Gun Mage Captain Adept

I decided to paint my Gun Mage Captain as a solo for my club's journeyman league.  Was supposed to be a quick diversion from finishing an Ironclad... ended up taking a week to finish.  But I'm happy with the result.  

I decided to leave his left hand bare, despite its hugeness compared to the right.  A glove might have looked better, but then he would have been wearing only one glove, which would have been weird in another way.

He got a nice elevated base because the sculpt is 28mm, which is short when compared to warmachine's standard 30mm heroic scale.  I'll be putting my Black 13th on similar tall bases as they have the same problem.

Cygnar test model

After far too long a process, I've finished my first Cygnar model.  He isn't even an actual mini for the faction, being a Magus Damien Sperling (AKA: pre-asshole Magnus the Traitor) from the IKRPG minis range.

I'll be using him as a Journeyman though, as its still a nice mini.  I'm pretty happy with the colour scheme, though I think it needs deeper shading.  This model also has no heraldry, which I'm planning to paint in burnt orange on models which have it.

Cygnar, and lots of it

We now return to our irregularly scheduled posting.

My Cygnar arrived!  However, I was stuck in a 100% playthough of Borderlands 2, so that took a while.  I also did a fair amount of work on my minis but made no posts.  Lets fix that.

The first unit I worked on was my Sword Knights.  The ones I've been borrowing up until now have broken easily due to no pinning, so I pinned everything.  This was a lot of work, as almost every model had flash lumped in their shoulder joints which had to be chiseled out.  However, I finally finished them all.

The unit and UA.  One trooper is missing currently, as I got an extra officer in my unit box.  Privateer has shipped a replacement already.  A couple of the models will need some green stuff fixes, particularly shields which I drilled all the way through by mistake.

The only conversion work I did on the models was replacing the standard bearer's flagpole with a steel wire rod.  Brass would have been easier to work, but steel is what I have.

Rats!

Time to paint Bones!  I read up on peoples' experiences with them, and gave some rats a wash after cleaning the (very few) mold lines and flashing off them.  I decided to see how various paint mixtures went onto the plastic, as well.

The leftmost model had Undercoat Black with a drop of with alcohol thinners, the middle was thinned with water, and the right was paint straight from the bottle.  Well, from the bottle, onto the palette, onto the model, but close enough.  Overall I like the way that thinned paint goes over the plastic; it doesn't cover everything perfectly on the first coat, but it does leave all the details clear.

I followed up by mixing a little more thinned black and doing another layer over all of them.  This brought them all up to the same level.  Some mixed pink went onto the noses, ears and tails to give them a few details.

I shall call them blackie, blackie and blackie.

I decided to try do the fur and flagstones using my nemesis in the world of painting techniques: drybrushing.

I always manage to leave too much paint on the brush, and get a thick layer of paint on the details I want to highlight.  I had bought a flat synthetic brush recently though, which I was willing to abuse rather more than usual.  I took it slow, putting a mixed grey onto the flagstones, and a dark brown, followed by a lighter highlight of straight Calthan Brown on the fur.  I slopped too much grey onto the base of the middle rat, but everything else wasn't too awful.

A dab of magical Devlan Mud wash onto the bases to give them a bit of grime, and I called it a day.  It didn't hurt that it helped bring out the flagstones again after I'd painted between the cracks.

Is certainly isn't the prettiest of paint jobs, but they are rats.  Anything south of 10hp isn't going to be around for long enough for people to admire it.  I also took the last photo way too close, I need to look into trying to get better at taking pictures of my minis.

First Bones done!  They are just as easy to paint as advertised.  I admit that the detail isn't the best, but they certainly are worth the money, for models like these.  Looking at some of the other models, I think that the larger the mini the better detail comes out, but I shall see when I get there.  Next up, painting the other 9 of these little ratty bastards.

The fat loots

They're heeeeeeeeeeeere!

After many, many months of waiting, my Reaper Bones have been delivered.  Reaper ran this kickstarter last year, for their new Bones line- miniatures cast in polyvinyl plastic, rather than pewter or resin.  The base pledge reward grew as their total did, and eventually they almost made 3.5 million dollars.  This translated into quite a lot of miniatures.

They have been shipping the rewards for months, but finally I got mine.  South Africa seems to have been the last in the list for overseas shipping.  In any case, the haul:

There they are.  257 models, all told; I got the ones not in the top box as add-ons.  They are Cthulhu, Nethylmaul (a dragolich), Kaladrax (another dracolich), Wyrmgear the steampunk robot dragon, Here be dragons, the Pathfinder Red Dragon, an extra set of swamp things and the deep dwellers.

I've got my work cut out for me with painting them all!  I'll be taking them slowly, but I want to get though them..I'll get lots of practice on that many minis.  I still have another month before I'll be starting to paint my Cygnar, so I can get started on these!

It begins, part the end

On went some Chainmail paint.  I tried to mix it with thinners, but it did very odd things.  Beautiful, swirling, glittering things.  Luckily it went onto the model well, though.  I drybrushed the helmet, neck coif and sword, and painted the arm plates.  I also mixed some brown and black into a wash-type thing and went over the boots and scabbard, which made them look much better.

The arms look pretty glaring, but I'll fix that now.  The goblin paint box came with Devlan Mud wash, probably far better than my "drip some stuff in a palette and put thinners in it" wash.  That went over most of the mode, which made the arms look better, fixed the undershirt and pants and defined the face and sword.

Before that I'd put on some yellow for details, and tried to freehand the star on the helmet on the shield as well.  That didn't go so well.

Knight of the blobby star!

I cleaned it up with red again.  At this point I feel it is pretty much done.  All in all, better than I expected, and a nice learning experience with washes and thinning paints.  I'll paint the base and seal it once I get some matt sealant spray.  I could add detail from here, highlighting the armour and painting the sword hilt gold, but for a model like this I think there is an upper limit of useful detail, for middling painters, at least.  It looks decent, which is enough for this one.

Finished model:

It begins, part the second

I continued my attempt at slapping paint on a model.  Then I fiddled a bit with my phone, and took some pictures of it.

As it turns out, my lighting was weird in the second picture, the knight having somehow gained neon red armour.  On the other hand I put up a black backing, though that might be part of the issue.  Well, all part of the practice I suppose.

Painting the face went better and worse than expected; the eyes are clear, but I managed to eradicate any other shading around the edges and lines.

The pants and undershirt I painted in two layers of very thinned light bone paint.  It seemed to mostly gather in the cracks, which is the effect I want to get with a later wash, but its at least a new discovery.  Not much left to do, I think, though I shall add more layers on the red and brown.