Tragic progress

My collection nears completion and com.. Er.. Paintshun.

Most of the McDeath team.

Project coming on doncha think?

  I just need Sandra Prangle, Lady and Laird McDeath and at least one more pack or two of clansmen so I can have each clan colour represented.  Quicksure's mounted version is unassembled at the moment.

I also have the zombie clearly used in the card counters as Boney prince Charlie and the LOTR Ent used in Johns painting.  It would be nice to know who the warriors guarding Brewben Keyler's wagon train where that shipped with the deal... Any ideas?

Comments make m..mm...mmm...me haapyee.

Warduke, imp and more

Kicking off with a work in progress... a night horror imp.  Naturally I had to paint it to the scheme used in the Chalice of Doom diorama.  The space on the base will be ceremonial candles and a plastic skeleton rising.

Giz a kiss

Wip of back.  Wings not done.

Chibi Warduke.  Needs matte varnish to kill the ink glaze shine.  I modified it slightly to be closer to the original- shaving off chainmail and the third skullspike.  The colors are from the back painting from the Warduke toy blister... Which I happen to have on my desk.  Because I love Warduke.  Yes, I do.

WARDUKE FTW (Impact miniatures)

And two trays full of shame pushed forward more.

So all my balrogs, trolls and ogres are repaired, assembled, based and primed.

The shame is slowly abating.

Blanchitsu PDF

I made a PDF of that Blanchitsu episode where Blanche tells you how he done does that Blanchitsu thype stuff.  Pontifex maximus!

http://www.darklinggames.com/eavyledd/blanchitsu.pdf

Progress on the shame backlog

Nothing special tonight for you, only this journal entry that I have finished emptying out and rebasing all my Night Horrors, Eternal Champion and all the non Rackham stuff from my CANCON haul, bar the stuff currently being stripped.  I plan to be good and get through these all by next CANCON.  All the Eureka Brughel minis and dogs are off to one side of this picture awaiting a spray prime. 

I am pleased to find that I have a small Skulldred sized warband of Melniboneans to enjoy.  I will borrow from Phil Lewis' excellent paint jobs for these. Enjoy the shitty pic!  As I say, often these are just reminders of progress.

Huntsman in my studio

Huntsman spider in the studio.  It dodged my first thwacks with a wooden pole better than Neo, then ran under my desk.

No.  Just no.

CANCON raid 2

Day 2 of CANCON was fun.  I converted some napoleonic zombies for Eureka miniatures live on the show floor so people can see how it's done.

Gosh, it is fun doing zombies.  I am so tempted to sculpt a batch.  These particular two are off to be cast next week.

I also found these...

The C11 giant replacement weapons I did a while back.  I am looking forward to getting these cast.

I raided the Confrontation bin with ten blister packs of Midnor and Goblins.  A triplet of stags also will make great mounts for a buck each.

My dog mini fetish made me do it.  Eureka animals, Malifaux McMourning squad, hag, spawn mother and some awesome Bruegel inspired critters from Eureka.  Paint cue bump for those!

" Dahgs... Do yoo lyke dahgs?"

CANCON raid

Great raid.  Lots of loot.  Less quantity then last year, but more 'fukkinNOway...yoink!... Mine!!!' Moments.

Imagine a world where you can get ten Fimir for $100 AUD.  That would be a nice world.

Happy birthday to me!  Seriously, I never dreamt of collecting these.  I just could not justify the ebay prices.  But ten bucks each?  Sold.

I am not even mad about the missing head.  That just says 'Pete Taylor conversion' to me.

I also scored an original Nagash for fifteen dollars.  Voted the ugliest miniature of all time, Morley's monstrosity was nevertheless a challenge I happily accept at that price.  It's like the game Daikatana.  People bought it just to see how bad it was.  Perverse.

And the rest of today's loot.

Five champions, Aly Morrison Oriental heroes, a gatorman shaman, Lahmian vampire, chaos sorcerer and Ral Partha orcses.  Note that the musician has a certain sword sheath required for a certain Undead Assault project.

I also grabbed an ogress in metal.  Nice to see the usual sexism alive and well at GW.  She is armed with a rolling pin and cooking pot, because a woman's place is in the kitchen, even on the battlefield.  But hey, charming figure that will be a blast to paint.

My final grab was a bag of undead shields that will help my lichemaster terrorise.

The packaged champion is going to my trades list.

A big thanks to the lovely Kara who won the 'find the fringe' challenge.  She kindly held my box of loot whilst I ran to the ATM to borrow money from evil capitalist pigs (cheers).  May your squig hunt be successful (and post pics) mantis grrrl!.

Turelio went all kinds of colours when I showed him my winnings.  I let him stroke my bag of Fimir.  (Check his blog out, he is uber painty).  I also enjoyed making him cry by opening the chaos champion mint blisterpacks and making him smell Nottingham factory air circa 1993 with me.

We both agreed nineties Nagash is a great challenge.  Can I make him not look like a christmas tree raping a confused cheap mexican papermache sugarskull whilst lazily doing the Macarena?   Can I give him some of the dark dignity the lord of undeath deserves?  Turd polish mode engage!

Tomorrow will see me sculpting Napoleonic zombies at the Eureka stand.  Come and say hi.  Bring food... the catering is terrible.  :)

CANCON thoughts and Spring clean time

Well, I kick off work on a MMOG project next week, so I will be back on the PC and probably away from my painting desk for a bit.  As a warm up, I popped open photoshop and spring cleaned the site up a tad.

Mmmm. Shiney newness (in a retro way).

So my thoughts turn to CANCON 2014, which is bearing down upon us.  I got a question about if Darkling Games will be selling there, and the answer is sadly no.  I have just been too sick this year to arrange enough stock, book a table and get merch printed.  As a counter balance to that, I will be doing a sale soon to clear old stock ready for new stuff!

If you are planning to be there, you can probably find me hanging around the Eureka or Reaper miniatures stall on the Saturday.  Keep your eyes peeled for a shifty lookin' woman bearing this fringe.  (I won't be dressed in a medieval outfit, or a deathmetal/pokemon t-shirt if that helps round it down).  Come up and say hi!

She shifty lookin'

I was toying with the idea of sculpting my blogs avatar, with swappable heads (helmet and bob haircut) and a paintbrush or axe option.  I will vary it a bit more so not to infringe on John Blanches work, keeping it to the homage it is (plus make it work in a mould).  Kinda like Matakishi has his adorable little cat (which I have two of).  Comment below if you would like to see that happen!

Jeesh, ego much?

So looking forward to seeing some of you at The Con!

WANTED trade list now up.

Welp, I finally made my trades list.    Am I good or what?

LANIE WANTS
(Well, most of all at the moment)

LANIE HAS
Seriously, there are TWO Frikkin REAVER titans in here.


Comments below for potential trades... If you want to email me offline, you need to solve this riddle:   bumdelaneykingrox@bumgmail.com  remove the two bums from this email.  Gosh, I am so grown up.  Bum.

I am also happy to trade for Darkling miniatures and sculpting comissions.  Yes, I am.

Medusa and Orc and Project shame (4)

The march towards total painted-ness of my back catalogue continues!  Tonight, I focused on base coating greys, metals and greens.  I pushed several more minis along thusly...

Citadel 1980's Talisman Orc and Armoured Medusa

I find that with painting lime greens, it is easy to get great results as warm green paints tend toward translucency.  I highlight by adding a matte medium or windex/water solution to thin the paint to translucent.  This softens the brush marks away and gives a smooth finish.  To get the green look I use for my orcs, I start with some form of medium cool (bluish) green, use a dark grey green for shading and then blend up warm lime highlights.  Once that is all done, I go over the model and richen places with warm dark green glazes and yellow glazes.  Often I will add warm blue glazes to some parts of orcs.  My color choice for the lips is based on Frazer Gray.  Because.

Villagers Actor, Talisman Orc, Night Horror Armoured Medusa, 80's LOTR Legolas (Citadel), Chibi Warduke (Impact)

As you can see the tray behind is moving along.  I am base coating color by color, adding thinned windex to make brushing on the paint a pleasure.  For most of these I am using a black enamel spray primer, VMC medium grey drybrushing to pop the detail, and Jo Sonja craft acrylics (hookers green) for the bases.

Those painting stands are actually pencil sharpeners... 3 for $2 at my local bargain basement store.  A wad of bluetack in the hole fixes the mini in place while I work.  You can put sand or glue washers inside to weigh them down a bit too.  They are especially good once sprayed black, as they are not distracting.  The screw ridge also stops your fingers from sliding up and smudging the model.

Okies, that is me for the night.  Probably next report from CANCON!

Birthday present: skull pony limosine

Mmmmm... plastic crack.  My wife/partner* got me this for my birthday.  Awwww, feeling the love.  She is also driving me to Cancon... A six hour round trip. (Editors note: SEVEN hours she has informed me.  SEVEN.  I am feeling even more love).   :)

   Anyhoo, I will be making the female version at some point... maybe mashing her up a bit with green stuff and bitz.  Cause that's how we roll around here.

Ermegerd, Werhemmer!  Meh eermy will crush yers!

Looking through the instructions, this is a hella complex model with lots of parts.  That isn't usually a bad thing, but in this case it equates to a lot of sanding and cleaning to get them all to interlock.  She will have to wait until after many more shame projects are done and I have another epic energy spurt.

Speaking of which, I managed to get through priming, basing and painting bases on all the non Skaven models shown last post. I started laying in the base colours on a few and became very excited!  Chaos hounds!  Chaos sorcerers!  Much painty goodness!

Pics of some progress soon :)

*[Political LGBTIQ thing:  interesting fact about Australia.  You cannot be married if you are the same gender or intersex.  That is ten percent (same sex attracted) and a further 1.7 percent (intersex) of the population denied equality.   The status of my own marriage is a grey area legally speaking.

  My wife/partner and I can, however, walk into a British consulate, remarry and walk out with our marriage recognised in Australia...  Because the Queen is totes cool with it and because I am a pommie.

  Our 'prime minister' used tax payers money to overturn same sex marriage even though in doing so he denied his very own lesbian sister the right to marry. He is a colossal asswipe.]

Project Shame (3): Progress of the damned

Lead!  Lead!  LEAD!!!  I know how some of you like fossicking through pictures, so here is my current desk situation on project 'Shame removal'.

Mmm... Chaos sorcerers, night horrors, dragon hatchlings, talisman and some Lords of Frodo's ring.

Skaven by the Rat King load, AD&D figures, Talisman, more Skaven, Heroquest, Dungeonquest, Lunchquest and a flying carpet from Grenadier.  Oh, and Skaven, in case you missed that.  Some of those.

The current state of those trays seen before.  Mainly to make me feel good when I look back in a few days and see how far I have come.  Loving Chibi Warduke!

AD&D Ogre wip

A quickie session today got me thus far on a Jes Goodwin AD&D ogre.  My inquisitor set required dry weather to spray, so I am back to fantasy.

  I read the 2nd edition Monster Manual again for the colours.  Though commonly yellow through brown, it says they can come in purple.  Perfect!  I also added the orange teeth, fingernails and white pupils on purple eyes and made sure its warts where 'of a different colour'.  I like how my AD&D minis are coming out very colourful... Much like the cover art of the era.

The skin still needs unifying glazes (where an extremely translucent colour is brushed over the whole area to tie the shading together) and work on metals and base.

I may do a little waterfall at the back too... that could be cute.  A little stream through the caverns.

I lost my mushroom maker in a studio reshuffle, so I will have to make a new one before I can festoon my collection with them.  I plan to go mushroom mad. Maybe even some snails and other critters too.  :)

Ageing tutorial

In this tutorial I will show you how to correctly spend your birthday.

Next episode, Delaney gets her arse out of bed and paints and/or sculpts something.

Maybe.

X.

Laney manufactors a manufactorium

My manufactorium kit has been languishing too long and has thusly been smited with my unmitigated mighty might surge.  Seriously, I have no idea why I am churning through shamefully unfinished projects, but day-aam, it's exciting!  One more languishing box of plastic crack assembled and ready for a serious festival of drybrushage.  Zoots!

I tried to treat my kit as your basic eighties action figure playset.  I managed to get a lot of potential gameplay features into it, like several low cover points, a couple of high areas and a choke point in the door.  I found the chimney actually worked better as a ground pipe, giving me an extra bit of cover to play with adds a nice arch.

  It makes me sad to see people turn a kit like this into basically a plinth for their spess mehreenz.  So much can be squeezed out of these kits!

My dark battle sister makes her entrance!  Note the gibbet from the giant kit. Tres inquisitor don't cha think?

The reverse side has a low cover area right next to the choke point door.

And of course you need a sodding great big fan.  I think it needs a skull in the middle.  The white stuff is texture medium which gives a lovely rust texture to things.  Gruyere approves of the obligatory computer fan for necromundian tomfoolery.  Pchoo!  Pchoo!

And in other news, it's my birthday tomorrow!  I shall be heading to Cancon to spend all my birthday money on second hand store goodness!  Weeeee!

Blanchitsu is good for you

My Blanchitsu Warband is now a gruesome twosome!  

Yeah, need to get that inquisitor scenery sorted at some point.

Parts used:  Island of bunnies Rat Ogre, Genestealer, Ork, Beastman and a spess mererhn.

I shall call him 'Ard Cheeze.

I have several of his clan underway, and now that I have found my guardsmen boxed set I can do a few more Rat mutants ala Mr Blanche!

Comments below or... Alternatively written in the back of money and posted to me.

Stirges suck

I only had an hour of hobby time today.

Stirges fall into the 'uhg, flying base... I will do that later' category, so these little blood sucking bastards have been loitering for a long time in my collection.  I had planned to use clear plastic rod, but the holes where just too small to make a strong connection.  I opted for blackwires, not because I like them, but because I wanted it done.  The skulls are a spare from The Skullchucker kit.

I used the colours from the AD&D 2nd ed monster manual from the time.

The photo is bad, the paintjob unfinished, but it charts my progress.  I want to do a second pass on these to add more contrast and highlights to the wing ribs.  The bases will get shrooms too.  Possibly baby shrieker mushrooms.

Last night I based and primed my entire Skaven horde, my remaining Talisman figures, and every last citadel AD&D minis bar the carrion crawler, which I need to find a nice base for before I glue it together.  All in all, a pretty good session.

Long way to go but it's gonna be a fun ride.

Three in progress

The recent onslaught on my backlog continues, with great progress on my Citadel AD&D collection.  Shriekers are FUN to paint!  I may need to get more :).

It is amazing how much you can achieve with a little focus and setting aside the need to be perfect in favour for 'good enough'.

Three very nearly finished figures drying off.  Just little details and a little edging to go.

The first is a Satyr from the Citadel Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series.  I find satyrs in greek myth boring- so made mine a form of forrest Fae.  It's funny how a paint job can turn a least liked figure to a fave.

Next up is The Inquisitor from The Talisman series, a true favourite of mine.  I painted one of these back in the eighties and it was the first I painted that managed to impress my friends.  Ain't that right Mr. Passingham?

This time around I varies the solid red with a cluxish white mask, which makes him scarier.

Finally is The Gypsy from the same release.  Again, I stayed away from the solid blue dress in the paint job in the advert, mainly because gypsy skirts and blouses are usually separate (pfff, girl brain, you know).   A touch of turquoise hints at magical powers.  Coz magic is turquoise... K?

 

Project Shame (part2): More lead from from the depthsMalifaux

My session today involved ressurecting another array of 'shame' figures that have been waiting too long for attention in the depths of my collection.  I found another Kev Adams zombie in my 'to sort later' pile, and dumped out my AD&D bag of unpainted figures- since there isn't many of them this is another area that can be cleared through quickly and checked off.

Yes, I am kinda back in factory mode, which I find kills my energy, but I have decided to do this to kick off the figures.  Simple stuff like rebasing, priming, dark wash, doing metals and doing base colours.  It is nice to feel progress though.

Shading and details can come after, and that is the part I enjoy. It strikes me that if my newborn son keeps me up, having a menu of base coloured models I can quickly tinker with a bit for twenty minute bursts may be a good thing.

Citadel AD&D, Talisman, Half orcs, Dwarfs, Reaper, Asgard, Malifaux and a Storm Giant from Ral Partha

Project Shame Part 1: Adventurers!

A very productive day today.  I emptied out my 'adventurers' tub, which contained a couple of the dungeon starter sets and some AD&D minis.  Most of these minis have been woefully neglected, having been based and primed at the very start of this blog, but never painted.  I decided to rectify this!

I also threw in a few other figs that had likewise been annoying me by loitering around my collection in equally unpainted state.

I managed to rebase the lot and get really far in the paint jobs- though all are still very my works in progress.

I wanted crisp colours, bright flesh and new colour combinations.  I wanted these adventurers to really pop out from the monsters.

Having an entire part of my collection 'done to varnish' is going to lift my spirits no end.  Sometimes the size of my leadpile can be overwhelming.  Not that I am complaining.  I find it interferes with buying things recklessly on ebay too... 'Yes I want that elf, but I haven't painted the other twenty I have over there...'.

Of course, I still have a huge amount of figures to go, but being able to realistically envisage dusting off my hands and say 'done!' one day is pretty awesome.

Well, I am zonked.  Good night kiddies!

Kev Adam's Zombies

My brother in law visited and we had a bit of a hobby session.  Speed painting his Spess Mareenz got me nicely warmed up to painting again, and I decided to have a  bit of a retro paint session last night to use that positive energy.  I decided to paint to completion something from right back at the start of my collection, and the first thing that leapt out where zombies... Lots of zombies!  Well, ten of them.

The first three finished where two of Kev Adam's brilliantly characterful zombies, and one of the highly sought after oriental undead, 'li-chee' which is a classic example of eighties pun names and racially insensitive humour.  His pose reminds me of Tommy Cooper.

Compared to my old batch of these zombie figures from when I started this blog, these figs really highlighted to me how much brighter, crisper and richer my painting style is these days.  It feels more retro to me, and much more aligned to the reason I started this blog... the enjoyment of eighties miniatures.

The bases where an experiment with cheap Jo Sonja's Hooker's green and moss green craft paint.  I diluted them with windex in pots, which gave me really nice dark mossy results that reminded me of Fraser Grey's base work.  Instant love!

Fraser used enamels, and formed his bases from found objects inserted into plastecene clay, covered with a shell of two part epoxy resin and grit.  I tried it once, and found it cracked too easily, stank and you could get better results with cork and superglue.

I do like how the deeper mossy green makes for a background for the minis own colors to pop out.  The cooler, less yellow moss highlight also will work well set against my goblin skin... One of the reasons I started to venture away from my forrest green basing colors.

Kev made the best citadel zombies.  After his tenure, the zombies where replaced by dull, stiff, flat posed, weightless shat knocked out under the 'paid per mini' system that wreaked havoc on the nineties, culminating in the worst miniature of all time, metal Nagash.

Comments appreciated!  I love comments.  Comments make me happy.

Blightking test piece

Here is my quick test piece for my Blightking team.  I tried both styles shown on the box but was unhappy with both... So I split the difference and mixed the turquoise blue and angels green together for a classic chaos jade.

And the first 'free' Blightking made from left overs!

Plus a little more progress on free Blightking number 2 (Papa Nurgle likes number two's too).

Just another four to go!

'EAVY LEDD issue 2: Stretching your kits

Hmm, I have just scanned a 'eavy ledd from 1986.. and would ya beleive it, it shows you how to fatten out your GW kits using cheap materials.  How did they know back then?  A mystery wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in bacon.

You can get the zoggin' PDF from 'ere...http://www.darklinggames.com/eavyledd/eavyledd_02.pdf

OLD SKOOOLZZZ!!!

More 'eaviness later folks.

Happy new year

Happy new year folks!

Welp, tis that time when we reflect back on the year past and summarize that bitch.

On the hobby front, I actually got a reasonable amount of stuff done, a little over 30 figures finished through to varnish, and plenty pushed along in a factory pipeline kinda way.  I think the progress made on the other figures is probably going to mean a lot of finished figures this year.

BAD STUFF 2014

My hobby time in 2014 was interrupted by two weeks of hospital stays, some severe depression and a flurry of freelance work.  Sublime to ridiculous.  My laptop for Skulldred died, the B broke off on my $100 keyboard, which isn't replaceable and was clearly built to break.  Logitech.  Grrrr.  Teeth.


GOOD STUFF 2014

It was definitely a good year for aquisitions.  I have a Cryx warband and several Malifaux 1.0 warbands in various stages of production, collected several big boxes full of Games Porksword sprues and bits ranging from Forsaken through to Genestealers which should see me fixed for a year of conversion hobby fun, and of course some fantastic classic metal.  This year I added a one peice limited edition Zoat, a metal reaver Titan, two metal marine Dreadnoughts, a Mcdeath Dragon Turtle, A Bob Olley 'Dragon vs. Dwarfs', some classic space pirates and a few more figures for my Lichmaster collection.  I also found a box of metal 40k minis just laying by the road ready for the street rubbish to be collected... it included 90's blood angels, metal landspeeder and metal terminators.  I know right?  Amazeballs.  I wonder how they are enjoying my stripping jar?

Speaking of finds, in a few weeks it will be CANCON and my Birthday, which means more haul if I am lucky.  I LOVE that my Birthday falls just before Cancon's second hand stall manifests.  Race you to the goodies kids, and try not to trip over the guilt of not having painted ANYTHING you grabbed last year.  ;)  I REGRET NOTHING!!!!


REALLY GOOD STUFF 2014

First up, let's talk about you.  Last year I did something I was terrified of doing, which was come out as intersex and announce my transition.  It could have gone really, nightmarishly bad- there are a lot of messed up people out there who just cannot fathom biology past primary school standards.  But it didn't go bad.  It went well, and clocked up the biggest response of any of my blog entries.  Oh geesh, I am starting to tear up a bit.  Thanks everyone, it is brilliant to have such support, and even better to have several people write to me and talk about their own struggles with similar issues.  I feel I have already helped by standing up and taking that big step.

Pat yourself on the back humans!

My transition has gone extremely well.  I have been able to go about my life as a woman without fear of harassment or abuse.  Apparently I just look like your 'average mid 30's lesbian arty geek chick' as one person so eloquently put it.  Suits me!
It is sooooooo relaxing to be in my correct gender now, and I love the way GW staff are not quite sure how to react to me.

GW Dude: "Who are you buying for?"

Average mid 30's lesbian arty geek chick:  "Oh, these are all for me."

GW Dude:  "Oh.  how long have you been collecting for?"

Average mid 30's lesbian arty geek chick:  "Uh, I think since 1985.  Kev Adam's metal snotling pump wagon and a Minotaur Lord- but my collection goes right back to first release citadel figures.  I have a literal ton of the fucking things."

GW Dude:  "................................................  Okaaay then.".

Heh.  Rofl even.

BIGGEST AWESOMEST STUFF

Kat and I finally fell pregnant through the magic of science!  Little King is due in March 2015!  I should have him painting minis by 2025... stay tuned!

PLANS FOR  2015

   I think I am going to call 2015 as the 'year of wrapping up hovering projects' for me.  Let's clear the deck and freshen up this studio's energy a bit.  But all this is dependant on the sleep little babes is going to give us.  Let us all give offerings to the chaos gods he sleeps through the night.  Bless.

 I have two boxes of unfinished scenery, which would not take too long to wrap up, so that is a good start.  Having a cat kinda stopped my tabletop gaming with lots of scenery.  I have no idea how to solve that problem.  Hopefully more space in the house we hope to move to this year.

  I am hoping to do a few more classic 'eavy metal style articles, focusing on things like orc skin, tinting, extending GW kits and of course the one I have been itching to do. The SHERWOOD store opening robin hood dwarf I was so honoured and blessed to be given in order to make the John Blanche 'Undead Assault' tribute.  That needs a special edition all to itself.

On the Darkling front, I hope to get the new webstore finally up so we can list all the new minis I have made.  Oh, and the paint.  I have BOXES of paint here to flog.  :)

I have already started sculpting again, you will be all glad to know it is the sphincter beast kit is first up.  Yep.

Okay, fuck off and do something important.  By the way, I hope you all had a FANTASTIC year and will have a BETTER one!

LOVE, PUTTY AND HUGS!