investigate scenic bases, whether metal or resin, but I'm intending to approach that _after_ the competition is done - this is about getting the figures painted, not their bases!

I was pondering for a while about how to approach the supersized event when I remembered that I have an Earthshaker Platform that I have been meaning to finish assembling for ages. Competition is an excellent way of motivating me to get something done, so that will be my first choice. I'm really wanting to find out how the unrealistic artist did the weathering on his latest project, and totally steal take that as inspiration.

The gaming board has been cleared away to make space for craft projects (my painting and the wife's knitting), my commute is full of random athletes and tourists . . . all I need to do now is order in enough canned goods to survive.

Steady progress

So, I'm trying to keep progress steady on painting for Darksphere's Apocalypse Event.

I spent most of Saturday at a friend's house - I cleaned up her Tyrannofex and assembled most of a Herald of Tzeentch on disk. For those who whinge about Finecast - two small bubbles on the disk's eyes, and a small void on the Tzeentch symbol on the staff that is easily fixable with some liquid green stuff. Still to have a single casting that tells me what any of this Finecast having problems fuss is about.

I also got a little painting done, but the majority of that was done on the Sunday, where I seriously got stuck in to my Storm Troopers. They now mostly need faces, gas masks and a few details and touch ups doing before washing. I'm really pleased with progress.

I think I'm on target to get done in time for Sunday. Having done some adding up, it'll be somewhere around the 2,500 points mark, which is more than I expected. Depending on my success I may end up over that, but nowhere near 3,000...

I have a number of half written posts I need to finish off and post up, and need to find the time to get the photos of my masterclass work in progress shots!

So, remaining to do:

- Finish 10 Storm Troopers
- Finish 10 Conscripts

Stretch goal:
- Leman Russ Tank
- 5 Ratlings I found lying around that are practically done