Hoff to a good start...

A quick pic of my hoffbeat painty rest break... I feel better after messing around with these.  Its got my juices if not flowing, but defrosted enough to peel off the cling film and stick it back into the mental microwave.

The spaced out druid is fun, but I really should have done a bit of a proper fill and file as he is from the era of rough surfaces and crappy fingers.  Not sure what to do with his lantern yet.  I may do source lighting, but he is already pretty light.  Hmmm.

WF Spaced Out Druid, Asgard Adventuress, GW Chaos Cultist, Confrontation Hybrid

The Asgard adventuress was the first in a whole slew of bare bristol warriors with crossed straps.  Citadel did a bunch almost identical several years layer which appeared in fighters and chaos fighters and I think Ral Partha did one too but I will check on that... I will do a side by side shot once the others are painted up.  Needs a lot of work on the eyes still, and I suspect she should be a brunette... (opinions below)  She had bug eyes, which is always hard to paint... and is generally poorly sculpted except for the obvious bang on bits.  Anyone know who sculpted her?  Still, nice to finally have her transition from ugly grey lump to ugly colorful one.  More polishing required before varnishing.

Third up is one of the snap together chaos cultists from dark vengence. 
How exactly does dark vengence differ from regular kind?

I decided to go way out there with style, painting them to be gleering out of the darkness with source lighting.  For colors I am keeping tightly with orange vs midnight blue, and keeping them muted.  The base is a Renedra 25mm plastic base.  Yeah, yeah but it will work better in tightly packed necromunda hives.

Finally is the lovely confrontation hybrid beastie from Rackham.  One of my Skulldred playtesters is using the system to resurrect the Arkalesh game world... and I love that idea.  I have enough rackham to make large dirz, goblin and undead warbands, as well as a good fist full of smaller bands.
Painting this guy is F.U.N.  plus I realised if I kept the basing simple grey flag stone, this versatile bastard is ideal for Inquisuitor, weird world war, nurgle, warmahordes cryx, modern horror and cyberpunk genre games.
Thus I went with a green metal armor and offset this with purplish hues for the flesh.

Oh you can see some bob olley dwarfs from mega minis just behind on my painting rack.  These will be appearing in Skulldred if all goes to plan.  I painted one with a white undercoat and cried 'sod this 'after a couple of hours and sprayed the rest black.  I just have to face it... I am a black undercoater.

Reward yourself with Hoff break

Before I explain Hoff break- I can happily confirm Aussie Import Cheaper than cheap ass matt enamel spray beat my expensive GW can, after I blazed through my collection in a primer frenzy.  It does clog though, so you have to wipe the nozzle with a rag every ten minutes, but boy you can prime a LOOOOT of minis for a few bucks.  I switched back to matt black and the results are just dogs danglies.

Its a truely flat black- feels like a chalkboard- not satin as I expected.  It worked a treat on the cheap as chips chaos cultists I bagged at CANCON so that ticks plastic off, a forgeworld psyker, do thats resin checked and metal... well, it does bukkit loads of that too.
As I went back over the figures I primed skull white I can definately say it has mileage, as my can is still going some fifty figures on where the GW can gave up.  Excellent!

Anyway, back to the HOFF break thing...

I have been dividing up my time methodically this month, trying to find that happy work/life/business/hobby balance, and I realised I was not actually having very much fun in the latter.
This struck me as a little strange- I am after all, neck deep in lead n paint.  I should be happy as a pig faced orc in a M.U.D.

I realised it was because I was in factory mode.  Hobby WAS work.  My great escape from the pressures of life is to kick back and make something dull and grey come to life.
What I have been doing is rinse and repeat tasks which, though burning through my assigned to do list, is hardly an escape.
Even my current lifetime dream project 'undead assault' was calling for wave after wave of brown clad undead in a little factory line.  A change is needed...

Now I have to say, I am definately winning the war on lead-valanche... (that moment when you scream "I have too many minis!"-) having rebased, magnetised, polished, repaired, primed, textured, glued, undershaded and glazed my way through hundreds of figures since I last posted a shot of all my trays... but for all this progress I am not getting any 'runs on the board'- finished minis to proudly drool over for my self.

I decided to take a break and dust off something really FUN to do.  A 'Dust off' day... which my wife heard as Da Hoff day.  Like I don't already celebrate that...  geesh.

Now what shall I enjoy painting?  Hmmmm.... rummage... rummage...

Aha!  Perfect...

A confrontation Dirz Hybrid monstrosity.  Big, kick ass and intimidating as the Rackham PJ was so daaaamn good.  What else?
A Kev Adams beastman...  Spaced Out Druid... that boobs out Asgard female adventurer sitting on my shelf and.. ooh, a sample chaos cultist from my new army.  Right, that little lot should cheer me up next hobby session.

Do you need a Hoff break?  You do look a little sunken...  go on, dust off something really out there to paint!

Post your selection in the comments below if your joining me!

Repainting plastics tips

By request here are some tips on turning prepainted plastics into proper minis.
First you need a proper blade... dont mess around with craft knives here, go get a surgical scalpel from your art store.  Be ultra careful with these as you can cut yourself down to the bone with ease.
The super sharp blades will cut through the vinyl very easily without pressure, so you can trim back the mould lines with gentle strokes.  Always cut away from you, and in fiddly areas try to cut away from details towards boring areas.
Its a good idea to sever the model from its base before cleanup- I use tin snips to do this.   For thin footed models I like to leave a little base tab to anchor the figure to my new base.  Its better to make big hacking cuts away from feet, then trim back with your scalpel.

To hide the mould lines and fill the slight nicks and ramps from misaligned moulds you can use either expensive liquid green stuff from games porkchop, or grab some acrylic heavy sculpting medium aka texture paste from your art store.  This acts pretty much exactly the same but without the green dye. You can add industrial talc or baking soda to make it thicker too.  Vallejo do a plastic putty too.  All pretty much the same thing.  Its really thick acrylic paint medium.
Damp a brush and smooth this goop into the cracks.  Wipe it with a wet finger so it is only in the cracks.  Once dry, gently brush on more to cover the filled seam.
The acrylic paste can also be stippled on to add texture to parts of the model.
For really thick gaps try slow setting zapagap and sprinkle on bicarb soda.  This sets rock hard, so keep this for solid, hefty models that do not flex much.

For any big changes, and to repair any accidentally severed feet, try green stuff (duro-kneadatite) as this is really sticky and  flexible so will go with the bendy vinyl.  Green stuff, dispite the marketing, it not the best filler in most cases.  However here the flex is important.

To strengthen limbs, carefully drill into them and insert a sharpened wire or pin.  I usually poke several pins in coated in superglue, then clip off the excess- poken them a little deeper with pliers and fill the hole behind it.

With swords its usually best to snip them off and pin on a plasticard or metal replacement.  I use greenstuff and a thick filling superglue like delta thick or zapagap to anchor it into the vinyl hand.

Stripping the paint is possible, but its best to just paint directly over it.  If you have to strip, use cotton tips dipped in nail polish remover... dettol won't usually work on this paint.  The rubber is easy to damage so go slow!

Rather than undercoat, I just brush evil empire lahmian medium on my models as a base.  It one of their few paint products worth every penny.  It kills the gloss immediately and gives a nice surface to take washes.

Citadels sadly oop foundation paints thinned slightly are the best paint for recoloring.  The current base paints are hella shiney.  Go lightly on your paint passes as detail is often soft.  I find a light drybrushing of white helps bring out details and helps the layers of paint stick on too.

Finally its a good idea to varnish the ever living crap out of the model... a flexible acrylic varnish is best.  Light coats of watered down weldbond will do the trick too.  This hardens up a bit too, and I suspect stiffens the model up a tad too... but it may be my imagination- I have not done a side by side comparison as I have yet to do doubles of the same figures.

If your feeling fancy, try sharpening up some of the soft edges.  Build up an edge with greenstuff and once its totally dry slice sharp with your scalpel.

I will post some pics of mine later... got me a wicked warband of crocs!

I cast resurrect!

I spent this evenings hobby time blocking in colors on the undead I currently have for the assault project- and have spotted a few of the missing figures on ebay that I will land with any luck (you can help by not bidding on fantasy tribes undead or skull faced preslotta chaos warriors for a month or so ;).
I found VMC german uniform dark brown perfect for the cool browns of the cloth, and adding citadel dark flesh got the warm highlights.  The greener zombie flesh is parchment liquitex and catachan green.  For the guts, john goes for the complamentary orangey red- a pairing he uses even today on his space marines.
These figures are really quick to paint- and it strikes me that John would have taken far less time to complete the diorama than I first thought.
I decided to base the hordes on a mix of 40mm round bases (poker chips) in batches of three, and some singles on 25mm x3m rounds.  Champions and necromancers are getting 30mm bases to differentiate them from the rotten rabble.
So far I have twenty of the horde moving along nicely!

Whilst I had the putrid skin colors mixed, I blocked in another wave of figures not for the project- some kev adams zombies, Malifauxs bette noir, a few chaos thugs and my female nurgle gun conversion of the nurgle lord- which is exciting because she has been loitering on my desk since xmas.

I also managed to get the bases painted up on twenty or so minis... a bizarre mix of repainted Dreamblade figures, heroclix and DND plastics that I have been itching to game with.  I rebased them all on mdf rounds yo match the rest of my hordes.

Its nice to feel some progress happening.

Undead assault pt2

Just a quick post whilst I am on my way to work...a quick and dirty smartphone snap showing the dwarf warband so far.

The double handed weapon adventurer is not in the best condition as his sword is mostly missing and he was very tarnished so I still need of a replacement.

Behind the sally port door you can just make out the dwarf thief that is pictured on the watch tower in a tasteful floral green number.

Sneaking in on the right is the Tom Meier Wraith that was zapping the door.  The figure is dated 1976- which if I check my own base... yep... its as old as me.  Its one of the first dynamically posed models as far as I can tell, and a masterclass in drapery.  This puts it firmly in the most influential minis of all time in my opinion.
  It, like a handful of the undead minis pictured are Ral Partha imports.  Citadel handled the license in Europe at the time.  You can still buy these from the pleasantly perky folk at iron wind metals.

Which reminds me... must find a broken Jabberwocky too.  I already have one done up in the same colors (previously blogged) but a submerged undead munchy one would be brilliant.

I am thinking I should make some 40mm multibases of undead, and make sure my bridge and arch can take that width.

Thanks all for the support so far!

Undead assault hunt

The John Blanche undead assault project is starting to take shape- thanks to the very special arrival of the Nottingham Dwarf previously owned by the late John Garland and donated to the project by J. Fulford in his memory.  A very special figure indeed- not only rare, but rare because it marked a time and a place in our hobby- the opening of The Nottingham GW store where John picked it up. More on John and his dwarf as I dedicate a post to its restoration.  Cheers JF!

The robin hood dwarf fills the biggest gap in the recreation of the diorama that has held me back from dedicating time to the project- and now bristling with energy I gathered together all my bits so far.  Pretty darn close!

So do any of you lovely folk have any of the pictured minis?

Two dwarf adventurers (halberd and twin weapons), the guard and armorer from the kings court on roof, a skull headed chaos fighter with mace and
I also need the fantasy specials pillars used on the bridge.

I have both the fantasy special doors ready for the castle, and have based and primed most of the figures so far.  I had to lay them all out like the diorama to check I had the right variants... gosh that was cool.  I cannot wait to paint these all up!

So my plan is to have two warbands complete with correct banners and a modular table that features a copy of the castle, bridge, hills and shrooms.
The undead force will feature key characters first, expanding to get as many as I can match done.
I was already mostly done with the ray casting wraith at the door, chaos lichelord on the hill, FA necromancer, ral partha samurai liche, two ghouls and ten of his horde.  It wont take long to get those to a photographable state.

Exciting stuff!

If anyone has any photos they took of close up details of the diorama please drop me a line.  I am keen to get a good shot of the dwarfs on top of the castle so I can see their colors, and what looks like a spear thrower the armorer is working.

Thanks!

Primer wars

After minitrol posted the great tip about plastikote plastic primer I jumped on a passing Zoat and rode into town to investigate my local Supercheap Autos spray paint range.
Though they didn't have that brand they did have a range of possible candidates.  I decided to start with the cheapest three and if they failed the test, buy the next three... and so on, so  forth.

As white enamel has proved far tougher a primer I decided to start there, and picked up three types of the cheapest paint money can buy.  Aussie Export brand; grey primer, white undercoat and matt white. 

Now this is a classy product, coming in at a whopping $3.59 each and being labelled 'not suitable for automotive use' which amused me considering where I got it from.

3.59, I hear you cry, "the thieving bastards!"  How can they sleep at night charging prices like that?  Compare this to the fair and entirely reasonable price of 26.00 for a can of GW Skull White.

Thats seven cans for the price of t'other.

Now fanboys, settle down.. I know your about to jump up and say but its better "qwalitee".  Sure, that is an excellent point.  I will take that on board with my experiments.  That said, it has got to be a significant improvement to carry the six hundred percent price difference.

So first I will test the products for useability, and the cheapest one that does the job well will then be compared the GW product over the next few weeks to see mileage.  Fortunately I have a hundred candidates to road test it on.

Now this is not a scientific test of course, there is variance between batches and weather does effect the psint-  but unless GW fancy ponying up for a full test by sending me a hundred cans from different batches, I will have to go off my experience over the last few years with cans purchased from two GW stores and four independant stockists from Sydney and Canberra. That should give me a reasonable cross section of the paint shipped to Australia.   As the worst of these did approximately 100 figures (I will count them up tomorrow)- I will set the pass bar here for my mileage test.

Tonight I just tested each of the three types on an eldar metal figure, and tomorrow I will do some plastics and resin sprues (both forgeworld and finecast).  I will also paint acrylic over the paints to see how well they adhere.  (Humbrol primer makes water based paint bead, for example, but white enamel takes paint excellently.)

So far it looks like Matt White is the best of the three tried.  All three had even, powerful streams that covered quickly.  A good foot distance is best.
The matt white gave a smooth, even coverage in just a few short controlled bursts.  You can just tell there is a fair whack of paint flying through the air.

The matt white aussie export does not have the flakey, snow like spray I got from skull white (snow white), and the finish is like brushed on enamel.
The two primers are a tad gungy and shiney.  Probably containing a filler as it instructs you to sand it back before base coat.

Let me conduct part deux of my sinister experiments tomorrow.  Looks like some space crusade marines might be having a bad day...

Where Dave talks freezes, both deep and buying, and

Its time to don my Andy Warhol wig cause its Factory time.
I went all Henry Ford on the leadpile's ass today and cleared enough room to make a conveyer belt layout (see pic).  To fix, to rebase, to prime, to texture, to magnetise, to paint, to hell and back, to infinity and beyond!

My lower freezer compartment is also full with minis.  I had to eat the icecream to make room, dammit.  Superglue is weakened greatly by freezing, and the contracting and expanding of the washers as I dunk them in boiling water pops the bases off nicely.  But that is a task for another day.  Quite clearly I have much to do here already, and seeing so much all layed out like this helped immensely with facing a long buying freeze.  Quite clearly I can paint exciting figures all year.
The problem is my collection is too big for my tiny little flat, so the vast majority of it lives in a secure lock up most of the time in plastic bags within plastic storage tubs.  Rummaging through these tubs is a total joy of mine as I forget what I have quite often.  I could sit for hours doing it.  Those that live here in my study also live in tubs, so its hard to picture.
Being able to lay out a huge chunk all at once was great.
  I can now actually see a light at the end of the lead pile tunnel... for many of these figures can be completed pretty quickly if I group like models and paint in blocks, like I was doing an army.

I can quite easily imagine doing all the chainmail in one go, all the leather... bone, flesh and so forth in blocks of five to a strip- maybe twenty on the desk at once.  Certainly all my lizardmen could be blocked in one go.

To facilitate fast block painting I went with a white base coat (killing a skull white can in one day).  I found with my orc warband that contrary to the foundry army school of thought, shading downwards from highlight tone is quicker than building up from darkest, as often a couple well aimed thin washes over white can get you game ready.  Plus it gives a brighter finish, which will help the mini work on the tabletop.
I have been getting great black lining using ink, alchohol and flowaid water (1:1:10).  Doing this after basecoat works well.

Anyone had any success airbrushing white enamel?  I am loathe to buy another skull white can considering how long this one lasted.

Mega minis metal magic magnificence

My birthday treat arrived today- a fantastic 24 peice Dwarf set from mega miniatures.  These originally came from Metal Magic, and where sculpted by Bob Olley.
I am a late comer to appreciating Bobs style I must be honest.  I violently disliked the look of iron claw minis- and still - even in my mellowing tastes- cannot quite appreciate his flower pot headed goblins and rather squishy looking black orcs.  Maybe they too will grow on me eventually.  I always liked open smooth surfaces with smooth shading (Fraser Gray was my god) and dynamic poses (Jes Goodwin checked all my boxes).  Bobs stuff was...  wibbly and covered in wrinkles and details, his poses constrained and lacking that excelsior kapow.
I gather his style polarises people- your either a fan or just dont get it.  Me, I am transitioning.  I think sculpting The Bederken Dwerg allowed me to understand a bit about the temptation to sculpt detail on everything.  Its like stealing the painters choices away though... takes away options to blend and freehand.

I adore modern day Bobs work thoroughly.  His brass bull for Reaper is breathtaking and whats not to like about his malevolent retro scifi blended mutant scrunts.  Plus I now adore Iron Claw scifi pirates, and have gathered quite a posse of them lately.

Bob's inventiveness with dwarfs is a shining example of why the man is a real artist.  His gothic dwarf head dresses, iconography, weapons and shields stand apart from everyone who ever put putty to stunty.  Check out the scans from the metal magic catalogue below.
Sadly some minis in the pictures are not in the set- sold off to other companies.  I may have to find the rest later this year.  I hear impact minis has the standard bearer.

I could not resist basing up the lot and will be ramming them up my painting queue so I can play Skulldred with them!  Hopefully tomorrow will be dry for a spray session.
The casts are great- really good value minis- Its tempting to get a second set to make a hott army too- those warmachines look great!

Its looking like I may not make it down for Cancon this year.  Though if luck is with me I may squeeze in a day- I certainly wont be doing everthing I planned this year.  :(
Hopr to see some of you there!

Nurgle Lord/lady progress and aproxie

A little more work on my fat nurgleblaster lady.  She was my spare putty project today- you know, each time a sculpt goes in my mini oven to bake I dick around with the leftover putty on something so its not wasted. 

So today I made a pleasant discovery in the form of a fifty-fifty mix of Aves putty and Procreate.  The general vibe I got off the hinterwebby is that Aves is too coarse for fine detail work on minis, but it's cheap and great for terrain.
I found that to be true, and set my big tubs aside for that purpose.
Yet I decided to mix it with procreate today for an armature and see what happened.

The resulting apoxie/procreate (propoxie? Aproxie?  Apecreate?) is really firm, feathers in well, is sticky to begin with so adheres well to previous layered and sets pleasingly rigid- has a few hours working time and is neutral grey.
Once set, it scrapes well and can be smoothed with sandpaper.
This means fingerprints are of no concern and I found I could work quickly and more roughly massing in forms with little concern for surface memory and less understructure.  The coarseness of the apoxie was cancelled out.
It was really surprisingly good to use, far superior than other mixes I have used.  Give it a go sometime.
The second picture shows a couple of sculpts using the mix.

New year, new phone, new app test

Happy new year Leadsbians.
Yeah... thats not going to catch on...

Testing this new blogspot app... and the camera on my phone.

Here is a picture of some work in progress.  Splintered light 15mm undead.

Nurgle Lord... Uh... Lady

I found myself with some hobby time whilst everyone recovered from a huge turkey injection and decided to stick some of my christmas booty together... And naturally conversions ensued.

First was (Probably the most converted mini in existence), the brilliant Nurgle Lord. I can see me buying a few more of these this year. Great fun, satisfying and a pleasure to paint (my brother in law had me slap one up for him a few months back).
A quick sex change and a nip and tuck, and she will be a heavy shooter in my new nurgle themed Skulldred warband I kicked off with that muted green-grey chaos beastmas a few posts ago.



The hair is from a dark elf sorceress. I will bulk out the gun with pipes once I get back to my studio tomorrow where my pipe rollers dwell. The barrel is from the nurgle lords sprue.

I may make the boobs bigger and saggier too, more like an earth mother type and add a few more touches here and there. At the moment its too subtle to really communicate she is a she.

Xmas Haul

Merry Xmas lead addicts. What do resin fans call themselves?
Resin addicts sounds a little opium den-nish. Res'eads?
Well here is my xmas haul- so expect painty /converty versions of these babies soon...



I got two 'valkia the bloodies' to play with- Im thinking a warband of bloodletters and eighties chaos hounds led by her would be tasty. Oooh, projects... More projects!

I am rather pleased by the quality of these- after terrible Forgeworld castings and poor dark eldar finecast castings, these are almost perfect. The hellcannon is missing a ridge, but its spikes, rivets and chains are fine.

(Its still not acceptable to have a single bubble or flaw in any product as far as I am concerned. Yes, you can return problem bits, but lets face it- you shouldn't have to. Returning or fixing miscasts robs you of time, and your time is your life. Instead of GW paying for staff to do quality control, YOU pay them YOUR money to do the job for them for free. Not on.
I would like to see GW add 'checked by DJ 375' stickers on the pack. Three strikes and quality control dude Dick Johnson looses his monthly bonus.- so endeth the rant).

Still, its a big improvement, and I have to congratulate GW on the quality of new sculpts. Festus is a particularly good example of an intricate model that holds its composition at all angles and tells a story. Hell, his nurgling alone is a character piece.
I am looking forward to converting these babies. I was tempted to whack an led in the hellcannon. :)

And of course I should mention my darling wife bought me this little slice of miniature history...



Bless her. She's a keeper!

So whats your haul like this year dear readers?

Sanity Claws

Never remember to paint something seasonal- this year I did... But time ran out! Here is a wip to send you into christmas!



Merry leadmas!

Imperial primer

So yesterday whilst christmas shopping- (Christinsanities annual reminder to atheists like me that there IS a hell and it looks a lot like a shopping center in december), I happened to pick up a bottle of Imperial Primer to give it a spin.

Its runny gesso.
Its distinct ammonia- latex smell and shrinking properties are no different from those big assed tubs of gesso you get from art stores.
Its definitely not a primer- which is a chemically different substance which acts as an adhesive between surface and paint. In fact you can rub it off with a gentle pressure and it peels like latex.

I am filing this under 'marketing polished bullshit' with GWs flash removing brush.

Give it a miss.
I am sticking to white enamel paint on rainy days. Much tougher.

Sandra Garrity Dwarf

Old school? Why yes, right this way....

Sandra Garrity Dwarf

Reaper classic female dwarf
I had an overwhelming urge to base up some really old Ral Partha skellies with old school bases referencing AD&D battlesystem Skirmish photos. Big fat 30mm square, 2mm ply.
No idea why, I guess a change is as good as a rest.
Once the skellies where done I figured I needed some old school heroes to fight them- and this reaper minis classic Dwarf sculpted by Sandra Garrity (not Julie Guthrie) was just the ticket.

Strip jar claw

Stripped eight coffee jars full of minis yesterday and can vouch that rubber gloves are very, very important. I decided to take off the glove on my right hand (as it would only be holding the scrubbing brush- riiiight?).
Insert family fortune bah-bahh sound here.
My hand is now shriveled and cracked like a mummies claw. Thats after the moisturizer.

So endeth the lesson.

Ironically one of the stripped goodies was the rare citadel night horrors giant hand- not to be confused with the creeping claw chaos familiar- (ebay sellers take note) which thanks to a huge release and recent rerelease is pretty damn common.

My hand now resembles this figure somewhat.

My plan was to end the year with my entire backlog of minis stripped, bagged and filed away in tubs. I figure I have about three hours of stripping left to complete the task but by golly gosh and by jingo even- it is going to give me some serious closure. What with my day job gobbling up all my Skulldred project time (and energy) like some vermitious knid on scooby snacks- some project closure would be great.

On a brighter note- The stripping jars gave up some lovely lead loot that I totally forgot I owned because they have spent the best part of a year lurking in black dettol.

I now have a few new doubles that I will offer up for trade come january- an aardvark beserker, night horrors ragged sheet ghost, the FF fiend and Sam Phox (the topless wizard ) to name but a few.
I was thinking its about time I made up a trades/spares page for the blog.

All in all, about five metric tonnes of lead took me all afternoon to strip and by golly jingo etc- I was knackered at the end. Still, highlights include a bunch of early c28 giants which I picked with various part combinations so I could sculpt up replacement parts (plug- these will be available january from Darkling mini store.) plus two RT Dreadnoughts!

I am really, really excited by these- I got a fat short one and a thin tall one both armed with laser guns! Pchoo pchoo!
I never owned a dreaddy- and always coveted them. I am thinking a Paul Benson inspired weathered camo job for my renegade forces and one for kill team charlie.

Anyway ladies, I have to shoot off, so pictures when I get back. In the meantime its your mission to you pop off and get yourself a few beers you have not tried from an obscure microbrewery and try painting something with your off hand.

Wanted: Dead or... Undead

Hey leadheads, I am hunting two minis for my latest warband- a skeletal headed chaos warrior and a musician (ral partha?) from John Blanches diorama.
I have been slowly building and painting both sides of this conflict for an epic Skulldred showdown- Including scenery.

God I hate sculpting mushrooms.

Bar the elusive nottingham dwarf, the two main missing characters are these...




Wait... Dammit, thats a photo of my knee. I hate this app.

These two...



Anyone have spares?

Darkling Spelltoads WIP

Hey folks, here is a quick iphone snap of my work in progress for the spelltoads, most of the way done. If you crosspost elsewhere please note they are wips and I will be posting finished, high res photos once they are done.
They still needs highlights, glazes, freehand details and eyes, plus my usual base decorations.



Left to right: Witch huntoad, Rogue toad, Zombie toad, Soldier Toad, Toadanator, Nosferatoad, Wiztoad, Tym the Enchantoad and Rollatoad.

I did these from a black base coat and black ink wash, midnight blue overbrushing up to a grey drybrush. Then a white drybrush followed by tints thinned with liquitex medium. The punchy blues come from liquitex too. Great brand.

They are hella fun to paint (but I would say that)- but they really are! I may have to break out some bullywug minis this year for a painty sesh. Perhaps Eurekas toads?

I am already brainstorming my next toad batch, but know that their existence will depend on sales of these, and their naked cousins. These toads are a pretty risky venture- about as niche as you get.
Perhaps I should run a kickstarter to handle pre-orders for a full 'Amulet' set. Think its a good idea?

Barbarian movie extravaganza

My barbarian research fest continues, as I plan to digest one bad ass (or just plain bad) brawn, boob and blade flick a night whilst slapping paint on the Copplestone Barbarians to ensure they are fully soaked in eighties barbarity.

I added Barbarian Queen II: The Empress strikes back, Amazons, Fulchi's Conquest, Hundra and Sword & Sorcerer to my movie to-watch list. Any other recommendations?

Done all the Conans, barbarians (barbarian bros), excalibur, Scorpion king, Barbarian Queen, Masters of the Universe (uhg), beast master I, deathstalker II, Red Sonja (yor ziztah iz dahying), Yor (hes the man) and Steel Dawn. Oh, Flesh and Blood kinda fits too- maybe a double bill with Excalibur.
Any other classics I must see?

I have been collecting this range for a while too- they will have to wait until I have done Skulldred though- I still need the dead guy, archer and the falconer from this pic if anyone has trades.




Hmmm. Must get my trade list photos done....