Dain WIP 2

Holiday stuff winding down, time to get painting. Nursing a headache from an afternoon of Jameson Gold Reserve, watching RG3 and Morris take the ‘Skins to the playoffs, I finished up the base coats for Dain.

I did a second pass of the Ultramarine Shadow/Walnut Brown mix to try and tighten up all the spots where primer came through. Doing this mini again I’d probably prime it black for my sanity, the white primer has been haunting me a lot on this one.

Then, following the kit instructions, I based the gold parts in Ruddy Leather and just went ahead and based all the leather in the same. I won’t worry too much about that as there isn’t a ton of leather on him; the wood and fur I’ll change up with washes/highlights from different families. Ultramarine Shadow as a base coat for the blue areas, planning on digging out the rest of that triad to do a quick job on the clothy bits. Horns got a coat of Stained Ivory.

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Dain WIP 1

Got out of work a bit early today and hopped on the sofa in front of a nice crackling fire.

Deviating from the paint included with the Kit, I based the skin with Tanned Shadow and the hair with Auburn Shadow, a quick lining with thinned Walnut Brown.

With apologies for the blurry pic…I then followed the Kit’s instructions on underpainting. Here you see the metal bits that will get painted silver underpainted with a mix of Ultramarine Shadow and Walnut Brown. You also see my sloppy painting at this stage of the project as well as my poor ability to paint chainmail solidly 🙂

That’s a two-hour session. I’m so slow!

New paints, Dreadball

Slight interlude here. I got a bit of a bonus from work which I put toward some new paints. I’ve been enjoying the Reaper Master Series paints quite a bit, so I bought a slew of them. I’ve been spending the last few nights cataloging them and putting a dab of paint on the lids for easier identification. I’m not a big fan of the move Reaper is making to black caps, makes seeing the darker hues more difficult and I had planned on marking the sku number on the lids with a sharpie.

I also found this cool chart of the RMS colors laid out like a periodic table.

I got in my first installment of loot from Mantic’s Dreadball Kickstarter. Some really nice looking minis, can’t wait to get into them. Several of the plastic minis were bent, so it looks like I’ll be learning the trick to heating and reposing plastic minis…

The one where I learn to paint armor

On to Reaper’s Learn to Paint Kit 5: Intermediate Armor. I prepped both the minis; Dain got primed and mounted on my painting mount thingy.

He’s my favorite mini from the Kits thus far. We’ll see how I feel once I get into the increased amount of fiddly bits. As has been my self-imposed restriction thus far, I’ll be painting as close to the instructions as I can manage.

Bertokk postmortem

A rambling brain dump this morning on the Reaper forum:

I guess at this early point in my journey (Bertokk is mini #8), flesh tones are my ‘thing’. I struggle with pretty much everything else. I even snuck in a custom mix for ze nipple (the slightest dab of the red from the kit into the mid-tone).

I also really like how the lining turned out on him. After not being a fan of the technique, I’m shooting for a real subtle implementation. Stumbled in a couple spots, but overall really pleased with that angle.

Leathers are all pretty meh. I need a better technique at some point. The hair turned out kinda cool, tough to see on camera, my idea was from old Superman comics, clack hair with a blue sheen. The green cloth is the method for Laurana’s outfit in Kit 2. I like the rope, oiled leather washed with a veeery thin walnut, re-apply oiled mid-tone and two highlights of oiled+linen.

Another thing to note is the difference angle and lighting make on a photo. Look at my last WIP shots, some of the shaded areas, the lower back and the chest straps especially, look kinda jacked up in the WIP. But in the finished mini sitting on the table, you can see how it accentuates the shadows.

I think this was my favorite L2PK mini thus far; fun to paint, good details, nice character to the sculpt.

Bertokk the Barbarian

This was a tough one, as following the Buglips the Goblin official order of L2PKs (1,2,4,5,3) we only have Kit 1’s metal method (tm Doug Marks). Which is really the only way I ever painted metallics, and it’s pretty prehistoric. Other than that I’m ok with how Bertokk came out, pretty fast for me – about three sessions of two hours each.

I think I’m going to skip the other mini in this Kit for now. I’m pretty comfortable with this basic method of layering skin and want to move on to Kit 5’s Intermediate metallics.

Final Bertokk WIP

Did the drybrushing bits and finishing details. The rope I washed and drybrushed, but painted in the highlights so it didn’t get too messy. Knocked back the laces that the highlight went out of control on previously. Used the colors for the rope to do the grip of the dagger, trying to keep it a textile feel. First pass of steel parts.

Doing the metal was difficult, because I have caveman technique when ti comes to metals. I basically just slapped some paint on and hoped for the best. Meh.

Pretty much just paining the base and calling it done.