Miniatures: 'The Hobby', 'Plastic Crack', and other tiny things
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Finally got the wash done on all the armour. Before and after photo below. I hope you can see the recesses are more defined. (There’s a reason washing the model is often referred to as talent in a pot.)
The wash has dulled the armour though, so next up is a dry brush with a yellow gold to make the raised details pop and bring back the shine on the flat areas.
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Interlude: my first Warband
It started with rats…
So in Warhammer’s current fantasy game - Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - there’s this faction of ratmen called the Skaven. I started painting a Warband from that faction because they have a variety of textures and details, from armour, fur, flesh, cloth, etc.
These were very paint-by-the-numbers. I was just starting out so I basically copied Games Workshop’s online how to paint videos for these guys without experimentation.
I particularly liked all the small details on the leader and his base. Games Workshop packs a tonne of details into such tiny models.
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Managed to get the dry-brush with the yellow gold done on all of my guys over the weekend, and made a start on highlighting the armour with a very pale gold. The jump looks stark up close, but from a few feet away - as they’ll be when you’re playing with them - it’s a subtle effect that just makes the armour pop that little bit.
Still got 15 guys who need those few highlights added, then I think I’ll move on to blocking in the other main colours, like red robes and capes, black weapon casings, etc.
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@EdH Went round to see my parents this weekend and went up in to the loft. I reckon the case has been up there unmoved for a good 15 years.
There was a bit of other stuff, including a badly painted tank which I left at theirs, lighting in the loft was shit so didn't bother photographing. There is another two layers beneath in the case but was in a bit of a rush this AM, and lighting pretty shite in my spare room, but you get the idea.
Full disclosure, all painting was done by my Dad, the few which I ever attempted, despite his tutelage, look like someone had painted them with a blindfold on.
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@AdamJ Dude that's a classic collection. Are they pewter or plastic? The Terminators (2nd and 4th images) look like they might be pewter... I think I see a couple of spots where the paint has chipped off, which makes me think that your dad might not have bothered with a primer?
With the more modern painting techniques, it wouldn't take much to elevate them, though I'd personally just strip the paint off with some isopropyl alcohol and start again.
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@EdH IIRC we'd paint them white first, let them dry then paint the base bits blue, and I'd let him do the real work! I did tell him about the spray setup you had and he laughed at how much time he'd spent hand priming with a tiny brush! Most of them are plastic, a couple of them pewter, the latter I have no memory of where we got them from!
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@AdamJ Yeah, my airbrush was a great investment for saving time laying down the block colours. (Thanks to Trump and Biden for those Covid recovery payments... about the only good thing to ever come out of being dual-national and having to file tax returns in the USA was getting sent periodic cheques from the US Treasury during Covid.)
You can achieve magic results with just a drybrush too though. I'll post a picture at some point of my sky-dwarves warband which were done mostly by dry-brushing the metallic paints. This is really effective for metallic paint because the recesses are left black, and the method really buffs the metallics to a high shine.
Edit: nevermind, had a dig in my phone, and found them quite easily.
I was quite pleased with the weathering done on these guys. I went really overboard with it, trying to sell the idea that they’ve been trapped in a maze and fighting endlessly for eternity.
Also the gems and eye lenses look great. I had to get on my magnifying goggles to do those!
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@EdH (and others), have you seen this? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-65766495
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@ARNC I did. Quite cool stamps. If I was also a philatelist I'd probably pick up a set!
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Taking a break from painting armour, so no need on that front. Decided I’d like to go a different direction with their bases, so had to cut them all off the models (stupidly I’d already glued them) and have been working on these:
Going for a black marble and quite pleased with how they’ve come out. Need a few layers of gloss varnish, then I think I’ll drop a nice gold colour into the crevices.
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Been a while since I picked up a brush. I think trying to batch paint models was killing my interest - it’s very boring to paint weapons black over and over again on every model when you have a small army to do. So I decided to get one model done, nail the colour scheme, and what have you.
And then I spent 2 hours painting one guys head, because I’m obsessive, and when you have 3.5x magnifying glasses and can see all the details, you want to paint them all.
That’s a 2p coin I’m holding, for scale. A bit blobby on the eyes, but you can’t really see it when you’re at a normal viewing distance.
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@goosehd said in Miniatures: 'The Hobby', 'Plastic Crack', and other tiny things:
am impressed with your results!!
Thank you, but I'm nothing. The guys at the top of this particular game are painting things like this:
When you consider that that model's head will also be ~5mm tall... I dread to think how long it took him to create that woollen texture on the robes. And those metals are not painted with metallic paint - he has deliberately used highlights and shade to create the impression of reflective surfaces. And those gems... he's somehow managed to paint a smooth colour value transition on an object around 3mm tall...
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Phish plays a soccer stadium known as Dicks Sporting Goods Park every year, and because my friends and I are totally mature, we 3D print out Dicks to hand out to concertgoers.
This year includes, for the first time, dickwhistles of various shapes, colors, and sizes.
And then there’s the Bag o’ Dicks
