30 Apr 2012

BMSS Nationals - London 28/04/2012

The day before yesterday I was at BMSS annual show in center of London.
British Model Soldier Society is a bunch of very friendly people with a common interest in historical miniatures, mostly soldiers.
But they were kind enough to let all the fantasy painters to take part in their competition in one of the non-military categories.
I was lucky enough to pick up two trophies: Silver for Andrea's miniature, Menhom Dark Shadow, and bronze for JMD's bust - Anton the Infected.


If you want to see more bigger pictures of the minis, here they are:
Menhom Dark Shadow
Anton the Infected

cheers

'eM

29 Apr 2012

Menhom Dark Shadow

Finally!!! I can say he's finished and ready to rest in my cabinet:D

Great pleasure to paint, even if it took so long:D
I learned few more things thanks to that mini.

Definitely not the last piece from Andrea, although I know I need to be very careful with the cast quality next time.

cheers

'eM

22 Apr 2012

Salute 2012 - the loot:D

Maybe it doesn't look like it's a lot of minis, but trust me I'm really happy that the pay day is this Friday... I won't be starving too long:D


Cheers

'eM

17 Apr 2012

Almost there - WIP

Menhom is amlost ready:D
I need to fix the OSL and dress, add some dust, but the work is slowly coming to an end.
What do you think?:>


And here are few pics of Grinder's swords. Except metallics, all with oils  and WIP ofc:D

And a close up. I must say, I love the blending you can achieve with oils:D I definitely need to learn how to use them on higher level:D




cheers

'eM

14 Apr 2012

Menhom's arms - WIP

This time I can show you that Menhom has arms:) And that they're almost ready.
If I'm lucky, and Mr Bombel won't be too upset after visiting the Vet (=too big pain in the neck), I should be able to finish them and glue to the body.






cheers

'eM

10 Apr 2012

Menhom's base - almost finished (WIP)

The base is almost done, just a few more touches under the bones to add more shadows, and some dust on the dress when it will be glued in.



And of course the sides of the plinth and a nice plaque with the name.

cheers
'eM

6 Apr 2012

Red bricks - review... well kinda;p


I don't know how about you, but for me it was a huge problem to imagine how the large or small bricks will look with  1:72 or 1:35 minis. But if I can see even one or two types of them on the photo next to the mini, and I know their dimensions, I can judge all the other ones by comparison.
It's true not only with bricks, but also with various plants and etched brass elements.

And if you're like me, not very great with all these scales and sizes, you may find this little article helpful.


Large bricks by Pegasus Hobbies
There  bag I bought  contains 50gm of bricks (around 100 pieces). The individual bricks are approximately 1.25 x 0.7 x 0.7 cm.


The bricks are seriously irregular and more suitable for modelling rubble & the debris of war.
If you want to build something out of them,  you'll need the patience (lots of it) to sand them to shape. But it's not easy to find too many bricks in similar shape. Maybe it would be easier to buy 2 or 3 bags, and then separate bircks into few piles judging by shape. But you need to made a decision first, if you're gonna need so many bricks:D


1/35 Scale Bricks, Dark Red by Juweela
The bricks are circa 0.72 x 0.36 x 0.18 cm and correspond to the kingdom format for brick used between 1850-1950.

As far as I know Juweela bricks are distributed by diffenent companies. For example I  bought mine with 'Mikora Modellbau Manufaktur' label, but they're also sold by PK-PRO.

Producent says they are 1/35 scale, but as you'll see on the picutre below, they seem a bit too small next to the 54 mm miniature.

There  is another problem with this product. The bricks are not rectangular. They're wider at the bottom and in the corners you can see triangular 'excesses'. I'm guessing it needs to be filed before building anything.


Small bricks by Pegasus Hobbies
There is also another type of bricks, more similar in shape to the big ones I have.
Producent says that bricks sizes are roughly 0.5 x 0.2 x 0.3 cm.


I tried to buy this one, but lucky for me they went out of stock. Judging by the photo they have proportions of the big ones I  bought (aren't that long and flat like the other ones) but 5mm long can be too small even for the 28mm mini, and definitelly for my patience when it comes to building;]


Here you have few photos  to compare both sizes of bricks between each other, Hirst blocks and miniatures in 1/72 and 1/35 scale


How to treat bricks:
At this point I have no experience with gluing or painting the bricks I bought, but they look similar to the Hirst blocks, so they should behave the same way.
If that's true,  PVA glue is enough to keep them together and they should accept acrylic paint easily. Also cutting,sanding and creating battle damage should be easy.


cheers

'eM

5 Apr 2012

The Grinder vs Oils - WIP

Finally I decided to try oil paints. I bought them months ago, but never find enough courage to use  them on a mini.

First impressions?
OMG!!! It's weird!!! Seriously, it's completely different than acrylics. I have no experience with oils at all, so I'm mostly guessing.
And I guess it wasn't the brightest idea to try it on a competiton piece;p Finger crossed, I won't mess it up totally.

I  touched leathers, skin and hair (and that last one was a mistake;p)

You probably noticed that the contrast on the leathers is much bigger than on the skin... It's because on the skin I use acrylic method of adding shades and lights. I was trying to gradually add shadows, and that's definitely not the way.
With leather elements I just used two very contrast colours and the blending just happened in the middle:P And the effect is much better.
I'll try to fix skin first thing tomorrow.


cheers

'eM

4 Apr 2012

Quick update - Menhom's base WIP

Here is the first version of the base:  dry earth, bones and lots of dust.


 I'm not entirely sure if the cracked earth is the best choice here. Maybe I'll swap it for old and also cracked stone floor... But bones and dust stay in both cases. I just need to rearrange bones in nicer way, when I'll be sure what type of the surface will be used.

Dress is not yet ready, It lacks few more dots and lots of glazes to unify them a bit and bring back the redness of the midtones.

cheers

'eM