Just a lazy dog dangling Sunday evening....

Some more work on the Arbite....namely finishing up the reds and shanding his right arm and left leg.

Oh, and a little preview of something that I'm painting up for my wife....a Blood Angel Assault Sgt.

More Adeptus Arbite progress....

Here are some more in progress shots...although getting pretty close to the end. I won't be doing any sort of rust or weathering effects.... this is a commission piece and the "commissioner" prefers the old school Mike McVey/Tim Prow GW style from the 90s...a style I love quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love to do the realistic styled rust and decay on my models, but after a while it gets old and everyone and their mom is doing it now.

Again, the base color for the yellow areas was made by mixing some Mecharius Orange with Iyanden Darksun. From there I added small amounts of Iyanden Darksun and Bleached Bone. The highlight is pure Bleached Bone but very thinned down. The Heavy Bolter was basecoated with pure Mechanicus Red and was then built up with Blood Red. During the layering of the Red I glazed it with Dark Burnt Umber from Liquitex (it's loaded with pigment and you can thin it way down without seeing pigment grains). I finally edged the Storm Bolter with Apple Barrel Red...and I added a tiny bit of Gehenna Orange from the Warzone paint lines (not from any set in particular...this was when they just had the two giant sets of paint). The pants were basecoated with Adeptus Battlegrey mixed with Chaos Black. I then did a heavy wash of Chaos Black in the recesses of the pants...I was going for a "washed out" black for the cloth rather than full on black. Why? With all that black armor, it just needed something to make it stand out as cloth rather than Ceramite.

My only real "professional" mini painting gigs....

These are some of the ones I was commissioned by the manufacturer to paint up. I think I did these back in 2000 for Holistic Design's Noble Armada space miniature game. Fun job that allowed me to paint little non humanoid things for once.

Progress Report

Okay...if that first blast of profanity didn't chase you off then I invite you to check out some in progress shots of my two main projects at the moment.

This handsome bastard to the left here is the Arbite I've been working on for the last couple of days (technically, about two weeks but since I have only a couple hours a night to paint...it's only been a few days). I've been going in and lining out the highlights on the black plates and I'll begin shading the cloth portions of his uniform shortly.

I also went back in and did a light glaze of Saffron Sunset to tone back the edges of pure Bleached Bone. I am not a fan of really jarring highlights or "extreme highlighting". I try to go for a warm glow type look to objects rather than the HERE IS MY HIGHLIGHT DAMMIT. One of the reasons I like Steve Dean's work so much.

The next guy up is Brains from Impact Miniatures...see keeping to my resolutions. I went with my classic zombie approach....Reaper's Undead Flesh Triad along with a strong Red somewhere on the model. Probably my love of the Vampire Counts creeping out there, but Red looks so good next to the Undead Flesh Triad. The eyes are Necrotite Green mixed with a little white to shade them up to glowing bright green. I then glazed the areas around the eyes with Necrotite Green to get the glow effect. His pants are Adeptus Battle Grey which I haven't even begun to shade yet...but hopefully I'll do that today.

And yes, he is on a teeny little base.

I'm probably going to add him to my Undead Team Roster as just a plain zombie...I really don't feel like trying to come up with a homebrew rule about undead halflings...or undead treemen. Just going the simple proxy route. But with these guys, my pool of undead players just hit about 40ish...and only one painted and one halfway painted....long way to go.

And in other news:
Tim defeated the Snowpocalypse with a box of Irish Whiskey.

The 2011 big project...D&D arsenal v.1

As part of my "Shit or get off the pot" initiative for 2011, I'd like to introduce my big personal project...D&D arsenal v1. It is the first part of what I hope grows into a large collection of PCs, NPCs, Monsters, and such for playing D&D.

Why a large collection for D&D? Well, for starters I'd like to get back into playing some every now and then. The other is I have always been envious of the collections of people like the Perry Brothers (saw it in an issue of Wargames Illustrated) and a ton of other people in the hobby.

So this is my starting point on a large collection...one that will hopefully span the decades to come and require it's own room for storage alone.

Adeptus Arbite...Day 2ish

Day 2 I guess....or at least I figure I've been working on it to qualify as the second day on it. I painted the base and mounted the Arbite on it.

The concrete color was achieved using Ceramcoat Quaker Gray and adding a little black to it. From there, it's just a simple matter of drybrushing and glazing with greens and browns.

I'll probably end up using some snow flock sparingly on the base as I'm sort of using the setting from a Caiphus Cain book as the inspiration for the base. In that story, it was a vast urban setting that had just entered into the winter cycle. I guess I could also even say it was the city from the Blood Pact novel as well...both had a sort of snowy urban landscape in it.

Hope to get back on this guy this weekend...I have to layout a book for a freelance gig tonight and it kinda ate into the time I had to work on this guy.

A quick note...smart phones are great for in progress shots for blogs. I just wish I had photoshop on my PC so I could color correct them....and its a hassle to run into the next room and just use the Mac for just that.

Day...1.75 I guess....

Progress thus far on the arbite's base. Plasticard, Putty, and Patience are the materials used...okay, there is some of my gravel mix on there too.

Once the epoxy putty hardens, I'll sand it smooth and hopefully the end product is a sidewalk section with a curb edging out some sort of planter in an Imperial City square...or something.

I'll probably add some spots of gravel on the pavers to give it a more "urban battle" look.