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A friend of mine gave me some canvases last month! I've decided to turn them into backdrops for my larger minis (or maybe just for minis in general depends on if I can get a floor piece to match. One of them (20"x16") I'm going to turn into a Bob Ross-esque painting but with like a dark and red sky so it seems the land is burning. The one I'm about to show (12"x16") is a dungeon that I've already had brother mock up a photo yesterday and I spent a chunk of yesterday and today drawing it out with heavy guidance from him. The third one I'm open to ideas. It is also a 12"x16". I don't care which way it's oriented. I just need ideas! I'm prefacing this by saying I literally do not draw. I've never felt good at it. It's just never been a thing I could wrap my head around. So back to the second one! I knew I definitely wanted a dungeon. But my brain, for a change, had a rough idea of what I wanted. I did some Googling and talked to my brother who does cute MSPaint cat portraits and other things to help me out. He drew up this rough sketch for me. And then with heavy guidance from him I was able to draw everything (except the chest) on my own! He helped with placing and proportions and whatnot. I still need to draw in the stone floor and cobblestones for the bridge/pillars though. So saying I am happy with it is an understatement. I will be painting this up. I have a /small/ set of water soluble oil paints and lots of acrylics. I will be using one or both of these in painting all of these.

It was suggested that I take an online Bob Ross painting class by my MIL as something to do while stuck inside. The kit and ticket for the class are like 60$. It was suggested that I just use acrylics and slow-dry medium. I think this is a great idea. I plan on using my Reaper paints on some heavy card stock or water color paper to achieve this. My problem is trying to find acrylic paints that are equivalent colors to the oils that Ross used. Anyone have any leads or ideas about a color chart or list or something?

Standby for massive dump in 3... 2... 1... Chopping this up into a few pieces for easy posting/consumption. Where I've been: Video games (Xumenicus#1118, if you're on Battle.net), bought a new house, running a fly fishing tournament for a treehugger non-profit, part-running my treehugger fly fishing non-profit local chapter, some other random stuff, and yeah -- here we are. I promise to paint more. Seriously. I just need to paint and sculpt more. I also need to fish more. And game more. I guess this is a thing: Apparently, I need deadlines in order to get anything done. This time around, since I couldn't make it to RC2017 (travel budget blown on BlizzCon), I aimed for a couple different challenges over at Massive Voodoo: http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2017/07/mv-challenge-2017.html Objective: Make a water-themed base. No central miniature, no real focus -- just a base. And it has to be mostly water. Disclaimer: I'm not at all confident, or consider myself proficient with clear resin. I wasn't sure how good/bad/terrible this piece would turn out, so I didn't spend days painting this. It's got a few rough layers of highlights, a few rough layers of shadows, and basically I just wanted to turn something in, have fun doing it, and not stress about being good enough to win. The MV crowd is amazing -- I was just trying to get closer to touching the sun. :) Supply List: Wood, coping saw, cyano super glue, wire, green stuff, sculpting tools, paint, brushes, old brushes, Ease Release 200 Mold Release Agent, plastic Solo cups, nitrile gloves, popsicles sticks (fox mixing resin), Castin' Craft® Clear Polyester Casting Resin, small sheet of plasticard, duct tape, Tree House Studio Clear Acrylic High Gloss Coating spray, sandpaper (100, 200, 400, 600, 1000 grit), Woodland Scenics Lichen, Woodland Scenics Water Effects, fly tying thread, level for leveling the curing area I did a few sketches one night so I could figure out what to do, and this is where I ended up. I thought about doing a waterfall, or something cooler, but I was kind of in a time crunch, and only had 3 weeks, especially since things are still calming down from moving. [pic_00] Picked out a piece of wood from my scrap pile... [pic_01] Went to work with a coping saw until I had a pleasing, interesting shape... [pic_02] Learning from past mistakes with trying to get green stuff to adhere to wood, I opted to seal the wood this time. I used cyano, and 2 old brushes. It actually works really well as a wood sealer ( http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/cyanoacrylate-everything-you-need-to-know/ ), but you need to be extra careful due to the amount being used -- more of a chance to glue yourself to something, glue to project to something, and the fumes will sneak up on you real quick, and burn your eyes or nose. Fair warning. Be careful. [pic_03] I opted to use green stuff for the project. That's where my comfort zone still is, even though I'm trying to work more with Beesputty and ZBrush. The bit of twisted copper wire there is to support an additional column. Do an image search for "limestone underwater caves", and you'll see where I'm going with this. [pic_04] More... [pic_05] A little more... [pic_06] Starting the tree. Do a search on "limestone cliffs trees roots", and you'll see where I'm headed even more. [pic_07]

I'm looking at picking up some tube paints for basic colors to start trying and wanted to just get five basic colors. What would be the best colors to pick up? Also, was thinking of going with Liquitex, but have never tried these kinds of paints before, so if anyone has any ideas on brands to suggest, I'm listening. Cadmium Yellow (Deep) Titanium White Burnt Umber Cerulean Blue Alizarin Crimson or Cadmium Red (Deep) Possibly also Mars Black Was also looking at the Iridescent Effects to add. I plan on using these to paint my larger models (lots of dragons). Also, is there a different primer I should consider as well?

I'm in the early stages of what promises to be a very long project. This is a rather large 90mm scale samurai archer from Pegaso Models. I've been wanting to do a samurai for a while, the colors and patterns make for some really neat figures. I'm planning for this to be a competition piece, so I'm intending to go all out on the design work. There are a lot of layered pieces for this figure, so he's going to be painted and assembled in a number of stages. I began with the face. As a larger scale figure, there's a lot more room to do detail and it's well worth spending the extra time. I probably put in 10-12 hours in to just the face so far. I had to switch up my skin mix a bit, I began with Reaper's Volcano Brown with a touch of Olive Skin Shadow and Burgundy Wine for the shadows, then into Olive Skin Shadow, Olive Skin, Olive Skin Highlight, and finally a bit of Linen White. On top of that I did some glazes with red, purple, and blue to add more color variation and life to the face. Then I did a bit of the cloth. The orange is Burgundy Wine, Bronzed Skin Shadow, Burnt Orange, and Linen White. I haven't done much orange in the past, but I'm happy with that mix. I will be going back over that part of the figure to add some pattern/design... but I haven't decided what I want to do yet. All I know is that the orange will be the background color. And, if you're curious, here's a close up of the other side of the face. As i said, this should be a long project. I'm hopeful I can get it done by the end of the year... but we'll see. I really want to bring it to Adepticon next year. There should be enough time for that if I don't get too side tracked along the way.

So in preparation for the arrival of the ks bones I recently ordered some craft acrylics, specifically these . Now I have read on some other sites about people complaining that craft acrylics have a smaller "pigment/medium ratio" than model paints because you have to dilute the craft paints more. So first question, in your own experience how true is this statement? And second question, if the above is held to be true, could this not be remedied by just using more brush strokes when painting? Also since im on the topic of using different types of paints I may as well ask this: Is it possible to use both craft and model paints of the same mini or does this combination go horribly wrong? Actually this question should be asked in two parts. First when talking about using the two on different layers, ie: craft for base/shading/highlights and model for details or any combination of base/shading/highlights and detail between the two types. Second when talking about mixing the two types of paints for creating custom colours?