Fafik - The French Puppy

Another piece finished. Well actually I finished it a while ago, just never got to taking photos.
So here it is, Figones lovely demonic puppy, which I called Fafik.

pnp

cmon

cheer
'eM

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

Euromilitaire results.

What a lovely weekend it was!
I had really great time, seeing all my friends,  making some new ones... indulging in the hobby, seeing lots of awesome paintjobs and buying some of the amazing products avaliable during the show.
It's a real pitty that now we have to wait a whole year for next Euro... I know, I know, there are some other great shows later this year (MSS, Hussar, Bugle Call and maybe more), and early 2015, but sadly I won't be able to go there... so I'm waiting for yet another trip to Folkestone, and planing what should I paint;]
But let's talk about this year's show for a while longer.

First shopping.
I bought most of it on Saturday, so chronogically it should be first.
As you can see on the photo, I didn't buy much.

• Just few unique bases, I love buying them during shows, where you can see them from every angle and find best ones that suit my models. One of them will be used right away, for my Diablito, cute little guy sculpted by Roberto Chaudon.
• A beautiful bust of Aquila, Roman Legionary, made by Nut's Planet, scale 1/10, casted in resin. I've seen it recently around painted by many amazing painters and feel like I'd like to give it a go. Not much of a chance to do it completely different than others (you know, the uniform and all that) but I hope I can leave my mark on it anyway.
• Battle Chick, One of new releases from Nocturna Models, a beautiful girl from the line Necrospace. The mini is 75 mm tall (according to the producer's website), 1/28 scale, cast of course in resin. I think I'll be doing some small changes to her equipment, but othet than that, she's trully gorgeous.
• And a piece I had in my mind for few years alerady. A gorgeous Mermaid from Origen Art. Another resin cast in 1/28 scale. I feel the right time came to finaly buy her and paint. I can't wait to start with all the rust and weathered parts, and the mermaid itself of course.
• Two video tutorials from Painting Buddha, about freeehands and basing alchemy (first part earth). I have their first set of DVDs and can't wait to see those two. 

Entries, and badges.
This year I entered 4 pieces, all of them busts, one historical and 3 fantasy. Luckily enough all of them got a badge.

Sapo - Gold
Old Gnome and Leon - Bronze
Landsknecht - Commended
I'm more than happy about that, as it shows some consistency in my painting, at least I'd like to think it does. And I gathered some valuable feedback from judges, so there is a chance my painting will improove in the mentioned areas:D
Below you can see a solo photo of my golden boy, Sapo.

Photos from the show:
I tried to take as much photos as I could. But both, social side of the event and my unability to take decent photos during such a busy show, stood in the way;]
My photobucket gallery. and some found in internet:
FB gallery of Andrew Nai,
FB gallery of Pekka Tapani Nieminen,
Platoonbritannica thread,
Photos taken by Rob Pollock and presented at imodeler.com: Part1, 2, 3, and 4,
Photos taken by a fellow PB-er Theunrealisticartist,
Photos published on militarymodelling.com,
Some photos found on the very nice blog The curious way.


cheers
'eM

Capt'n Sapo finished

I know I didn't even post any  WIP photos of this bust here, but at least I got some photos of the finished project.
The bust comes from a nice range of Figone miniatuers, and recently was a subject of a competition called 'The Sapo Challenge' held by the creators of this little beauty. The comp is closed now, but if you're inerested, you can find all the details and other participants here.

I'm really happy how it turned out. I know of course it could be painted better, with higher contrast or whatever, but I had a chance to work on a different type of textures here, and as always, I learned a lot.

cmon

pnp

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

Gallery - Da Rock

Final photos of my orc bust ein Stein (Da Rock).
I've been posting so many wips from this project so there is really not much more to say about it. You can always check out earlier post about this bust, to see how it was shaping up.
I entered this bust into the EuroMilitaire competiton last weekend, in Folkestone, where it managed to get Silver in Fantasy Bust category. I must say I'm pretty happy and proud.
I hope you like it.

cmon

pnp

cheers

'eM

Group photo

Not much to say to be honest.
Just a proof that I'm ready;]

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

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

Einstein's apron - leathers SBS

This time I'd like to show you the process of painting the leather like on my Einstein. The bust at this moment is still in progress, so you can check my earlier posts to see how it's progressing so far.

As you can see leather apron Einstein is wearing is very distressed, dirty and full of all sorts of discolourations and stains. It wasn't really planned this way from the beginning, but was more like heat of the moment improvisation.
Because I don't have  any photos picturing particular stages of the process I'll try to recreate the same effect on different piece (most probably the cartboard or something like that). To be fair I must admit that I'm curious myself if I can do that.

If you're  interested here's my other tutorial about painting leather

1. Basecoat
First step is pretty basic. Just apply more or less even layer of a base colour. In my case some sort of mixture  of: Graveyard Earth (GW), Desert Yellow (GW) and 'Jack Bone (P3).
The exact colours are really not that important, you can use your own pants and mixtures, but I'm gonna list them just in case anyone will find it helpful.
Because I'm  trying to speed up  my painting as much as I can, for such  big pieces, at this stage I'm mostly using airbrush to block colours and do initial shading. But you can easily do that with the brush, especially because you don't need an extra smooth  surface.

2. Basic shades and lights
For this step I also used an airbrush and simply sprayed some Graveyard Earth facing nozzle from the bottom of the bust, and then added few extra glazes with brush at the very bottom and in the recesses. After that few layers of 'Jack Bone on his shoulders.
I don't think I was worried too much about the shadows on the edges at this point, as I was planning to take care of them closer to the end.

3. Introducing texture, some colour variations and more contrast
After blocking first shadows and lights, I used thin glazes of various shades of brown, green, black to create some slight colour variations and more contrast. More 'Jack Bone and Dessert Yellow was used to brighten top parts of the apron.
At this stage I wasn't really going for smooth transitions. In fact some roughness, especially in 'light' areas was deliberate, and used to create leathery texture (vachetta leather - without a shine and rather dull when compared to the grain leather)

4. Splashes
When step 3 is finished the fun begines. Using thick and rather stiff brush, a toothpick and fairly dilluted paints and washes I created colourful splashes on the apron, trying to concentrate them on the middle part of the apron, where they're most likely  to happen in real life.
This metod is quite random and seems messy, but with all the 'non leathery' parts of the mini covered with Tamyia tape, and a bit of practice (to establish how dilluted part you should use) you can really go to town with it and create cool effects. And if something goes horribly wrong, you can always cover that area with base/shade colour and start over again. It not only won't  ruin the piece, but can even add a bit to the texture.
It's entirely up to you what colours you use for that step, but here's the list of those I used:
- 'Jack Bone (P3)
- Badab Black (GW Wash)
- Agrax Earthshade (GW Wash)
- Ogryn Flesh (GW Wash)
- Seraphim Sepia (GW Wash)

If you're not entirely happy with your splashes and dots you can add some with the brush. At this point I used slightly dilluted  washes to create 'coffee print' effect  with a paint pooling to the stain's edges, but it's really up to you what dillution you're gonna use.

5. Glazes of different colours to blend splashes and the whole surface together a bit
I used some Graveyard Earth, brown  and black washes to blend, and green, red and maybe even blue to add some colour niuances to the leather. After all, years of extensive use in different circumstances, had to left some marks and discolourations.

I know that the effect is not exactly the same with Einstein's apron, but I guess you got the idea how it was made so far. Changes I was doing from now on are rather hard to reproduce on the cartboard, so I'm gonna move back to the mini.

6. More contrast and weathering

After blending the whole surface a little, I reintroduced contrst with dark glazes (on the bottom of the miniature ans in the recesses, and light colours  in the brighter areas. Slightly 'chalky' finish in the highlights added some  texture and worn finish.

 

7. Edges
With the middle of apron more or less ready I took care of the edges. Bright colour applied with the side of the brush to the shapr edges of the apron and some glazes in the little holes and indentations  under them made the trick.
The same goes for all little holes in the surface. I applied some dark/black wash inside and then highlighted the bottom edge with Menoth White Base (P3)

8. Final touches
For now the apron is finished, but with whole bust painted I may add some more contrast or maybe few more stains. At some point I was thinking about making him more like a car mechanic, so there would be added some oil stains on the apron, but I'm not sure yet.

Well I guess that's all here.
I hope you'll find this tutorial helpful. If you have any questions, please ask. I'll try to help as much as I can.

cheers

'eM