The Passing of a Battle Brother and a Troll Rides a Bear

Before I get into my usual stuff, I just wanted to take a moment to talk about my friend David. David was a member of our local Warmachine meta, and a really good guy. This past week he passed away due to injuries sustained by a car accident. He was one of the nicest people I've ever met, and a great and gracious opponent. He was 22 years old.

That's some pretty heavy stuff for a blog that normally talks about painting little fantasy creatures, but I really just wanted to take a few minutes to urge the folks who may be reading this to really make sure you cherish the time you have with your friends. I'm an incredibly lucky guy to be surrounded by an absolute score of great friends, and sometimes I take some of them for granted due to silly things like them being more than a 15 minute drive away, or because they have kids, (I'm not too comfortable around babies/kids too young to communicate with properly), or just any number of petty little factors like that. The simple truth is, despite being arguably the most complex and adaptive biological machine on this planet, we are incredibly fragile creatures, and our lives are precious and short. Make the most of your time.

Enough of that, dear readers. I promised you folks a troll riding a bear, and that's what we have here.

I apologize again for not setting up the lightbox, but it was like 10:30 when I finished everything up last night, and I'm an old man who likes going to bed early.

I spent quite a bit of time on Borka2 (or Bearka) and I truly feel that he is one of the best models I have painted yet. He's definitely my favorite model in the entire Privateer Press range, and while I was super intimidated by the thought of painting him at first, once I got started, I had a ball.

First up, his bear! In the studio scheme, the bear is portrayed as a Polar Bear. While I dig on polar bears, the scheme I have for my trolls has them with very grey-blue skin, and having a white bear feels like it would have made the model have too many "cool" colors. I'm no great artist, but I've been reading a bit about color theory lately, and most people prefer a good balance of warm and cool colors.

I should also note that I painted Borka and his mount separately, and only put them together once I was just about finished for touch ups.

To begin with, I primed both Borka and his mount with Badger Stynylrez Black. After that dried, I used Minitaire Blood Stained Mud as a basecoat for the bear. Then I did a zenithial highlight at about 45 degrees of Minitaire Saddle Brown for the bear. I went back in with Saddle Brown to bring out some of the highlights on the shoulders, head, and the back individually.

After that dried, I moved back to the brushes, and drybrushed a 1:1 mix of VGC Bonewhite and GW Scorched Brown lightly onto the highest highlight areas on the mount. The saddle was painted with GW XV-88, and then washed with GW Agrax Earthshade. The blanket under the saddle was painted with Minitaire Spellslinger Blue, and washed with GW Drakenhof Nightshade. The teeth and claws were painted VGC Bonewhite, and washed with GW Agrax Earthshade. The tongue and inside of the mouth was painted with GW Emperors Children and washed with GW Baal Red. The metallics were GW Leadbelcher for the silvers, and VGC Brassy Brass for the brass. Both were washed with GW Agrax Earthshade. The gemstones were painted GW Snot green and then a tiny bit of GW Moot Green on each to provide a little bit of a highlight.

Feeling pretty full of swagger after painting what I thought was a pretty good bear, I begin tackling Borka himself.

I started with the skin, basecoating VGC Sombre Grey and then drybrushing VGC Wolf Grey. Leather was the same as on the mount above, and the "skirt" was painted the same as the blanket on the bear. I painted the "runes" on skirt itself with VGC Brassy Brass, and then the runestones attached to the skirt, as well as around his neck with VGC Stonewall grey, washed that with a thinned down VMC Fluorescent Green, then drybrushed with GW Skull White very lightly.

The hair, nails, and the "stubble" on his chin were basecoated GW Scorched brown and then highlighted with GW Averland Sunset, making sure to leave a little bit of the brown showing through at the base of each.

The armor was basecoated with VGA (vallejo game air) Gunmetal, drybrushed GW Leadbelcher, then washed with GW Badab Black. The Brass pieces were VGC Brassy Brass washed with GW Agrax Earthshade.

Let me take a second here and talk about how awesome VGC Brassy Brass is. Most gold/brass paint in all the various ranges feels thin, covers poorly without multiple coats, and never quite looks like you want it without a lot of fuss. Brassy Brass just like, works. It's one of my favorite paints. If you want to do a warm gold, it even works alright as a basecoat for the other paints.

Anyhow, The mace haft was painted with VMA Aluminum, washed with GW Badab Black, and the areas with the runes etched in washed with a 2:1 mix of VMC Fluorescent green and water to provide a little bit of glow.

The bomb bolas were drybrushed Leadbelcher and Brassy Brass, and both the teeth and the fur trim on the cloak were basecoated Scorched Brown and highlighted with VGC Bonewhite. Finally, the eyesockets were painted with GW Abbadon black, and the pupils picked out with GW Troll Slayer orange.

This is already pretty long winded, but I really do think this is one of the best models I've yet to finish. While I don't think i'm breaking any new ground here, I think the choosing of a balanced color palate and good execution made this as nice as it is. Even so, there are a few things I still need to work on. My "glow" effects on the mace are passable, but they just aren't where I want them to be. I need to spend some time practicing some glow. I've got some Cygnar jacks that I may try to do that with soon since they are all "electrical."

Next time we will either look at the progress on the Archangel, or we will start to document an actual commission I have to paint an Extreme Titan Gladiator for one of our local guys. Until next time!

No Mini is Beyond Repair (Archangel)

I am still working on Borka2, and you should expect to see some updates on that very soon, but my travels home for the holidays ended up taking a little more out of me than I thought. I do have something for you all, however.

I've previously mentioned that I do a lot of wheeling and dealing for minis. Recently, I picked up a lot of Legion models that I didn't own super cheaply because the person selling them had moved across country and had to mail them to himself. Vigilant as they are about rain, snow, sleet, etc - the USPS just about destroyed his poor box of minis. Most of everything was broken and the cards were nowhere to be found. However, if the price is right, and you don't mind getting a little creative/spending a little time, this should never deter you from scoring something you need.

Case in point: this Archangel. (Please excuse the less than stellar photography. Our house was somewhat in shambles after the holiday and I didn't have time to set up my lightbox.)

This model regularly retails for $135. I picked it up for $30. In the picture, it's missing the tip of its tail, a leg, an arm, the two most forward top pinions on the wings, some of the ridged protrusions along its spine near the head, and the head assembly itself. It's also missing the 120mm base it sits on for competitive play. We looked carefully through the poor smashed box, and happened to find all the actual pieces except for the lower jaw, the top pinions, and the base.

I spent some time yesterday going through my bits box. (Never throw ANY leftover bits away.) In relatively short order, I found out that with a little bit of milliput, I can safely use the bottom jaw of the plastic legion heavy beast kit for the archangel, and it doesn't look out of scale. The position of the jaw will be very open, like the beast is screaming or perhaps breathing fire - so I will be scheming on sculpting some sort of flame coming out of its mouth like the ravagore kit.

As for the two top pinions, I am going to remove some of the shoulder spikes from the scythean arms from the same kit, and then sculpt them into the empty slots.

The first thing I wanted to do was to soak the model for a day or two in a 50/50 mix of simple green and water to strip the paint and help to loosen some of the super glue connecting all the pieces. I'll document the cleaning and reassembly (along with the sculpting) in a post in the future.

I'm actually really excited to "save" this guy. It's such an amazing model, and despite it not being phenomenal on the tabletop, it's just a fantastic piece to have in the collection. Look forward to more posts about this soon, and remember - No mini is beyond repair.

(Here's what the Archangel should look like on the left, along with a regular 50mm "heavy" beast in the middle, and a 30mm warlock on the right, to give a sense of scale.

Dire Troll Mauler + Runeshapers

So, I do a lot of wheeling and dealing for minis on Bartertown and /r/MiniSwap. One of the excellent trades I made not too long ago were for a lot of Trollbloods. The guy stated that he felt they were well painted, and if you've spent a lot of time doing Minis painting, you'll know that that could mean anything from "actually well painted" to "I drank a display rack of Vallejo Game Color and took a shit on these models."

Fortunately for me, these were actually very well painted, and were in an alternate scheme of a light blue grey with yellow accents. I got a pretty good assortment of models, but like any power mad Hordes player, I knew that I had to get all the items I still required to play Runes of War at Tier 4 for great success.

I ordered 4 units of Runeshapers in the new plastics and a Dire Troll Mauler to complete the list out of what other models I had. Here is the first batch of Runeshapers and the Mauler.

I had an absolute blast painting the mauler. Seriously, this was one of the most fun models I've painted in quite some time. I can't really put my finger on why that is just yet, but i'm not going to over analyze it. 

I began by priming him black with duplicolor sandable spray primer, mostly because I was too lazy to drag out the airbrush. 

After that dried, I did a heavy drybrush of VGC Sombre Grey, making sure to leave the recesses black. After that, I did a drybrushing of VGC Wolf Grey to establish the skin color. 

The leather on the model was GW XV-88 washed with GW Agrax Earthshade, and the loincloth was GW Death World Forest drybrushed with GW Nurgling Green (which is one of my most favorite color combos ever). 

The brass was VGC Brassy Brass, washed with GW Agrax Earthshade, and the silvers were GW Leadbelcher. 

The tongue, gums, and mouth were GW Daemonette Hide with a wash of GW Druchii Violet. The teeth were basecoated GW XV-88, then I layered VGC Bonewhite onto them. The eyes were done by painting the entire socket Reaper Pure Black, then using GW Troll Slayer Orange (ironic, perhaps?) for the eyeballs themselves.

For the nails, rocky protrusions, and "hair," I basecoated GW Scorched Brown and highlighted with GW Averland Sunset.

The base is yellow/gray milliput that my lovely wife helped me scuplt into the mounds like the above. This was something that the fellow that I got the original trolls from had done for all his bases, and I thought it was kind of neat, so I wanted to continue it for the entire army. 

I was very proud of how this turned out for the investment in time that I made. From start to finish, it probably took me about 90 minutes to paint him. There were a lot of things that I could have done better. One of the glaring issues that this model has is a smsll gap in the mold on his back, that only gets super accentuated when you drybrush. I will be going back and using liquid green stuff to fix that, then repair the area. I also didn't spend as much time as I probably should have on the protrusions on the shoulders that were really large - I probably could have went another shade lighter on the big rocks, and instead of doing a layered blend on each individual "hair" along the head and back, I got lazy and drybrushed it. 

Now for the Runeshapers!

Again, these were super fun to paint. I started off the same was as the mauler, with black primer and the duo of VGC greys for the skin, and the brown/yellow combo above for the rocky protrusions and "hair."

The Cloth is basecoated GW Mordian Blue and drybrushed GW Ice Blue as a highlight. My plan is to differentiate all 4 squads by painting their cloth different colors. The leather bag and the straps on the gauntlets are as above on the dire troll.

For the runestones, I basecoated VGC stonewall grey, washed with a 1:1 mix of water and VMC Transparent Green, then after it dried, I lightly drybrushed with GW Skull White.

The brassy metallics are VGC Brassy Brass, and GW Leadbelcher. For the armor pieces, I washed GW Leadbelcher with VGC Smokey Ink, which is an amazingly versatile product. You can use it in varying thinness to do a variety of things, here I thinned it about 2:1 water:paint and used it to make the actual armor have a nice warm patina.

The gemstones on the armor as well as the bases are basecoated GW Warpstone Glow and then highlighted with GW Moot Green. Front arcs are painted with GW Averland Sunset.

Again, I was pleased with these, but felt like there were a few more areas that I could have improved. The runestones look pretty good for tabletop, but I have yet to find a good way to paint a "glow" effect. I'm satisfied with this for now, but I need to experiment more and figure it out, there are so many glowing runes on the trolls. Another disappointing thing was that the plastic runeshapers had some pretty noticeable mold lines on the face that went right through the rocky bits on the chin. It was very difficult to trim these/file these without losing a lot of face detail. You can see one pretty plainly on the fellow with the warhammer and his hand stretched out to the side. I've got 3 more sets of these fellas to paint though, I'll be extra diligent on the next ones.

Next up on my painting table is Epic Borka on his sweet Bear Mount, and possibly a Dire Troll Bomber? I've got a lot of Trolls to paint, but I will endeavor to power through the Turkey coma that will surely come this week and have something to show you guys next week.

Clothespin Brush Holder

One of my FB friends shared this today and I thought it was super neat.

Space is at a premium in the workshop in Newman Industries, otherwise I would be all over this. When I eventually upgrade my space, I'm going to make one of these. I love DIY stuff like this.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my tens of eventual readers. My name is Anthony Newman and like thousands of technological savvy 30-somethings all over the world, I've decided to start a blog detailing the ins and outs of my hobby. I assemble and paint toy soldiers to use in playing make believe war. Astounded yet? Here's an example, although not terribly recent.

Primarily, I just want a place where I can keep records of the various things I have painted to have a point where I can look back and track my progress and improvements. This will mostly be for warehousing information, and the occasional piece about various miniatures wargaming stuff.

So yeah, thanks for stopping by. I hope that you found something useful or at least got a laugh. Also, because internet - here is a picture of me and my cute dog. Now I will get all the viewers.