Hall of Shame part 1

New subsection of my blog is live now:

Hall of Shame

Here  you can find first part of my forgotten minis.
For now first 5, but next will be published soon.
I hope putting them on a public display will help me find time to finish them:D

Glossy eyes and other works - WIP

Monster bottle:

As you can see, I added lots of delicate redish and blueish veins in the corners of the big eye, gloss varnish and some light reflections. I'm affraid I need to redo them, because the natural ones from those two lamps, I was doing photo under, look way better:)
But other than that, I'm quite happy how the 'face' of the bottle is looking now.

The Grinder:
Not much to say for now. This is an extremely early stage. Only the leather elements are touched. I'm hoping I'll be able to try oil paints on this one. All these flat surfaces seems to be perfect for that, but I can't be sure if I won't chicken when it comest to that.

Menhom, Dark Shadow:
Next project I'm about to start;p
It's almost ready to be glued together, and I'm really excited to paint this one:D I even have clear vision of colour scheme and base, and that's rare for me.

At this point I think I should start new part of this blog: Hall of Shame, for all those started and abbandoned minis. I got the feeling that my HoS is allready huge, but I tend to hide unfinished and abbandoned minis in my drawers, so they don't make me guilty for starting a new one:P Maybe looking at them all in one place, would motivate me to finish at least some.
I do envy people who are able to work on one project from the beggining to the finish without distractions. Or at least are able to work more methodically than I do.

And how would you describe your workflow? Methodical or rather chaotic and full of various projects 'on hold'? I'm really curious if I'm the only one with ever growing  Hall of Shame?

cheers

'eM

Monsters, monsters... WIP

My little monster bottle is progressing quite well I think. The 'face' part is almost ready. Still eyes will need some more attention, few touches to clean the area a bit, and of course gloss varnish. But there is the whole back of the bottle to take care of. I'm planning to try and recreate at least some prints from the real Vallejo paint pot, maybe mixed with some Maow stuff, but I'm not sure if I can manage to do barecode properly. If not I'll try something else.

The other one, Raggarth, is not such fun to paint. The shade of blue I took for skin is tricky for me to work with, and I still struggle with the shining (the layer of dullcote didn't help, maybe it was too thin?). But leather elements and the bones on his elbows and neck look good, and metal parts at least promissing, so maybe I won't trash it yet:)

That's how it looks at the moment.
Below you can find photos from earlier stages, almost back to the  basecoat.

As you can see, the skin doesn't look much better now than on the oldest photo. Sure there are some delicate highlights and shades, but there is still work to be done and lots of it.

cheers

'eM

Winsor & Newton series 7 vs Rosemary & Co

I know choosing a right brush can be tricky sometimes, especially if you can't check them personally, and all you got are some pictures in internet.
If you are interested what I got to say about brushes I use, check little article I did for Chest of Colors, maybe it will help you make a decision:)


cheers

'eM

Walter Proof

As I said earlier, Walter is ready for a while now.
For a while long enough for me to find out what I could do different, better:P
For example now I know,  I could emphasize the bags under his eyes a bit more with other colour, I could add frog like spots on his skin, mostly on his head and legs, I could....

But I didn't, and I because decided that he's ready, so I'm not gonna change it.
I'm simply gonna use that ideas with another mini:)

So here he is, with splashes of water and without all those alterations I mentioned above.

cmon

I still like him. And I hope you do too.
It's a cute mini, real pleasure to paint, and a pleasure to look at in the cabinet.

cheers

'eM

Monster Bottles - review

I just bought yet another Maow minis.
Monster bottles this time.

(c) Maow Miniatures

Packaging:
Again bottles came to me in zip bags. But, like Matou from Maow Miniatures, said in a comment about my Hell Baby review, it's a deliberate decision to keep prices low.

 

Minis(??):
I'm not even sure if the word miniature is the right one to use. Monster bottles are the size of an oryginal Vallejo's bottle (or Rackham's), and that makes their 'faces' seriously huge.
Here are photos for comparison: one with my other Maow stuff, and the second one with real paint pot.

Impressive, isn't it?

Quality of the cast:
The pictures are mostly self-explanatory:)

Again very funny and original minis and quite good casts. In fact the only parts that need serious work are under caps, so when you're planning on painting your bottles with caps on, you don't even have to worry about that part at all. At the back of the bottles you can find a knife trace after removing a mould line, well at least I can find it;p But fixing it is not a big problem.
No airbubbles though:D After cleaning and preparing both bottles, I must say, I didn't find not even one.


Sculpting:

As you can see on the picture above, both bottles are completely different in style when it comes to sculpting. First one full of sharp edges and rather busy, the other one, with tentacles, is more soft, with nice smooth surfaces for freehands.

Ah I forgot... You probably noticed that bottles are not standing straight:) It's because both of them have a huge chunk of resin underneath. It's probably cast vent or something like that (I was never very familiar with casting process to be honest). I guess I could remove it before taking pictures, but I prefer to present mini excactly as I get it:)

Conclusions:
Both bottles are awesome when it comes to the concept and a huge fun to paint:) I bet they are not the last ones in my collection:)

Cheers

'eM

More Maow in progress and other WIPs

Before I'll post photo of finished Walter (he's ready for a while now, but I forgot to post pic here) I want to show you something else from Maow miniatures: early WIP of one of the Monster bottles, the one with lots of eyes... and even more teeth:

As you can see this is indeed very early WIP. Nothing is even close to be finished. I just marked more or less lights and shadows on the 'skin', and did a bit more work on teeth an tongue. Because I can't make my mind how to paint eyes: more like humans or maybe animal with pointy pupils? I just left them with unfinished basecoat.


The other mini I'm currently trying to work on is Sphere Wars Raggarth.

Huge pain in the neck if I may be honest... Not very great cast (and that's an euphemism, trust me), horrible in assembly, and, because I couldn't see a possibility to glue it together after painting, quite tricky to paint.
At this point, I managed to do some preshading here, but it's not working very well on this model, so I decided to start with colours today.
I'm going with the Sphere Wars idea of this creature, and I'll paint it in a blue-ish colour, a bit more turqouise maybe, and of course true metallics.
If he'll be lucky, and I won't lose rest of the patience I got for him, tomorrow some more pictures should be ready to post:)

cheers

'eM