More boys is arrived ta join da crew!

So, UPS finally decided it was about time they delivered my starter box and also the Blitzer! I have to try really really really hard to resist the urge to start working on these guys instead of finishing the Mauler off. I've always had problems finishing off models, especially when I get new toys...I just want to start playing around with the new stuff. But I have to keep my eye on the prize...and that prize is a pissed off rampaging Mauler that's fully painted right now.

With that said, I've done some more work on the Mauler as time permitted.

As you can see from this pic, I cleaned up his stomach area a bit more, with some advice on blending from the Privateer forums (specifically Malveaux). It's still not as smooth as I'd like (dang perfectionism), but it's getting better, I think.

Also, I started and finished the top side of his right hand, and also started his right forearm and bicep. Additionaly, you can see in this pic, I added the base coat to a lot of his upper back, and though you can't see it here, his lower back is basecoated too. I'm really hoping to have the bulk of this bad boy done by the end of next week. I'd say the end of this week, except I have a ton of work to do by Monday for real-life stuff. Darn real life, always gettin in the way.

The last bit of work I did was to start his upper left arm and to finish off the bottom of his left hand, which turned out to be a HUGE pain.

For some reason I could not figure out how to highlight and shade his left hand. Everything I did seemed to come out looking horrible. Eventually, after about an hour and a half of work, I reached something passable and called it quits on that part. I don't have any pics of it, but suffice to say, it's not really picture worthy yet.

I should have probably stopped painting then too, but I forced myself to keep going on his upper arm. BIG MISTAKE. When you get the feeling you should stop or are tired, you should listen to your body.

I was so tired that I horribly messed up his upper arm, as can be seen in the picture...it's all blotchy, messy, and generally ugly looking. It's as if he's suffering from some horrible degenerative troll skin disease or trollish leprosy!

And the worst part was I couldn't really tell because I was so tired, I thought that it was coming out ok. But after stopping and taking a look later that night, and now later looking at these pics, I can see that it was a pretty shoddy job. As it is now, I may have to start over again on his upper left arm.

So I hope people can learn from my mistake, it's not worth it usually to keep going when you're tired. Take a break and come back to it later, else you might have to spend even more time fixing your mess-ups!

Anyway, I'm rested up now, and will try to do some more work on this guy later tonight for an hour or two. See you next time!

Painting the Mauler...begin!

Ok, so I fixed the Mauler's broken toof, and have started painting him. Here's a pic of him with primer only. He's looking, uh, very black. Nice even coat though from the GW Black primer. While quite pricey (~$10 per can) I find that the GW primer really does go on very smoothly and doesn't cover up any of the details while having a very deep black color. Much better than the black primer I would get from other brands.


On with the painting. I've never painted blue skin before (starting to see a trend here on this blog? :) ), so I had to go through some experimentation, as you can see from the various different patchy areas on other body parts. Also, like most people out there, I really don't have any clue how to blend well. So these Trollbloods will be my first real attempt to learn some blending. Hopefully they don't come out looking like garbage.

I started with the hand and arm since those seem to have the most defined ridges and I figured it might help me with what I need to highlight and what needs to be shaded (I'm also terrible at lighting...guess it's why I didn't go to art school and instead became an engineer).

I started with a basecoat of GW Regal Blue (the very dark blue) and worked myself up through light watery coats of Enchanted Blue, Electric Blue, and then Space Wolf Grey.

I think that the result is ok, and will probably go back and clean up the edges and also try a tiny bit of ink in the crevices to deepen the color just a tad.

The blending though still isn't very smooth and I wish I could make it smoother, so hopefully as I go through the rest of the model, I'll get better at it and can come back to the earlier parts like this hand and touch it up.

Having tackled the hand and forearm, I decided to attempt his stomach. Same color steps as before, except instead of waiting for each watery coat to dry before applying the next, this time I tried blending while the paint was still wet.

This was a pretty stressful exercise as I had to move really fast and keep adding lighter and lighter shades while the paint was still wet, and normally I'm a pretty slow painter.





The good thing about doing this though was that I think it actually became easier to make a smoother looking blend.

The bad thing is, as can be seen in this pic, is that it was really hard to tell how strong of a blue each section was while it was wet, and while I was frantically trying to add more shades.

Toward the end, I paniced because I thought I was seeing "rings" of blue and so I added a ton of Space Wolf Grey and Skull White all over the stomach.

The result is kinda what you see here, where there's a lot of white, and then it makes a pretty jagged transition to blue.





This is a shot of the side of the stomach, where in the upper left corner you can see a couple more color steps between the transitions.

I think this is closer to what I would like to see on it, but I want to have a smoother set of steps. I'm going to go back to it today and see if I can smooth this out some

One thing I'm really liking about this blog is that I can see all my mistakes magnified in hi-def when I go to post these pics up.

Below is a final pic of the work done so far from the front. Here I guess the stomach doesn't look too bad and would just need a bit of touchup. Maybe a bit more blue around the upper right edges.

Ok, back to the work at hand. I'm going to try to finish up the underside of the left arm, touch up the upper side (the thumb and sides of the fingers), and touch up the stomach today. Also, if I still have time before 24 comes on, maybe I'll start the right arm too.

Trollbloods Update

Bases done, priming underway, pics later.

In other news, my Starter Box and Dire Troll Blitzer are lost somewhere in the midwest according to UPS :(

EDIT: TRAGEDY! Well sort of. Apparently the solvents in the spray paint eats into greenstuff/superglue and so the tusks on the Dire Troll fell off!! I told him to cutback on his candy consumption, but nooo....

Ah well, hopefully I can fix it later today after the primer is dry.

Bah, stupid rain...

It's been raining all day today...so no chance to primer anything cause there's too much moisture in the air outside...I'll have to wait till it dries out more...hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to work on them some more.

In other news, my Trollbloods starter box and dire troll blitzer is on it's way from thewarstore.com and should be here, I hope, end of this week or early next week.

Menoth Experimental Color Scheme

Here are a couple of pics of my work-in-progress/experimentation with a bone/purple color scheme for my Menoth warband. This is pretty much the first time I have ever tried painting bone as well as purple. Most of my other painting experience has been with orcs and so a lot of greens, browns, and metals.

I think I like the color combination, but I need to touch up the purple areas, as well as make some of the bone areas more brown. I was being very cautious with the bone color since I didn't want it to look too strong, but I think I ended up going too far the other direction, and now it's too light and lacking that contrast needed to make it really look good.






This is also my first attempt at sculpting bases out of greenstuff. Disregard the brown color...just a basecoat color for now to see how it looks. By the way, I did the sculpting with no sculpting tools (don't have any yet...). I just used a plastic knife, my x-acto knife, and my fingers. Given that, I think it came out ok, but could definitely use some improvement, and I think a lot of the problems I had were that I didn't have the right tools for the job.

This guy will have to take a back seat though while I work on my Trollbloods warband. Purification by holy fire will have to wait until the Trolls are ready for bashin'.

Doomshaper and Dire Troll Mauler Assembly

So I finally finished working on assembling Doomshaper and the Dire Troll Mauler. Doomshaper fit together pretty well and so didn't need very much greenstuff work. Just a little around the arm and hand joints did the trick.

Unfortunately, the Dire Troll Mauler didn't fit together well at all and required a ton of greenstuff to fill in the gaps. It looks pretty bad in the pics, but I'm pretty sure with some paint over it, it will look fairly smooth.

I also tried my hand at a very very small amount of sculpting (extending the thorns on his back, third pic) and I think it came out ok so I might extend the thorns for the rest of the mohawk too. We'll see how it goes.

Lastly I started on the bases for these guys and will post them up tomorrow when I get better shots of them...the camera didn't like the sand and couldn't focus for some reason.

Starting the Trollblood Warband

I'll be using this blog to chart the progress of my Hordes warband for the Hordes tabletop miniatures wargame, along with any other mini wargame projects I have going like my 40k Tau, and also my Fantasy Orcs and Goblins and Tomb Kings. I'll be posting regular updates as I build each model, paint, and post battle reports too.

So, without further ado, my new Trollblood Warband list:

Doomshaper
^Dire Troll Mauler
^Dire Troll Blitzer
^Troll Axer
^Troll Impaler
Fell Caller
Kriel Stone Bearer (min. squad)

Total: 499pts.

I really wanted to try a list that was beast heavy, and I love the models for the Blitzer and the Mauler. Unfortunately, the model count for this list is pretty low, and I think that it may have some problems against infantry heavy hordes, especially in Warmachine cross-over games. But it should be fun, and I'd rather have an army whose models I like rather than one built purely for game min/maxing. A special shout out to Malveaux on the Privateer Press Forums, who has been a great help in deciding this final list! Thanks!

I currently have the Dire Troll Mauler and Doomshaper, with the warband box and the Blitzer on the way. Pics coming soon!