Over the last week I have been thinking a lot about where I am going to go with this commission service that I have. I am enjoying the commission work, the new models, the money, the challenge, but I am having a hard time keeping up I think. I am also experiencing the urge to paint on my own models, including some models that I want to take with me to Games Day to enter into the Golden Daemon competition. Well that is all neither here nor there. I have commissions to finish and these decisions are better left for another time.
Anyhow I have made some excellent progress on the Thunderhead. I have really enjoyed painting this model, the glow, the metallics, the blues, everything is just a joy. I am writing a tutorial for my metallics as well as a tutorial for the electric blue glow that I am becoming so found of. Here for your viewing pleasure are the finished shots of the Thunderhead’s body:
Cygnar Thunderhead
Cygnar Thunderhead
As I said above I am thinking about taking a few models and entering them into Golden Daemon in Chicago this year. A few of those are models I am going to be doing for my Dad to include in his Lizardmen army, but one of my own pieces I plan on taking is Dante. So I did a little work on him tonight as a bit of a break from the Thunderhead. I have just been staring at that model for too long and I need to take a break to get fresh eyes. Anyway, got a bunch of work done on the backpack tonight:
Dante
Anyhow I have been making good progress on things and I just hope that that progress continues to snowball. Thanks for following along friends, whether it be here, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Heresy, or on Miniwargaming.
As always I will sign off by saying….. More when I have it.
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Well over the last couple of weeks since my last post I have been working furiously on getting my Cygnar commission really rolling. I have been so busy with these guys that I haven’t had any time to work on my own projects and I can feel their eyes boring into me, wondering why they have been so neglected. Well that aside I managed to finish up the Storm Gunners and made a fantastic start on the Thunderhead, a piece that I am overjoyed to be working on. Here are some teaser shots of the Storm Gunners, more photos can be found over in the Gallery Section, and the WIP of the Thunder head:
Cygnar Storm Gunners
Cygnar Thunderhead
The only other thing that I really have to mention on the Commission side of things is that I am still waiting for that Pre-Vampire Counts empire stuff that is supposed to be coming from the land down under. The client shipped his stuff on the 25th of January and I thought that I would have seen it by now, but asking around I have found that it can take a month to a month and a half for things to show up stateside from Australia. Anyhow, as soon as that stuff comes in I will update you all on that.
On a personal side of things, I am taking part in a Warhammer Fantasy tournament league that is taking part over three states Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. The tournament spans over the next 11 weeks and in my division I have 5 other opponents. Well I played my first game against my first opponent, who played Dark Elves, and I got my ass kicked to put it bluntly. I had a wonderful time and my opponent was a fantastic guy, but all the same I got stomped into the ground. But all in all I entered the tourney to get more experience with Fantasy Battles and to that end it has been a successful experience. My Dwarfs are gearing up for the next game, this time against the new Vampire Counts, so I will let you all know how that game goes once it is over.
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Well all I am back about a month later to bring a progress report. I have had a hugely busy month of it with commissions, competition pieces, and the odd personal project here and there. I have also been fighting a wicked head cold and a stomach bug at one point over the course of the month so needless to say it has been a fight to keep my motivation up. Most nights I have just wanted to go to bed after getting my kids down for the night, but I am happy to say that I am definitely feeling better and things are looking up for the next couple of weeks. I will start things off with an update on my current commission.
So up first I will let you know that I finished up the Stormsmith Storm Tower. I really had a great time with this unit. The textures and details on these minis was a lot of fun, and the electric blue glow was something that I had really been looking forward to. Here they are:
Stormsmith Storm Tower Group
Oddly enough this unit prompted the commissioner to get with me and add a few more pieces to the current commission, the wonderfully detailed Thunderhead Warjack, which is my favorite model of the Cygnar range. That should be showing up in the next week or two along with another piece or two. I also got to work on the Stormblade Stormgunners and I have made quite a lot of progress on them as well:
Stormblade Stormgunners
I have a lot of work to do on them but I think that the armor is going to be bitching when I get it done. Now that I am finally feeling better I am really hoping to make some good progress.
Finally on the commission front I got word from my other commissioner that he has shipped the models but since they are coming from Australia, I believe, it will take a bit for them to show up. However I am still really looking forward to getting started on that one.
On the personal projects front I have been participating in quite a few Death Matches over on Miniwargaming. First and foremost the judging for the King of the Hill, invite only DM, has concluded and I am pleased to say that I placed second with my Vlad. There are definitely some things that I would do different on him, but overall I am quite pleased with the placing based on the competition. I created a new Miscellaneous Gallery where you can find shots of him, but here is a front side teaser:
Dark Vlad Front
I scored a Primus Death Model from Enigma Miniatures, the same company that Vald is from, and though some others had problems with the cast I really liked him. I am looking forward to getting my hands on him. I also finished up a Marine model, this time I was taken with the prospect of finishing Sgt. Vestus for my Angels of Mourning Tac Squad, so I did.
Sergeant Vestus Front
He is going in the January general Death Match and I am hoping to make a good showing. If you want to vote, head on over to Miniwargaming, link to their site is over on the right. Working on him, and some comments on Heresy, prompted me to get my Dante out and get some work done on him. While I was doing that I got to work on the DM entry that I will be working on in February. Here they are:
Dante
Sanguinor WIP
As always more photos and thoughts and comments are in my Plogs and more finished photos are in the Galleries. I will be pushing on with the Stormblades over the next couple of nights so hopefully I will be posting some progress on them soon.
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Well all It has been well over a month since I have updated you all with a post. I have however been working steadily to update my project logs and I think that as of today I am finally up to date with them.
The holiday season was just nutsoid for me and that equated into lots of painting but not a lot of time for website updating. I had sugar high kids, presents, food, more hyper children, more food, crazy family, more food…. well you get the idea. So instead of boring you all with the ins and outs of my personal life over the last 6 weeks, I will tell you what I have been up to on the hobby front.
Starting out I finished the thunderer unit that I was working on for the November edition of the Heresy Painting Challenge. I am most pleased with this since it means that I only have 8 more Thunderers to do before I have a completely painted 2000 point army. That is something that I have never achieved in all my years of painting and I wanted to do that with the Heresy Challenge.
Thunderers
Thunderers
I am thinking that they turned out really nicely and I am really pleased with how the gun stocks came out on these guys. To continue on the Dwarf front, found that I wasn’t able to find enough time to finish the second half of the unit for the December Challenge, but I did finish up a Dwarf Thane with a great weapon:
Thane Ulrich
He really turned out nicely and the simple detailed sculpt of the model really stands out. I was able to experiment with a few things on him, like the arm hair, and in the end he was a great model to paint. His completion saw me go 12/12 in the challenge and I have already gotten my nice shiny profile medal from Heresy. The challenge was a lot of fun and really pushed me to get things done and I am hoping to take part in the challenged this year that is potentially starting in March. I don’t know if I am going to be able to or not with all the commission work that I have right now, but I am going to try.
Final few things in the realms of my personal painting projects: I added in the tutorial on how I made the Herald of Nurgle on the Palanquin for anyone who is interested. I had to re-create it, but I wanted to get that up on here because it is still waiting for Mod approval over on Heresy. I am not sure what the hold up is, but it has been almost 2 months since I submitted it and they still haven’t approved it……. <grumble>
Anyhow I finally finished up my Dark Vlad for the King of the Hill Death Match over on Miniwargaming. I have photos that I am still doing some editing on, but in deference to the “no WIP” shots rule for the DM I will refrain from posting them here until I finally submit my final photos to the Mod in charge of the show over there. Once the judging has taken place and the winner announced I will put some photos of him up over here as well. Along the same lines it appears that I was volunteered to take part in the January Painting Deathmatch as well for a single PA Space Marine. It seems that I am somthing of the reigning champion in that type of DM and everyone is trying to unseat me. Anyhow I will be working on finishing up that Marine tonight before I get back to the Warmachine Commission.
Speaking of that commission I finally finished up the Highshield unit that I had been struggling with for so long. My journey with this unit can be found over in the project log, and more detailed photos can be found over in the Gallery, but here is a small shot of the unit as a whole:
Highshield Handgunners
These guys proved very difficult for me, something I go into more detail on in the log, but I am really happy in the end who they came out. Very rugged and functional. I am hoping I hear back from the client soon to see what he thinks of them.
I started in on the Stormsmith Storm Tower and got a couple of layers done on those guys, as well as adding layers to the Stormblade Storm Infantry guys and the Storm strider:
On another commission note I retained another commission, this time for some Empire stuff for a guy over on Heresy. His army is based off of a Pre-Vampire Counts Sylvania family and he has asked me to take care of some of the more unique items in the army. I will give you a full list with descriptions as soon as I have everything in hand and ready to go.
I think I have made damn good progress on things, for one that paints as slowly as I do, but I am looking forward to the new commission, and hopefully a few more wonderful personal projects.
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First and foremost I want to wish all of you out there a happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all had a wonderful day full of good food and family. We had a great dinner and I ate myself into an hour long nap in front of the television. However, before we journeyed over to Grandma’s house, I had an opportunity to sit down and get some painting done so I thought that I would share that as well.
I have been working diligently on those Thunderers as the deadline for those pieces draws near and I have finished all of the prep work for the High Shields that I will be starting shortly after I finish these Dwarfs. They got their final bath to get all the simple green off of them today, and will be under the primer can tomorrow, weather permitting. Here are some photos of the Thunderers as always progress pics can be found over in their project log.
Catch you all later and happy shopping tomorrow!
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Well all it has been almost a week and a half since I last made a post here on the blog, but tonight all that changes. I have been super busy over the last 10 days, buying, building, planning, and painting I am having a hard time deciding where to begin. In deference to my client I will start the proceedings by talking about his stuff first.
As you all know I recently took on a rather large Warmachine/Hordes commission with a variety of pieces from the Warmachine Cygnar, Warmachine Mercenaries, and Hordes Minions lines, and in no particular order I have just started knocking out those pieces and to be honest things are going really well. I have finished three of the solos now with Lanyssa Ryssyl and the Stone Keeper joining Anastasia di Bray in the finished pile.
Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress
The Stone Keeper
Both of these pieces were an absolute joy to paint and each provided some excellent challenges for me. I really think that I have come to a point where to get better behind the brush I need to start working on some of those more advanced techniques like OSL and glazing, both of which I used on these models. All in all I am really happy with how they turned out. More shots of them can be found over in the gallery and in their project log in the Commission Project Logs sections. Next up on the block is a unit of Hammerfall High Shield Gunners, more info on how they are progressing again can be found over in the Commission Project Logs section.
Moving onto my own stuff. I am still plugging away on my Dwarf Army for the Heresy-Online Painting Challenge and though I seem to be losing steam on them another member of the forum has challenged me to a bit of a race to finish this months unit. Being spurred on so, I got behind the desk over the last 10 days and got quite a bit of work done on the 8 models I will be doing this month. I am to the point that I will be starting beards, faces, and weapon arms later on this week after the Thanksgiving eating concludes. Here is a shot of were I am at with them at the moment, as always bigger photos are available over in the Project Logs Section.
As far as the painting table the Dwarfs have been the only army that I have worked on, but I have been buying up and building reinforcements left and right for my Nids, my Daemons, and my Angels of Mourning. On that front I have some really good news and some bad news. As I said in the project log, I picked up a FW Daemon Prince of Nurgle and attendant Herald at Games Day Chicago a couple of years ago and I finally broke him out of the package and converted up the palaquin I had been planning on for him for some time. This brings me to the first bit of good news, and the bad news that I mentioned.
There are three independent hobby stores that I frequent on a regular basis, one of which is brand new, the other has been around for years but is a bit too far away from my house for everyday travel, and the third which has been my store of choice for the last 7 years. Well I found out last week that that store is going to be going out of business at the end of the year. So…. sad news that my gaming home for last 7 years, not to mention it being my first gaming home, will be shutting its doors. I did manage to pick up some Plague bearers and nurglings for a really cheap price due to them going out of business, but it is one of those things that you kinda feel bad about. Rick and Raji you guys had a great place going there and you will be missed.
Anyway, that story was important because, well I have been pretty bummed about it to be honest, and because I needed the Nurglings to make the palanquin. Here he is in all his sickly glory:
I will have a tutorial on how I built him going up in his project log as soon as I find the flash disk I put the pictures on. So to continue on with the good news, I was out at the other hobby store, not the new one, but the further away one, and I found that someone had sold their entire Daemon army to the store and it was sitting in the discount bin, to further Grandfather Nurgle’s designs I picked up another 5 Plaguebearers, dirt cheap, to finish out the 10 man unit.
As I said earlier I have added a few more reinforcements to my growing Angels of Mourning chapter. I was surfing around in the Trading section on Heresy and found someone getting rid of a sizable BA army. Well being strapped on cash from my recent experience at the hobby stores, I wasn’t able to pick up much, but I added a Furioso dread with Frag cannon and the venerable Lemartes to my ranks. The good news continued when I went to put them in the big bin of un-built Imperial kits, containing mostly dusty Sisters of Battle kits, and low and behold I found a drop pod kit that I had bought way back in the day when I was planning on adding a Deathwatch Kill team, when they were still legal, to my Witch Hunters army. Well, since my Witch Hunters probably won’t be seeing the light of day for another couple of years, I have subsequently requisitioned that Drop Pod for Tactical Squad Vestus. I know that it is a bit much, but I plan on having a Drop pod and a Rhino for each of my tactical squads for my BA Successors. So it was all win for the Angels in the last week.
The last thing that I am going to ramble on about is that I have found myself with the building bug ever since I put together that Herald of Nurgle and that has lead to quite a few things popping up for Hive Fleet Pariah. On a whim I broke out a Ravenor kit and my final Trygon kit and started cutting and snipping away, assembling models. I have always found assembly to be such soothing work, and I always find that I am struck with some sort of inspiration for future projects when I engage in it. This time was no different and I made some preliminary plans for a big Tervigon Conversion project. At the moment I am writing up a list of bits that I will be ordering from Bits & Kits across the pond and I should be putting that order in in a couple of weeks to get that project up and running. Hopefully I will be done with this commission by the time that stuff arrives as I know I will be itching to get to work on it.
Well that was a bit of a novel, but in all honesty it has been quite a bit of time since I did a proper update. Lots more to work on, and lots more in the works so stay tuned for updates!
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Well I am pleased to announce that my commission work is progressing along nicely. I started on and finished off Anastasia di Bray:
Anastasia di Bray
And I will be starting on Lanyssa Ryssyll this evening.
I am also pleased to report that I am have cracked some Dwarfs back out and I hope to make some progress on them in the midst of painting Ryssyl. So I should have some info over in the Dwarf log come tomorrow morning.
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Hey everyone!
I know that it has been sometime since I updated things here but I have been pretty busy in RL, as well as with some creative writing projects that I have been working on. Well I just wanted to throw up a quick post with some of the stuff that I have completed over the last week or so.
First off the bat I finished up the Cauldron of Blood:
Cauldron of Blood right side
Have a whole bunch of shots of this guy along with the accompanying witches up in the Commission Projects Galleries. I am also proud to announce that I am also finished up with the Dark Elf Finecast Assassin that I was painting for the same client.
Dark Elf Fine Cast Assassin Front
Again more shots of this guy are up in his Gallery.
I have a few more personal things that I will be adding to the site over the next couple of days, including a Herald of Nurgle on a Palanquin, and a tutorial that I wrote up for his creation.
I am also pleased to announce that I have procured a fairly large commission for a bunch of Warmachine pieces. I will be updating the site with info on that.
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I spent a wonderful Halloween weekend with the kids, carving pumpkins, eating good food and lots of candy, and having some really nice warm hot cider. After the sugar nuts got put to bed last night after trick or treating I thought it fitting that I sit down and work on my own bubbling cauldron full of blood and left over bits of bodies, while watching some great horror movies on AMC. All in all a very successful Halloween. I did manage to get quite a bit of work done on the statue part of the CoB and I am happy to say that I think another session or three will see this guy finished off. Then I am onto a Dark Elf Finecast Assassin, also on commission, and perhaps a rather large Warmachine commission that is still in the negotiation phase. I am going to direct you over to the commission project logs for more photos of the Statue, but I will give you a teaser shot here:
Again Happy Halloween!!!
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Well it has been over a week since I posted up here on the site, but I have real excuses I swear…… Between my wife’s crazy work schedule, RP threads on Heresy-online, and sick kids (did I mention that respiratory infections in a five year old suck) I have had little spare internet time. Anyhow, the kids are on the mend, the wife’s work schedule has settled down, and I am up to date on all my RPs I have some time to update my log here. I have a good amount of painting progress to present to you all.
First up I have started another Marine army as you all know from my last post, but this time I have a completed test miniature to share for my Hands of Dorn:
Battle-Brother Gustaf Runyon front
I am most happy with the way that he turned out and I think that a full army of these guys is going to look spectacular! My next project for them is going to be a Standard Dread with a few FW icons. So stay tuned for that.
I have been hard at work on my Cauldron of Blood commission. I have all three of the witches and I must say that I am most pleased with them as is the client. I have obviously gone with a slightly different skin tone than is typical for the Dark elves, but the client and I talked about it and it was his assertion that a sea faring race would be hale and hearty and I had to agree with the logic. So here are the finished witches in all their scantily clad glory:
For larger shots and more detailed pictures you can check out the project logs and Galleries for those.
On a completely different note I got my new toy today in the post!!! I have been saving up over the last couple of months to by myself a real airbrush and after a trip across TCP Global’s website I found the one that I wanted, hit the order button and waited patiently. Well the ninja like UPS guy dropped it off today and I tore into the box like a kid on Christmas!
It is a Paasche Talon airbrush and the quietest air compressor I have ever heard. I plan on spending the next couple of nights playing around with it and getting a good feel for how it works.
Until next time my friends….
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