Ferox

A local gaming store (Strategies, for any of you in Greater Vancouver) started a WarmaHordes ladder today. Difficulty: they only permit fully-painted armies. So to get my Legion up to 15pts, I had to paint some Striders. And as much as I enjoy lavishing attention on my models, I also subscribe to the school of thought that rank-and-file minis don't need as much attention to detail as, say, heavy warbeasts. With that in mind, I painted these guys up with just a single level of highlight and shadows. It seemed to work pretty well; all anyone seemed to remember was "oh wow you strung the bows!" Anyway, here they are: I timed myself on each step for most of the WIP thread. That was a mistake: it put me under too much pressure, and I (a) got a bit sloppy and (b) didn't enjoy it as much as I should have. Also, having carted this army to and from a remote game store, the "nickel bases held to the game bases with blu-tak" option just isn't gonna work. The only damage any of these guys suffered was when I levered an outstretched bow on the guy in the front left whilst trying to stick him to his base. (He's posed a bit awkwardly, so I don't mind re-gluing that arm.) Another lesson learned: these guys have too damn many base colours! It looks pretty good on the table, and ties in beautifully with pLylyth, but the next unit I paint will be, ah, more straightforward. And finally, a group shot of my 15pt Legion force. As an utter n00b, I went 1-1 in the ladder -- and later figured out how I might've been able to win the second game. Nice to know that after better than a hundred bucks and probably forty hours of painting I actually enjoy the game, too. C&C appreciated.

Striders are done (and not a moment too soon!).

Hard telling exactly how much more time I've spent painting, but before the end of the GP I got the leather highlighted with Terran Khaki and shaded with Vallejo Smoke (also on the metal). Afterwards I took a little time to highlight the bows with Khaki Highlight and the cloaks (oops) with Uniform Brown. Some quick dots for the eyes and here we go: I'd guess that I'm on about 6h30m for the whole group. The blending's rough and the highlights aren't quite where I'd like them, but for an hour a figure I'm pretty damn happy. Now a bit of work on the bases....

5h07m: Bases, cloaks, and feathers shaded with Nightshade Purple. Also got some desultory freehand on the squad leader's cloak. 5h16m: Feathers highlighted with Rosy Highlight, some mistakes on the flesh fixed. Watching the Australian GP at the moment, so it's hard to keep track of how much time I'm actually spending painting, but I've highlighted and shaded the skin, hosed down the red cloth with Brown Liner, and shaded the bows with the same. Once I get some contrast on the leather, they'll actually look like painted models.

4h32m: Blacks (mix of blue and brown liners) and metals (50:50 Aged Pewter and Pine Green) done. At this point I could hit the models with sealer and call 'em "done", and be tournament-legal. I won't, of course, because they look like... er, well, to avoid tempting the word filter we'll just say they look decidedly unfinished. But I'm definitely on the home stretch here.

4h02m: Basecoat of Khaki Shadow on bases, bows, and some other stuff. No photo; setting up the light box feels like too much effort. That's the last of the major basecoat work; I need to do hair and eyes and metals and stuff, but that's no big thing. At this point I'm tempted to shade everything with Vallejo Smoke and call it a day; I might do that, but only as a last resort. It seems strange to think that I only have 40 minutes into each figure.

I really like what you did with the skin, especially the face -- turned out much better.

3h32m: Basecoat of Deep Red on the cloth wraps, fletching, and details that seemed to want it. Fortunately, Deep Red covered pretty well once I figured out how much paint I needed relative to gunk, so the second coat was more of a touch-up and less of a full coat. Still covering fiddly pieces, but the sheer area's going down. Basecoating has tended to take most of the time I spend on a miniature, so I'm hoping that these'll go pretty quickly once I get to the highlighting and shading stage.

Hah, lol n00b. 3h: Leather basecoated in Intense Brown. There's a lot of it, in fiddly little places too. Fortunately, Intense Brown covers pretty amazingly well. In general I'm being a fair bit more tolerant of errors on these guys than I'd usually be able to manage. In particular, I find myself not correcting little mistakes when I think I can simply extend a shadow or a highlight to cover them up. No big surprise, I suppose. Lots of work for tomorrow.

I find it hard to sit still and work on one single thing for more than about an hour at a time. Even if I'm in the zone, I need to stand up, take a piss, get a drink, and let my subconscious chew on whatever I've been working on for a few minutes. So while I can spend "all day" painting or building terrain or programming or gaming or writing, I'm constantly taking little breaks as I do it.

Oops; neglected to link to the Show Off post.

Sunday's not so far away. Fortunately, I have actually been working on these guys. 1h39m: Cloaks basecoated in Blackened Brown. I neglected to mention this in my plan writeup. Oh well. It took as long to get two coats on the cloaks as it did to get three coats on the skin because (a) there's a lot of area to cover, but (b) some of it's in very awkward places. 2h10m: Feathers basecoated in Snow Shadow. Again, two coats. Snow Shadow is close enough in value to the grey primer I use that these didn't look like I was making any progress until the second coat went on. Here's hoping the rest of the basecoats don't take this long. Still and all, I have only about 20 minutes into each of these figures -- not bad, considering. Better go put a basecoat on the leather.

I am diggin' that wraith. It just so happens that mine made it back to my workbench after I got sick of bending the sword; a guitar-string pin and some green-stuff fixed that problem but I need to paint it back up. When I do I think I'll up the OSL and post some photos. The rest are great, too, but... man, that wraith is spectacular.

Blasphemy!!!! The SEALs who shot up the MV Maersk Alabama pirates might beg to differ.

Well done, sir. That OSL really pops out.

43 minutes: skin basecoat. Would've taken me less time, but I tend to thin my paints to "really thin" without even thinking about it. This stuff's probably 3:2 paint:gunk, which needed 3 coats to get to what you see there (including more than a few pools of paint in the deepest recesses of the model -- too much paint on the brush). The first coat took 24 minutes (yes, I checked); after that, I mainly concentrated on putting more pigment on the parts that wouldn't be in shadow, and having the paint already down on the models helped a lot. On a more special model I'd be pickier about getting a smooth, even basecoat everywhere, but in this case I don't really care if the shadows are a bit patchy. (Imperial Purple is a pretty strong pigment anyway, so it's likely to cover up most of what I missed without complaint.)

I'll second MamaGeek and Ghool -- between the flecks of metal medium in your matte colours and the chunky bits of pigment, this scale isn't at all flattering for your painting skills. It doesn't help that the photos you posted are a lot larger than the mini itself, and macrophotography magnifies all imperfections. The scale issue might be why you're having trouble getting the details to come out the way you want and why your other submissions were accepted while this one wasn't. If you've taken courses in painting, you're probably way ahead of most of us in terms of mixing some basic colours to come up with what you want. Beyond that, your brush control looks rock-solid, and I dig the freehand on the open pages of the book -- which would've made me run screaming after a couple weeks of painting. I think once you get the pigment issues sorted out, you'll see great results.

So on Sunday I'm playing in a "painted models only" WarmaHordes ladder, and the last models I need to put together my base 15pt force are these here Striders. I thought I'd make a WIP of it. Here's the unit in primer: As much time as I spent on my Carnivean, I'm firmly in the camp of "spend time on the focal models, not the grunts". These guys are grunts, so they're getting a basecoat, a shade, and a highlight. Grunt leader might get some basic freehand on his cloak just to differentiate him from the rest, but nothing fancy. The plan is to tie these folks in with Lylyth, as well as the warbeasts in my army. Here's the colour scheme I'm thinking of: Skin: base Rosy Highlight, shadow Imperial Purple, highlight Ghost White. Cloth: base Blood Red, shadow Blue Liner, no highlight. Leather: base Intense Brown, shadow Blue Liner, highlight Terran Khaki. Feathers: base Snow Shadow, shadow Blue Liner, highlight Rosy Highlight. Bows: base Khaki Shadow, shadow Imperial Purple, highlight Khaki Highlight. Dude on the right there needs his sword painted, which I'll do separately. To keep myself honest, I thought it would be fun to time each step. We'll see how "fun" I think it is once I get started. Obviously I'm leaving out the obnoxious "assembly" step, which I didn't exactly make easier for myself by refusing to replace my dull pin-vise bit.

Progress is always interesting. Glad to hear that your lack of posts came down to lack of time, rather than more unwelcome excitement like two weeks ago.

Nice work! Good, effective colour scheme, clean painting, and enough interest on the bases to make the Skeeters look like they're somewhere rather than on a slab of plastic.

Finally got the Striders assembled; primer's drying on them now. Odds are against me finishing everything by the end of the month, but I should be able to get to 15pts with these guys.

You might be able to use Zuzzy tree stumps for the trees. Standard tree armatures without foliage, or with bits of singed foliage right at the tops, seem to work well -- there's a page of "forest terrain" tutorials in the back of the Hordes Mk. II rulebook that does burnt-out forest that way, and it looks pretty decent.

Is... is that a velociraptor on a rocket-powered flying surfboard? Something about the disembodied (disententacled?) Brain Horror makes me think he's tending bar. Great use of a Clix base.

How's it going, MG?

Thanks folks! SK, there's a lot of pewter in that thing, but also plenty of brass rod and green-stuff.