the trouble with stunties

Dear GW,
Please print a copy of 'the trouble with stunties', read it, learn it, love it and keep it under your pillow.
Yours,
-Craig

Warriors Batch #2

Last 2 nights work:

About 2 hours a night.

Two dipped Dwarfs, and eight more with 3 colours - tin bitz, skin and beards (well, I have two more beards to go).

I've been trying some different colours, to compare the new gw paints with the old. I'm a lazy painter, I just want them to be the same...
Now, the two dwarfs in the front have just been dipped, so it's hard to see the differences in colour while they're so glossy.

Left Dwarf v Right Dwarf:

Ratskin flesh (left), which is the new version of dwarf flesh (right) but is actually a good deal more tan coloured. :(
Auric armour gold (left) which is the new version of burnished gold, and seems pretty much the same, with the same low pigment level and inability to cover (read: requires 3 coats to look any good).

One of the things I'm going to try and do is vary the painting scheme somewhat. From afar these dwarfs will look like approximate copies of each other, but up close I'm going to change up helmet, horn, axe haft decoration colours using different colours from the same scheme.

Get your beard on:

I'm also going to try and vary the beard shades just a smidge. I used Cassandra Yellow shade on the left dwarf above, which lightened it up a lot. Unfortunately army builder dark tone deepended it again, and it looks almost the same as the dwarf on the right.

Next time I'll try much more of the Cassandra Yellow (I only used a touch the first time) and try and hit some highlights with it which will show through the dip. I know, it's a shade and is supposed to run into the lower areas, but we'll see.

I can also try the soft-tone dip on the beard instead, which gives a much browner shade to the models.

All quiet on the Martian Front

Spotted All quiet on the Martian Front on Hobby Horse.
I grew up on Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, and absolutely loved the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen war of the worlds story line. I'll be keeping an eye out for what's on offer when their kickstarter goes live. Very tempted.

ratskin flesh base vs old dwarf flesh

Ratskin flesh base vs Dwarf flesh. GW conversion chart says These are close. I'd rather they were closer. That is all.

Update: brown rose from Vallejo might be a better match. I haven't tried it though.

Warrior Painting #2

My first painted banner!

After dipping last night, I've applied matt varnish and a gloss varnish to the helmet and axe gems. Looking pretty tasty if I do say so myself!

The warrior with the brown base on the end is a tester for green grass & snow style base, I think that's what I'll be going with except that I'll keep the bases black underneath. I also need to grass & snow up the movement tray.

I'm loving the colours of the shields, and the musicians horn. I need to be a little tidier with some of those shields on the next batch.

These chaps took far too long to paint, I definitely need to figure out how to get my time down with them. Be less neat on the rear ranks? More neat in the front? Maybe, but if I'm spending the time I like to do a half decent job (relative to my ability that is).

warrior painting

It's been a while since I've done anything warhammer related, and last weekend I got my paint on big time. 

Spent some more time yesterday on them, finishing off two more warriors and the musician and banner. The musician and banner took a good deal of time more than the warriors - a chunk more detail on each.

I'm really happy with them. I was going for a slightly darker orange on the banner than I used on the beards. It's not as different as I'd hoped, but any darker and it just looked brown. I think the banners orange goes well with burnished gold. Also, it was my first freehand attempt. Not too bad eh!

Now I just have to matt varnish then and base them up properly.