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

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

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

Hall of Shame Part 3

Time for Episode 3:D
Mostly black and white, not particularly artistic, simply preshaded.

cheers
'eM

Little bones for basing

At the moment I'm preparing another base with natural bones, so I thought I might as well tell you how to deal with them in our hobby.

But first few informations:
1. No animals were killed to obtain these bones, well they were killed and eaten, but not by me and not for the purpose of collecting base accessories. Pure cruel nature.
2. Some people may feel disgusted by the process of acquisition of the bones... I must say I don't understand that, but... well... If you feel you might have weak stomach or feel sick for trivial reasons, don't read this article, find another way to make your bases look awesome:D


Where to fing such a tiny bones (the gross part begins:P):
As you probably know, owls have very weak stomach acid, and are unable to digest bones and fur (and  they swallow their prey whole or in small pieces) , so they vomit it after a while. Ornithologists call that vomit pellet.
There are other animals that do that (for example cats, hawks, eagles and other raptors), but the owl's, in particullar Barn owl's, pellets have the bones in the best condition (weakest stomach acid).
The important thing here to remember is: it's vomit not a poop, it comes out the front end not the rear!!

You can buy natural pellets on ebay, sometimes with bone charts, as children are using them sometimes at school at biology classes to reconstruct bone structure of little mammals.
There are also artificial pellets avaliable, but I have no idea how the bones look like in them.


What can we find in a pellet:As I said earlier pellets are masses of bone, teeth, hair, feathers and exoskeletons of various animals.
Here are types of the bones you can find there.
Of course it vary in every pellet. This is 100% natural thing and all depends what the owl eaten that day.
But normally you can find: Skulls, jaws, parts of the spine, ribs, tibias, and other long bones.

That's the picture of the bones I got from my 6 pellets. It will probably be enough bones for my entire hobby life.

How to dissect a pellet:
1.Use latex gloves, and a dust mask. Ideally, you should have obtained your pellets from a reputable dealer, who will ensure that these pellets can't transmit rodent-borne disease (there is a note on ebay auctions if the pellet was sterilised).

2. Begin to pull apart your pellets with your hands, slowly and carefully. This tiny pellet is filled with small, fragile bones that you'll want to preserve. If the pellet proves to be too hard, you may soak the pellet in water to soften it. That creates a muddy mixture of bones, fur and other things. I personally prefer to deal with the dry pellets than wet, but it's entirelly up to you.

3.Separate the mess of fur, feathers, and bones with tweezers. As you break the pellet into smaller and smaller pieces, you can soak your pellets in water to remove the fur and feathers from the bones. Place the bones gently to one side, in a clean container or on paper towels.

4. Clean the bones thoroughly and just to be sure put into a cleaning/disinfectant liquid for a day or two.

5. Dry the bones and store them in a container, making sure they are out of reach of children and pets, you know... just in case.


At the picture below you can see the bones in comparison with 28mm miniature (Hasslefree Akanke).
They would look great as a monster's bones in this scale, and skulls can be used for example as a dragon's remains. With bigger miniatures we can use them (the bones) as parts of human's skeletons.

How to glue and paint the bones:
If I remember correctly I was using PVA glue, but I believe they should survive contact with super glue without problems. In fact I just tested it on a very thin bone, and there are no signs of dissolving.
Paint them as anything else on your base, use primer at the beginning and then paint normally. You can stop licking your brushes for a while when painting bones, it's an animal's remains after all, even if sterilised.
Just be careful when picking them up with your tweezer, they're fragile and can be crushed easily.And of course wash your hands after touching them, just in case.


And at the end, here are examples, where I used the bones on my bases:

 

Next base with bones soon, maybe even tomorrow:D

cheers

'eM

Menhom Dark Shadow - Review

Another mini under the loupe, this time my first purchase from Andrea Miniatures.

Menhom Dark Shadow

(c) Andrea Miniatures

I felt in love with this piece few years back, when a friend send me a link with the pic. And it was the love at first sight. Unfortunately at that point I was on a verge of quiting the hobby, or not sure if I should get back to painting (don't remember exactly when it was), and the mini itself was too pricey just for a whim, so I didn't buy it. But never really forgot about it. And finally managed to buy it few months ago.

The mini itself is from an Andera's range Warlord Saga, the line of 54mm fantasy miniatures (some really nice stuff there - check it out).
I did measure it, and from the top of the spike to the floor it has 80mm, so it's quite tall even for it's scale (please notice that Menhom is bending forward, standing straight, he'd be even taller).


Packaging:
The mini comes in a paper box, not too stiff, but parts are secured with thick sponge, so there is no way anything can move inside. It's very important, as the metal used for that mini is rather soft and can bend easily.

What's in the box:
As you can see, in the box we find 15 metal parts and one resin (the bottom part of the body).
All the spikes and horns are on one bar, which is nice, because they're tiny and some of them are really thin.

Quality:
The metal parts of the mini are rather clean. You can find few mould lines, but they are easy to remove. You need to be careful with the thin parts, like sword or spikes, because the metal is very soft and can bend almost under the weight of the brush.
Unfortunately the resin piece is way worse. The resin is rugged, especially in all these places that are hard to access, and by the look of the dress, you can say, that there is lots of such spots. There are also few mould lines, but comparing to the roughness of the surface in the recesses of the folds, it's not a big deal and easy to fix.

 

Assembly:
I'm rather happy with the way parts fit together. Even hands and wrists have little 'pins' to make the joints stronger. The only problem here are spikes, especially the longer ones. It's very difficult to make them fit the recesses and even if we manage to do that, making them stay there - it's completely different matter... I guess the only way is to paint them separately and glue to the mini at the last minute.


Overall opinion:
'Beautiful mini with issues' - that's the simplest way of describing this piece. If you don't mind prep work and can be patient with fixing all the imperfections, Menhom will be a very nice addition to your collection.  I'm not the fan of the intense preparation myself, but luckily the mini isn't bad enough to discourage from buying more Andrea Miniatures in the future (I got my eye on few Vikings there:D).


Were to buy:
If you're from Poland, I'd suggest to go straight to Jama store, they have great choice of minis (and even if they don't have it at hand, they can just order it) and the service is swift and very firendly.
UK - SK miniatures.
For the rest of the world - google closest retailer:)

Or of course, you can buy directly from Andrea Miniatures website.


Other Andrea Miniatures reviews:
Urmuth Scars of War

A dress with a serious case of 'chicken pox' - WIP

Yesterday I was thinking what can I do, to make this huge surfaces of red dress more interesting. After a while (old and rugged golden embroidery even if very spectacular, is a bit too complicated for me atm) I decided to go for worn and old look of the fabric in 'Natalya style'. Well, tbh she's not using this technique to get worn look, but I hope I can adapt it for my purposes.

So dots, dots... lots of them....
And after one evening, the effect is hmmm... interesting at least, but not even close to the original;p

For now the dress looks like it has a chicken pox or something like that. But I'm trying to convince myself, that it's gonna look like I want in the end.
Don't get me wrong, I kinda like how the dress looks atm, especially on the pic that shows the back of the mini, but I'm going for a different look, and I'l ltry to achieve it.

But I guess it needs to be something more in this technique than just mindless stabbing the mini with a brush:)
I can promise, that if I find what's the 'secret ingredient' here, I'm gonna share it with you:D 

cheers

'eM