Al Hippone

A nice bust I'm working on right now. I was trying to depict colours of real hippos on his face. It's not perfect (should be bit more fleshy pinkish than violet) but it's close enough for me and I really like the effect. The bust is almost ready, I just need to repaint the tie, and fix contrast on the cloak and the nose. Looks like I should be able to finish it before Saturday and Welling's Show:D

BTW, I bought this little handsom fella from Path of Chameleon. If you like him, just give them a shout, they'll sort you out:)

Back from the dead... again.

It's been a while, I know. And right now I can't promise that I won't disappear for a longer time again. Sadly my everyday duties keep me too busy to paint too often.

This pirate is not the only piece I'm trying to paint recently. But the only one that looks presentable enough to be shown in public.

Of course still a lot to do, but his left forearm, fist and left shoe looks the best.
When I started this miniature, back in 2013, I thought that the bottle looks pretty cool, but right now I can clearly see it needs to be redone, not only due to paint marks.

We'll see if I'll be able to finish it before the end of this year;p

cheers

'eM

Hurry, hurry, only one week left!

With only one week left till EuroMilitaire, and tickets lying in the drawer, I'm doing my best to finish two busts I got on my workbench. It's not as easy as you could imagine, me being constantly tired to death, my hands acting up sometimes, going  numb without any reason, and my free time seriously limited. But I'm doing the best I can in these circumstances.

I managed to do some more work on the Landsknecht. The biggest change so far is the colour of the tiny bag hanging on his chest. I really liked the goldish colour I used previously, but it was drawing too much attetnion from the face, so it's dark brown now. I still need to add stronger highlight to the left side of the bag (right on the photo), but other than that I'm quite happy.
The other big change is the red feather. I couldn't get it right, so decided to change colour. I tried few options and finally decided to go for goldish like the other. I must confess, they're pretty hard to paint. And I have 5 more on two other busts. It's not making me happy to be honest.

Other than those two changes I finished the shirt and belt, and did a bit more work on the bere and beard. And as I'm really happy with the way the belt turned out, I'm not so happy about the beard. As you can see at the bottom photo, it looked  (at least for me it did) way more structurized, organized when only undercoated.

Right now it looks more chaotic, I can't really see the nice waves, as I could earlier. I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix it and make it look like I imagined. I guess we'll see.

 cheers

'eM

Wet on wet, for the first time

With Old Gnome waiting for the skin to be finished, I felt I need to 'warm up' a bit on another model. You know, it's always easier to start over again when only the face is painted, not the whole miniature. I decided to go with SK Miniatues piece.

Beautiful Landsknecht bust (scale 1:9), sculpted by Yury Serebryakov. Pretty big face, and the rest looking deceptively simple and fast to paint. And what's more important, I got it p repared already for few months now. At some point I decided to prepare and prime several miniatures and busts. If you're courious about my preping process, I described it in some more details few posts (and almost a year) ago.

And, as you probably can imagine, I got carried away.

With face basically finished (just few touch ups here and there, when whole thing is done) I just continiued painting. For the first time I managed to successfully use wet on wet technique. Till now I was struggling with big time. I've seen countless video tutorials on this technique (well maybe not countless but a lot for sure), but couldn't get it right. Luckily this time it just worked. I'm especially happy with the red of the tunic and black on the emblem on the front. Both red and black were really difficult for me to paint with high contrast, and this time I quite like the effect. I hope I'll be able to use this technique from now on without any problems. Below you can see a massive close up of the red and black elements. It looks kinda rough here and there, but please bare in mind that the photo is few times bigger than the whole bust, so of course all imperfections are well... bigger.

Right now it's almost finished, just like the Old  Gnome piece... And I can only hope I can finish both of them without further distraction.
The face is somehow desaturated on the photo. I seem to be unable to get the colours right on my new camera, but over all I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Like I said I'll be doing some more work here, but I'm almost there.
For the rest of the bust I need: repaint the pouch on his chest (draws way too much attention away from the face), fisnish the belt, shirt, beret, golden elements, and of course beard.

cheers
'eM

Euromilitaire is upon us!

and I'm burried in nappies... instead of paints.

And with less than a month left, I'm affraid I won't be bringing too much to the competition. So far I have only  Leon, and Capt'n Sapo, two busts finished at the beginning of this year.

I'm hoping I'll be able to finish something else, but it all depends on how much sleep and free time I'll be able to  get these next few weeks. So far the most advanced is Old Gnome bust (from War Griffon Miniatures). At this point basically only the flesh needs to be finished, rest is more or less ready.

As always I'm struggling with the skintones, that's why I tend to leave it for the end. It's a real pity, as the face is the most important part of every miniature, bust especially. And if I won't do it good enough, the whole paintjob will be, well, wasted. So finger crossed I won't mess it up this time.

For the first time I'm trying to do directional light, shining on his left shoulder, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull it off. We'll see how it looks with the face ready. Hopefully it will work.

And if I'm really lucky, and wil be able to get into 'the Zone', I might even paint something else, something small and simple. If I'm lucky...

cheers

'eM

Slight progress on Mr Leo

I made some progress on one of the busts I started recently.
Actually I did some more work on other pieces as well, but they're not yet ready to be shown to public.

Anyway, here he is, Mr Leo, a beautiful bust from Yedharo models (the bigger one).
To be  honest with you, I picked up this bust first, because it looked easy and simple to paint. And I was hoping to finish it quickly, to warm myself up, and move to other projects. But now I know that it's not gonna be so easy. The further I am in painting this little buddy, the more details I discover;]

At this point the finished parts are: leather shoulderpad, the strap on the front, belt bucle, and the sword (without the golden thing at the top of the hilt). Face and the rest of the body still needs a lot of work, but the toughest task is the hair. It is beautifuly sculpted, full of detail and textures, but painting it believable will be a trick. And even if the hair around his face are fairly easy, the back of the head is completely different story.

cheers

'eM

Back from the 'dead'. Hopefully for good this time.

After months without the brush I finally felt like I'm ready to go back and paint with pleasure and some consistency. Well almost without the brush, I tried to paint from time to time, but it wasn't very successful. So right now after a few days with painting I really hope the 'dry spell' is over and I'll be creative again.

Because I'm not really a fan of preping miniatures, you know cleaning them, assembling, priming... Especially priming. I use Mr. Surfacer 1200, which smells really nice, but still is not the healthiest thing to inhale, so I need to use a mask and all that stuff, and it takes time... you know.
Well anyway, I decided to prepare bunch of miniatures, prime them at one go and be over with it for a while. Below you can see the minis I chose to be painted next. As you can see, mostly busts and bigger scale. I'm not quite sure if I knew what to do with 28mm mini right now:D

At this point, the minis are all primed and 'preshaded'. Because I use light gray primer, I couldn't just use white paint from the top to mimic zenithal lighting, it wouldn't be wisible enough. So first I applied a fairly diluted, dark gray paint from the bottom (+/- 45 degree), and then again diluted white from the top (+/- 45 degree). Thanks to that I can see much better lights and shadows on my miniatures, which should help me to build the volumes. The darker and brighter areas will also look a bit different when covered with paint, wihich is an additional help to the contrast.

And here the last step of my work with airbrush. Of course if I had all colour schemes planned out already I could do much more, but I'm still hesitating, so I did only flesh parts. Here again I applied first lights and shadows, but rest of the job will be done with the brush.

cheers

'eM

Ein Stein - yet another WIP photos

Well, two days left, and my Ein Stein is not yet ready. And it's not making me happy. But I messed up with the back of his ears. The veins I was trying to paint there din't turned out as I planned so I had to repaint this part. Sadly achieving the smooth transition was next to impossible this time, so I had to settle for some dot pattern...  I hope it will suit this bust and rest of the paint job.

I still need to glaze it a bit to make the dots more organic, and then I need to fix the name tag on his back (which is a massive pain in the neck due to the colours I used) and then just few touch ups and it should be ready to go. At least I hope it's just few touch ups.... after such a long time with a mini, it's hard to see it objectively.

cheers

'eM

Knight bust - finished or not?

As the title asks, what do you think? Is it finished or not?
I'd most certainly like to say it's ready to go on the shelf. But sadly I think I lost my perspective here. I guess I need to put it on a side for a few days, and then revisit it with fresh eye.
But if you see any places that could be improoved, please let me know:D

cheers

'eM

Viking's base, phase one - building

This tutorial has been moved to Minichix Studio.

Read the full, updated version here:
Building a Woodland Scenic Base

One step closer

And again long break from posting. For some reason I struggle to write anything lately. I hope it's just a phase and will pass soon, but for now I'd like to show you what I've done lately with my two beautiful bust.

So here they are, my two boys: medieval Knight and ein Stein:D

Like you can see there is still lots to do, but I guess I'm going into the right direction. Orc bust is more or less ready, just few touch ups left to be done (teeth for example). Knight is a bit less advanced, more needs to be done, but I'm almost happy with the face, so rest should be easy. I might repaint his tunic though, as I'm still not totally convinced with the colour here.

cheers

'eM

Wetblending is girl's best friend

And now, after the 'theory' of workshop it's time for practice on some real pieces (those I'm gonna finish at some point in my life;p).
First photos of what I've done right after the workshop:

On my Einstein (ein Stein to be precise) I was working mostly on his shirt.
Of course the inscription on his back is far from being finished, but I'm quite happy how the orange turned out. But now, with my beloved Burgundy Wine back in stock I can finish his face:D

Here I decided to repaint the whole skin and start again using Apa's advice.

And that's the photo before the changes :

As you san probably see at this point the contrast is slightly lesser, part of that is caused by the different light. But truth to be told, I did decrease it on the 'muscle' level to get the chance to increase the general level of contrast. From this point I'll be working on every muscle separately to increase contrast of the individual parts of the body.
This is gonna be my first mini painted new way, so finger crossed I'll be able to pull it off.


cheers

'eM

Medieval bust - what I've done so far.

Of course I coulnd't keep my hands of this beautiful medieval knight...
And here you can see the results so far, in few stages.

First you can see how I handled the hauberk.

I must say I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I might tweak it a bit later on when the rest of the bust is painted, maybe some rust here and there, but for now it's ready.
When the metal parts were ready, I moved to leathers, leaving the toughest for me part, skin, at the end. But then I remembered that I decided I want some scars on his face.
So he has scars now.To create them I used liquid Green Stuff from GW.  And while working on them I tried to fix the hole next to his left eye.
To show you how the scars are looking without the distraction of gren colour, there is one photo in b/w at the end.

To be honest with you I wasn't really sure if I like the scars at this stage. The green was way to distracting. But after painting first layers of skin colour, it all came together very nicelly.
Of course the skin is not even close being ready, but you can see how nicelly the scars are blending in. And thanks to the one going through his eye, I can paint it with a cataract, to make him look even more like an old battered warrior.
Eyes look weird at the moment I know, but I need to repaint them.