Smell that?  Smells like teen spirit.  Or plastic and superglue.  I get those confused.  More kit bashing tonight, to celebrate the fact The Block was on TV and I would rather gargle barbed wire.

 

First up, Sister Ophelia Proximity.

A sister of battle using Dark Eldar and Chaos parts only.  Because that's how we roll in the shire.  Ever listened to the lyrics of Teen Spirit and thought Kurt was just cramming words in there.  A warband made up of a mulato, an albino and a mosquito called Libido would probably fly over peoples radars I suppose.

So four more nasties, made from Skaven, Dark Eldar, ogres, a Giant, ork, daemonettes and empire bits.  I cannot find my box of imperial guard, I must have eaten it.

That happens.

That article...

John Blanche explained his modern painting style in what I suspect was a 2009 issue, possibly december.  It was plugging skaven and crimson fists, if that helps.  348-360ish.

I don't know because I removed it from the dross and put it in a scrapbook.  Jervis Johnson was replaced with JB for standard  bearer.  Here is a snapshot of what your looking for.

It is actually disappointingly vague and basic.  I pretty much summarised it last issue.  Base coat everything.  Sepia/mud mix, mud recesses then blend or drybrush up.  Fine subtle white drybrush and never use a metal higher than chain mail.  Be grimy, weather stuff and buy lots of games workshop stuff.

 

The little Talos pain engine that could

Talos pain engine.  I wanted one so much I actually went Into a Games Porksword shop and actually interacted with the staff.  Shudder.

I made it out alive.  Just.  So I am now armed with a box of nasty, gribbly pain bitz for my inquisimunda conversions.  Yay.  I feel like I need a shower, but dammit I made it!

I am now upstairs chillin' with an assam tea in the goodgames store above GW, listening to nerds nerding hard.  Ahhh, my people.

Actually, I had a pretty good kitbash session last night.  I knocked up a few more thingies to Blanchitsu.

I also had a couple of good putty sessions on my sphincter beast and ass cannon.  I hope this isn't going to be a big theme of my work.

Inquisimunda

To kick off the adventures of Delaney King, I decided to Blanchitsu the shit out of my bits box.  I had a lot of fun, and I can see a warband or three emerging from this.  First a skavenger mutant "Gruyere".

Photo courtesy of Samsung Galaxy screen engineers who forced me back onto my old, old, old, old iphone.  Because dropping a phone on lino should destroy it utterly.

I have to dust off my old camera and shoot him properly once I get more done.

I followed Johns description of his modern technique from white dwarf, first painting in all the base colours, weathering, then using washes of devlan mud mixed with gryphonne sepia, blending highlights here and there, then giving the final glaze of thin mud/sepia to give that yellowed varnished look.  I used pen to add dots, stitches, chequers and words. 'This cursed earth' on the scroll refers to a quote John used in a painting from the eighties.  Because.

I deliberately over-varnished the whole thing with layers of gloss spray, giving the model a smoother, more porcelain effect, then matting down parts with matt medium.

I used a Skaven clanrat, Dark Eldar gun and Flagellant head.  They felt used.

The green stuff was 2:1 yellow:blue with a hint of supersculpy added to remove some of the putties 'memory' quality and increase working time.  This is perfect for filling and detailing, but produces a very soft, rubbery material once dry so don't use this for structural stuff.  As this reduces stick, you will often have to dot superglue with a cocktail stick under some parts to makes sure it will stay on.

I used my old green pipe roller tools too.  Love those.

The base uses bicarb and superglue, for authentic JB baseyness.

Later alligators!

Felix Jagermeister and Gotmilk?

Eddles sent me a pic of the recently reunited heroes of some books I am unlikely to ever read as I find exclamation marks annoying.

It is kinda nice to think these models where destined to stand together painted, despite being 12,000 miles apart at one stage, in two totally different collections, both half painted, laying in a box somewhere under piles of junk no doubt.

Kings minis.  Friends reunited ain't got nothin' on me.

So how's my chick painting? 

Dnd miniatures. Fail.

Random boxes sets!  Crappy rubber!  Twenty dollars each!  Need ten mites for your scenario?  Well you sure as hell ain't gonna buy enough random boxes to get those.  Therefore you eBay them.  Therefore box sales from game stores diminish.


  They didn't learn a thing.


Hmm.  Think I might have to kickstart some styrene multipart plastic kits next year.

Sphincter beast revealed

Finally, a picture of the fabled sphincter beast miniature!  Thanks Steve!  http://eldritchepistles.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/have-you-ever-seen-sphincter-beast.html

As promised, I shall henceforth sculpt a modern one so players may finally have ass-ass-ins of their own.  It will be a great warm up to ease me back into Darkling miniatures.

 

Rare, old school, ugly as ass

D&D

I picked up the d&d starter.  Pretty close to what I would have done.  Glad to see the ampersand logo is back.
The cover is a big disappointment.   It totally misses the brilliance of the Elmore orgininal.  Elmores dragon was coming at YOU... right out of the frame.   Between you and the dragon,  a dynamic fighter... clearly your character... the spoils of gold behind.  It summed up the game, reached out to grab you.
This editions dragon droops into frame in washed out pastels... the fighter framed out... the logo apologetic in it's sizing.

Bad art director.

I picked up the prepaints too.  They are sprayed and awaiting fresh paint.  The details shallow and poses mostly weak.  Why not unpainted, snap together styrene in six colors?  Why Drizzt again?  Why not  Warduke?  Or the classic mix of base characters?  Why the oriental armor designs?

Meh.  Close but not perfect.

Felix Jaegerbombs and Antonio

The drought is broken.  I painted these up last night.  Nothing fancy, but good to get rolling again.

Felix Jaeger, C01 Fighter (Antonio, Terror of the Lichemaster)

Not dead yet.

Yes, yes, I got sick again with my weird ass condition.

But fear not- after years of confusion about said weird ass condition, I finally have an official diagnosis from a specialist, and thanks to the wonders of modern medicine and a butt load of pills (not literally, I might add- those are suppositories anyway, not pills.)  I am better than I have ever been. Seriously... I have energy now.  It's freaking cool.  I feel like I have superpowers compared to where I was.  Tis magic!


Anyway, it is going to take a little time for me to settle back into a blogging and game development routine, as I need to cram freelance jobs to make up for lost time.  Kate and I are looking for a new house, and things are probably going to pack down for that too.

I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone for the emails asking if I was well, oh and for the Four Liebster awards.  I have to look up what they are, because I am just ignorant about the interwebbything and stuff.  I am pretty sure they don't win me money, which is a shame because I do so like the stuff.  It buys lead.  And paint.  And more lead.  Can we have leadster awards?

I would like to thank Sterling Archer for keeping me out of the dangerzone.  Because that is how you get ants Lana.

Since getting my mojo handed back to me by a very nice specialist, I have done hobby stuff, but nothing exciting.  I have based up / rebased and primed a couple of hundred minis (all on 30mm bases you may like to know) and tonight I will be picking up a paintbrush for the first time in a long while.

Wish me luck!

-D

A little progress

A little progress on my current batch- two of which are shown and a quick color test for my minifig high elves.  I went with the Rodney Matthews classic purple/green combo.  I think the tunnel elves will be autumnal or green/slate grey.

I also forced myself to assemble and base up a tray load of multipart Reaper minis I have had in storage forever and fix a couple of broken minis that will go well with the current batch.  Mainly for the discipline, and a feeling of progression- plus they can all be photographed for Skulldred.  I found some nice treasure models in there so I whacked those on some bases too for the items section.

I then primed them all (and my tunnel elves) with my airbrush... which sadly broke today whilst cleaning.  The nozzle thread came off.  I swear I barely cranked the living hell out of it.  Lesson learnt.

So do you like the rough color scheme for the elves?

Barbarian warband

Oh just found this on my phoney thingie.  My barbarian warband work in progress.  I think there is butter on my lens.  Very romantic.

I popped by the Garema place game store in Canberra today and picked up a pack of warmahorde skorne girlie figures in dresses with drum hats that took my fancy.  I plan to beat the fancy out of them with some converty type skillage.  Does it annoy people I don't give a crapette about minis official names?  All part of my evil plan.

So as you can see the barbarians are at various stages of paintyness.  I am planning to push them along with my dwarfs in a wantom baccinnalia of flesh painting- then once varnished on to my high and tunnel elves.

Windex is hassle free

Only had a little time so whacked on some base colors on the dwarf warband- plus a few loose figures in need of similar colors.
  The basecoating process is far less painful to me now I have forsaken water in favor of windex.

Windex you say?

Yes.  Windex.  As in My Big Fat Greek Wedding Windex.

Windex dilutes paint without destroying surface adhesion and evaporates quickly- so it sticks to your model in a thin layer, then dries.   Therefore you can apply several thin coats in quick succession.  The first bit of paint is literally dry by the time you finish coloring in the last bit.  Windex allows the paint to flow off the brush easily, and is really cheap.  Windex can also reinvigorate drying acrylics.  Give your wet palette a windex spritz under your baking paper and marvel how it doesn't go moldy.  Yep.  You heard it here first kiddies.

The blue tint evaporates leaving your colors exactly as you mixed them.  Bless it.  However- if you want to spend money, however, buy vallejo airbrush medium.  It is basically windex without the blue in it. Don't believe me?  Give it a sniff.

Windex has been used as a thinner in airbrush art for donkey's years.  Though I would definitely wear a gas mask.  Are you my mommy?

I layed out a quick pass of black, leather brown, vermin brown and flesh.  But now I must sleep.  Good night, whatever you are.

Windex.

New warbands: Hassledwarfs

New warband #2.  A lovely batch of dwarfs from Hasslefree minis.  As with the elves I went with washers.  They certainly look a lot better on the smaller base, and feel sturdy.

I think I may field them as snow white and the seven dwarfs.  I have a hasslefree Kaylee who would make a good Snow White and the sleeping Beauty from Reaper.

I am going to give each dwarf a strong, cartoony theme color.  Great figs!

New warbands 1: Aurelo Rococco Elves

New Warband!

First of my minifigs Aureola Rococco collection (best.  name.  ever.) is some elves.
Based on (to put it politely) Rodney Matthews art, this range is pure Skulldred.  Old school, quirky, kookie and fun.  I have the riders and tunnel elves too.  They where at the bottom of my stripping jar, and I was terrified of breaking them!

The Aureola Rococco collection is the best minifigs produced in my umberhulk opinion.  Yep.  Glad I told you, ain't ya?  Made your night reading this didn't it?  Sigh.  Blogging is a weird, narcissistic thing.

Anyway, Rodney used one color trick throughout his career- pick a color- pick its complementary color, desaturate them so they don't clash... and then go apeshit.  Purple and green being my fave Rodders combo.  Lo... these minis shall be so.

Rodney allegedy denounced rpgs as satanic,  so there where never any official Rodney Matthews figures- though Jes Goodwin constantly references his work.  They both rocketh mine munda dawg.

Aaaaaanyway- new warband!

I based them on washers.  Yes I did.

Some dick at google

Wondering why your big photos look bad after uploading them lately?

  Some dickwad a google decided that applying a filter to everyones photo uploads automatically wasn't just the most inconvenient, idiotic and brand damaging idea ever.  Fortunately you can turn it off in your google plus settings.  You still have to reupload your damaged images.

Think it's the same moron forcing google. Plus down youtubers throats?  Lets get out the pitchforks and torches!

Because rebasing is relaxing

Had trouble sleeping so popped off the old bases on my chaos warriors and slipped on some 30mm multibases.  Here is a snap of one of the two tubs!
No progress tonight... catching up on sleep.  Zzzzz.

Boar me

Hi folks- can anyone ID the boar that Aly Morrison used in this conversion.   And do you have one?

Some (nearly) finished stuff

Lots of minis this blog- not one completely done,  but very close.  My camera phone does not do a good job in low light- I must dig out the digital cam that I used at the start of the blog.

Enjoy!

Coming along nicely

A quick scale test before painting and surfacing begins.

My skulldred themed dice pillars!

The chaos warrior from my ' John Blanche's undead assault diorama' inspired project surveys the land.  He agrees.  More shrooms needed!

Emerald dwarfs survey the building of the skull doored castle.  She-he-man likes skull faced castles... they give her a +3 to her combat dice!

Bridge by Eureka- Dnd repaint model crossing.