Search the Community

Happy Wednesday everyone, here are pictures of the Tabletop World Townhouse I've been working on for a week. I painted it with Reaper MSP and Citadel shade. (Once the model is varnished, I'll add lichen and moss to the roof and wall). It was a very pleasant model to paint. I painted light effects around the windows and on the shingles. I also added rust to all metal parts and added Woodland Scenics water to the bucket by the door. The furnitures are also from Tabletop World.

Hey everyone, here's the third in the series of mischievous fellow I'm currently painting. This is the 77444, Goblin Warrior with halberd sculpted by Bobby Jackson.

Hey everyone, here's the second of my mischievous goblinoid. This one is the 77445, Goblin skirmisher with sword and shield sculpted by Bobby Jackson.

Hey everyone, what's a tribe without a leader... Here's 77349, Goblin Leader sculpted by Ben Siens. I'm not sure about the poison on the blade, should I add more or change it for blood? Let me know what you think.

Hello everyone, here's another converted Goblin. This on is made out of 77444, Goblin warrior sculpted by Bobby Jackson. I swapped its weapon with that of another Goblin.

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I posted. I was working on a large model. I painted this terrain piece mainly with Reaper MSP paint. The stones were painted with 9088 Stormy Grey and 9089 Cloudy Grey. For the non-metallic metal (NMM) copper on the roof, I used 09030 Leather Brown, 09031 Tanned Leather, 29825 Tusk Ivory and 09039 Pure White. Then, for the verdigris I used a blend of 29848 Jungle Camo, 09294 Alien Goo and 09282 Maggot White. The shingles were painted with 09028 Muddy Brown, 09030 Leather Brown, 09031 Tanned Leather and 29825 Tusk Ivory. I also added rust effect on the metal parts using 09028 Muddy Brown and 09469 Fireball Orange. I finally added shading with a 09255 Black Wash on some areas to give more contrast to the stones and shingles. This Windmill is the second Tabletop World I paint for the hamlet I'm building. I painted it in the same fashion as the Water Well I did two months ago. I will build a base for the windmill later. If you look carefully, you'll see I added six decorative anchor plates on the windmill wall. I designed these structural reinforcements in Inventor software, prepared a program in Chitubox and printed them on my new resin 3D printer. I broke one of them when I removed it from the print supports but I think it’s even more interesting and realistic this way. As you can see on the last pictures, the anchor plates are about 14mm long and only 2mm think. Have a great weekend! Windmill next to the Water Well Model design in Inventor 3D print program in Chitubox 14mm long anchor plates

These were the third installment of my Bones 1 WIPs. Which is metal? Which is BONES? You'll have to check out the WIP to decide! https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/86504-darcstaar-vs-bones-1-ep-3-oxidation-beast/&tab=comments#comment-1834708 Hope you enjoy, and I hope it helps people see that there isn't always a loss of detail between BONES and Pewter. C&C Welcome.

Since Callie is coming to a close, I have been preparing the Oxidation Beast. I have one in metal also, so I will paint both together. I had some 40mm hollow, round lipped bases that seem like a good fit. I used some styrene model train cobblestone for one, and sculpted dressed stone tiles for the other. I plan for one to use the 5th Edition Monster Manual color scheme (Bones) And the metal one to follow the Pathfinder Bestiary 1 color scheme. It has a red with black stipple color scheme.

Playing with Secret Weapon Miniatures weathering pigments (finally...) Making a rusty wrought iron fence is really fun! I think I need to add a few more shadows to make the bits pop. I'm pretty happy with this, but C&C welcome and appreciated!

This is my first go at using chipping medium, and in all an experiment with weathering. Just wanted to share my experiment with everyone, do not really consider this as a tutorial as I did not know what I was doing. :o) 1. A piece of a blister pack plastic, prime black, and painted a mix of Black Brown and Dry Rust. 2. Wet blending with following colors in random pattern; Black Brown, Wet Mud, Explosion Orange. 3. Wash with mix of Flesh Wash and Dark Red. 4. Stipling and a bit of wet blending with Wet Mud and Explosion Orange. 5. Wash with mix of Flesh Wash and Wet Mud. 6. Adding Chipping medium to the top and water and salt to the bottom. The idea with the salt is that it can be peeled of later to leave 'paint chips'. But I only seen it achived with an airbrush, so wanted to try it with brush. 7. Green paint, couple of layers. Way most of the salt fell off, leaving only the very small pieces, they do give a good structure of rust-bubling paint though. 8. Water to start the chipping. I ned a bit more patience, so the first chips went too deep and removed some of the brown paint too. And to get the chipping look good seems to need some practice.. I used a tooth brush and a tooth pick to scratch the green paint off. 9. 'Repaired' some places with stipling of Wet Mud and Explosion Orange and a wash of Dry Rust. 10. Added streaks with Strong Tone and Dry Rust. And made the rust patches darker with Dry Rust. Those streaks really breathed life into the decay. Done! Came out allright, but the streaks seems to be making a big difference.im

A speed paint I did using Siri's tutorial on rust. I actually did this at the same time I was laying down a rusty undercoat for my Rottweiler grav tank. Since I was doing the various colors for the tank, I did several terrain pieces, a couple vehicles and this all at the same time. By no means a competition level paint job, but pretty good for tabletop with what I figure is less than 20-30 minutes into it.

Hi everyone, I need your help. I feel as if I am at a bit of an impasse. I am currently painting an armed force of ancient skeletons. The primary reasons for taking this project was to practice my OSL on the eyes, and trying my hand at verdigris for the first time. I love how both the skeletons and the ancient metal are coming out. However, I feel as if there is not enough contrast on the models, and when viewing them from tabletop distance, they look too... homogeneous. Do they look "boring" to anyone else? Does anyone else have a suggestion for how to fix them?

So I was asked to do a step by step tutorial on how I did the rust on my Wyrmgear [located here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/56248-77177-rusty-wyrmgear/ ] so this morning I did just that with three of my Secret Weapon bases from my Bag O' Crap. I hope you find it useful! Here's the three I chose, washed and ready to be painted. Six paints are used [pictured] and two brush sizes [pictured] So first I cover them in brown liner and let that dry Next, I dab at it with my Ancient Bronze. Throughout this whole tutorial, I dab with my brushes. It's a bit rough on the brushes, I recommend using slightly ratty ones you don't mind getting a bit worse. I dab using the side of the bristles, not the ends, but it still is a bit rough on the brush. You don't want to entirely cover the base, but do a decent amount of area in bronze. you'll cover most of it up later, but it gives you a brighter surface to put rust on than the brown liner. I did varying degrees of bronze on the three bases Now you'll add your base rust on the bases, using an orange. I used Lava Orange. Again, i dabbed with my brush. I find it gives a more organic and sporadic feel than brushing the paint on. You'll want to leave the underlying colors visible in areas. This is all about layering the colors to make a glorious mess of colors now you add some dark areas to your rust. I found Bloodstain Red to be great for this! You'll again want to leave areas of orange peeking through. Don't be afraid to use a paper towel and wipe at areas of your base as you go, to get a gritty or smeared look. I did this heavily on the smallest [middle] base below Now I go back over some areas with the Lava Orange to bring out a bit of brighter spots that got covered up too much by the red Now we're going to use a metallic silver, in my case Shadowed Steel, to give a hint of underlying, un-rusted metal beneath that rust. You'll put this over the areas that you left the rust off of, where the dark brown liner is still visible. Don't be afraid if you end up doing too much silver, you can go back over it easily to rust it up. Even though you're actually putting this ON TOP of the rust colors, when you dab with your brush the contrast of shiny to not shiny will make it look underneath, like so: Now we use the small brush that I haven't touched yet for this tutorial. Yellow will add some realistic color to the orangey red rust, but you don't want too much. My yellow doesn't like to put out paint so i have to take the cap off and dip my brush in the cap, so I usually end up with a thick yellow. I deal with this by wiping it gently with a paper towel after dabbing small amounts onto the bases This is a touch up step, where you apply small amounts of orange and red. I did this because I felt that the effect I wanted wasn't completely there, and i needed some more rust over the silver. At this point, I'm rather unhappy with the manhole cover, because it's complicated, textured surface is making it difficult to get the effect I want We pull back out the Ancient Bronze now, to add some shiny rust effect to the duller rust. You can note the difference especially on the manhole cover We use the brown liner again! We're nearing completion. I use the brown liner to imitate dirt, shadows, and to get detail to pop. I put it into the detailed areas of my Wyrmgear's base, the cracks in the metal for example, and wipe away the excess to leave only the dark gap filled We go back to the yellow, because I felt that i had gone too dark again. I went a bit heavy with the yellow on the man hole cover, especially the letters, in an attempt to bring the color up a bit. We're done now, save for some small steps I used Pure Black to go around the edges to cover the paint strokes and to give it a neat look. This actually helped the manhole cover immensely, I think Final sealant coat! I love how sealing them brings the colors out. We're done! I hope everyone finds this tutorial useful for doing heavily rusted bases/miniatures! You can easily adapt this to do less-rusted stuff by increasing the amount of visible metal underneath =) Look up pictures of rust, it's very useful. Rust is so colorful, there is so much variation in it, and my frustration with my Wyrmgear that resulted in me painting him rusty was a boon in disguise because I hadn't realized just how much fun rust was to paint and how beautiful it can be

My 5th bust. Forged Monkey - Shaâ un Ram Warrior painted as a Slaangor. WIP here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/72600-sha%E2%80%99un-ram-tribe-warrior-bust-by-xherman1964/ Hope you like it!

Finished the last mini in the Bones 3 Ogre Command set. Here is the Ogre Chieftain. He doesn't have a squire to polish his armor and the goblins use spit and their loincloths so....his armor isn't in the best of shape. The shield on the back probably needs some battle damage but I hated to mess it up after I spent so much time getting it to look nice! Maybe he "found" it. So here are pictures of the Ogre Chieftain and a group shot at the end. (I need a large photo background!) I added a tutorial on how to do the rust effect.

A few people asked me how I painted the rust for my Ogre Commander so here is a tutorial. For this tutorial I dug through my Bones 3 to find something that had a large expanse of metal to properly show the technique I use. My genius husband grabbed the iron maiden. Perfect! You can use this on any metal that you want to rust but I wanted something big so everyone can plainly see. So the first thing I do is paint the metal just how I would if I weren't messing it up. I used gunmetal as my basecoat. I usually end up with three thin layers to make sure I have opaque coverage. I mixed dark brown (the same one I will use for rust) into my gunmetal and shaded. I used my painting lamp to determine shadows and highlights for this one but you can decide where your light source will be. I then mixed in more of the brown and did my darkest shade. (You can shade yours however you like, I just chose brown this time, I could have easily have chosen dark grey or purple!) I then used silver to go in and hit the "hot spots" where it would be the shiniest. I do not use my brightest highlight, which I use Vallejo Metal Medium usually, when I am going to muck up my metal. I let silver be the highest highlight. I use P3 Umbral Umber, Army Painter Chaotic Red, and Army Painter Lava Orange for my rust colors. This just happens to be what I have on hand but any dark brown, deep maroon, and bright orange will give you similar results. I do not use a nice sable brush for this technique. I am going to be dabbing and splotching and would ruin a good brush. I use a brush that is already past its prime that I keep around to do dirty work like applying washes or mixing colors. My husband couldn't figure out the focus so all of the next photos were blurry. I dip my brush in the umbral umber and drag it out leaving some paint behind on the palette. I do not want thin paint for this nor do I want my brush heavily loaded. I don't want the paint to run and I want to have control over how much goes on the mini. I splotch the brown on where I want the rust to be. I google images of rusted armor, rusted wrought iron, or whatever I am working on to see how the rust might form on different things. I can use these as guides or just put the rust wherever I think it looks good. I do try and keep some "rules" like I think rust forms along the edges where moisture would settle and around bolts and rivets and hinges. Continues in reply....

So I finished this guy up in between working on the couple of other WIPs I have going. I'm pretty happy with how he turned out. I didn't spend as much time on this one as I normally do for highlights and details. I definitely stole the idea for the blue eyes off the painted picture on the reaper store. The base is a secret weapons lava base. Instead of lava I gave it some rusty pools of water using realistic water.

Another lazy painting day with my wonderful husband produced this. I grabbed this guy out of the Vampire box not really knowing what to make of it. Even after boiling it didn't seem to stand well on any combination of the 6 legs, so I posed it on 3 of the rear legs that touched the base, kind of like it was rearing up in front. I wanted the legs to be black and beetle-like, with some blue green sheen, and I wanted the upper portion to reflect the "oxidation" part of the name. I just started dabbing paint on until it looked good. Since it has a little of every color in the spectrum, I refer to it as the the eastern lesser rainbow bug.

Stuff, and things. Started a WIP, but I suck at keeping up with them. I always get too involved in painting and don't stop to take photos. I had to mess with the brightness a bit, there was a lot of glare, even with the diffused light source. Here's the end result: As always, C&C welcome!

So, I've dug out a mini to paint up for the same Hobby Hangout contest that Ub3r is entering. Flying Frog Games' Shadows of Brimstone: Guardian of Targa. We all know how bad I suck at keeping up WIPs, but I'll try to post as I go. This is what it looks like: I'm kidding. It's the guy on the left, here: I've just finished cleaning and assembling mine, and as you can see, I had to do some filling on the base...which I tried to cover up with some bits, since I can't sculpt. It's on a Secret Weapon Trash base, 60mm, beveled. (Bleh for beveled edge bases, but it's all I had that fits the theme I'm going for.) As you can see in the tags, I'm going to be doing some heavy weathering and some OSL in this project. Stay tuned.

A Bones Orc Berserker. I'm trying to learn to paint shading on skin, primarily, although I decided to do this orc in green with the olive greens triad. I also decided to try a rust effect for the armor (inspired by somebody's verdegris post). I started with a Ruddy Brown base, heavy drybrushed steel over it, and then dabbed bits of the lava triad oranges on it with my most goofed up drybrush brush. I should make my players save against tetanus with this guy. I see from the zoomed up image that I seemed to have left some gaps in his armpits which is really frustrating, and I'm starting to get bummed out about my lack of basing ability...

Okay, so I'm going through the local Goodwill, and I see this toy (image grabbed from a Google image search) on the shelf: (EDIT: This is the Fisher Price Lil Zoomers Rockin' Roll Truck. Picture is linked off-site and might not load for some -- sorry!) Because I'm me, the first thing I think is, "Wow, the front of that truck looks sort of like one of the cab-over-engine rusted hulks in Fallout." And, thus armed with a weird idea, I picked it up and converted it into THIS: Steps involved: * Flip over, unscrew every screw that can be unscrewed. * Snip wires going to battery compartment for internal electronics. Save speaker, circuit boards, lights, just in case that might ever be useful for something. (Probably not, but who knows?) * Remove googly-eye "headlight" insert and annoying rattle-ball atop roof of cab. (Save rattle ball -- it's a sphere, after all, with two halves, and might be useful for building something else ... maybe.) * Use Dremel to cut away plastic parts holding rod for central tilt-bed. (It looks like the rod was jammed in there forcibly and meant to STAY there, but I haven't the tools to worry it out properly -- so just cutting away the plastic innards until I can remove it seemed the fastest solution.) Remove handle, rear "trailer" area, wheels, smokestack/button, rear gate, and tilt-bed. * Use epoxy putty to fill "smile" on front bumper. No smiles belong on rusted trucks in the Fallout universe, I'm pretty sure. * Use piece of mat board and some putty to cover up the roof hole. I couldn't really smoothly match the contours of the curved top, so I just added a panel up there, curved it a bit, and hoped it might plausibly pass for an original structure. * Use Dremel cutting disc to cut out hard, opaque "window" recessed areas, to make broken-open windows, and clean up some of the plastic "crumbs" resulting from this operation. * Use Tehnolog Robogear/Platformer panels to make interior dash and seat frames, plus some plastic to cover up a hole in the back of the cab. * Use a piece of scrap plastic to make a new flat "bed" on the back of the truck, to cover up holes and internal workings. * Use a HeroClix base with a slot cut out of it, propped on a bit of putty at an angle, to make a "fifth wheel." * Use some Warhammer 40K scenery pipe "bitz" to make a replacement smokestack, with some putty to gap-fill the area it nests into. * Spray-paint the whole thing black on interiors and bottom, grey on the outside and top. * Splash "burnt orange" (rusty) paint all over, then stipple with "golden yellow" here and there. * Messily stipple with multiple applications of "Caribbean Blue" paint on upper body, and "Sandstone" for lower bumper / frame areas. Leave headlight and taillight rims bare "rust" color, along with anything else that might have once been shiny and chrome (such as the front grill). Indicator lights are painted the dingiest yellow-tan and barn-red colors I have. (I'm deliberately avoiding bright, solid, primary colors.) * Splash everything with some black and grey washes. Splash it some more. Spatter it with some brush-flicking until some of the splash-on is thick enough to run in rivulets. Yay, grunge! ... I would like to have added some rusted-out axles, but the wheels on the original toy are solid plastic (tire and axle alike), with big Fisher Price logos on them, and any use of them for such a purpose would require a whole lot of cutting and covering with putty, to the point where it might be questionable why I used the plastic part in the first place. I might later on try to make rusted, tire-free hubs out of HeroClix bases and metal rods, but for now just leaving the wheel-wells totally empty seems to work well enough for purposes of making this look like a rusted-out, long-abandoned roadside hulk. As Wendy notes, it looks to her more convincing as a rusted-out old 1950s TOY rather than an actual truck, partly because of the ridiculously large headlights and generally round and friendly shapes incorporated into the design ... but a lot of Fallout vehicles look closer to old toys than they do to anything from real life, so I'll roll with it. I've not bothered to replace the screws to hold the thing together. In the Fallout game, if you hit one of the various rusted nuclear-powered cars or trucks littering the landscape, eventually the thing would go KABLOOIE with force and area of effect comparable to a mini-nuke -- and then you'd leave behind an even worse-off wreck in the aftermath. I need to add some "torn-up scraps" to the interior for such a purpose, but I'm thinking I might go with the idea of having the cab be deliberately removable so I have an "even-more-damaged" blown-up version to leave on the table. I suppose it might make a firefight all the more interesting if there's a chance of stray shots setting off unstable reactors littering the street (in the form of junked nuclear cars). I'll just have to be sure and warn the players of this, so we don't have the PCs getting the bright idea of climbing INTO the truck wreck to use it for cover in a firefight, and then ending the session with a nuclear TPK.

Finally finished my Iron cobra, painted up in a partially rusted style

Credit to Daniel36 on the Warseer forums, since this is where I originally saw this. His rust effects are what I use on the few things I make rusty. Problem is, his pictures were on Photobucket, and they have since disappeared. I will make notes of my differences in paints and what I do differently in the steps, as he is using GW paints and has some differences on what kind of rust he wanted. I prefer a more brownish orange rust, myself. Except for my notes and added steps below, this is a direct cut and paste, since his photos have long since disappeared. The aim for this was tabletop quality, however, I can use the same technique for display style quality (I did my dragon, Abyzarran, using similar techniques to the verdigris, and I used those same techniques on the gears of his base). Total time spent painting the golem between last night and today, including drying times was about 3.5 hours. Now, onto the Tutorial itself. I will warn you, this is taken directly on my workspace, so the pictures aren't the prettiest, but they came out pretty well. Step 1 Base in a dark tone. I use Vallejo Game Color Charred Brown as my base, you will note that, even with the Bones, I prime a medium-light grey. I personally like this regardless of what paint I put on top. My mix is 3:1 RMS Black Primer to 1 Vallejo Game Color White Primer, just enough tooth and just enough butter. You could probably use a similar "mix" of primers, even doing all black or white, or everything in between. The base is a 40mm resin base that I cast myself, along with a pair of rocks using a couple of rubber molds used for model trains. Great for filling up that extra space! Step 2 Once you have your dark base, here's where you start building up. I tend to stipple this, and it shows in the pictures. I use VGC Beasty Brown. The other thing of note is my brush. I use a pig hair brush intended for stippling. This is very handy and makes some of the work easier. When doing display quality, use something better (and SMALLER!), but this worked for my purposes for getting a second, tabletop golem out there for future player torment. Step 3 I diverge from Daniel 36 at this point. I begin with stippling Vallejo Game Color Fire Orange (really, any bright orange will do, but this one really pops and resists our next steps. Step 4: Lining where I want the metals to show. Yes, I want the golem to look like he's articulated and moving along the edges. I did this with my trusty #2, and used Vallejo Model Color German Grey. Step 5 Now, to bring down my rust tones, I follow his original step 5, and wash with a mix of VGC Charred Brown and Leather Brown This plays a huge role later on, when I return to this, using reds and oranges. This is also where his tutorial ends and I continue, since Verdigris is also going to happen. Step 6 We're going to start metals after this, so I want to be clear, we will return to the rust later on, but the metals become important in my sequence, while you may choose to complete the rust effects in your own path, this is my path. I start by painting the Shoulders Vallejo Model Color Brass and the steel areas with VMC Oily Steel. I will note I brought down the brightness, as the metals seem to glow when I do the standard adjustment. Step 7 This is my Verdigris recipe. I do not use Acrylic inks, I use India Inks. 2 parts Bombay Turquoise Ink, 2 parts Bombay Green Ink, 1 drop of Vallejo Model Color White paint. Step 8 Reclaim some of the areas of Verdigris with Brass paint. This will be done in a transparent, slow manner on a normal figure, but, for this guy, it was done a lot faster. Step 9: Back to the Rust! And Gem stones. I started them when I added the reds and oranges to the main body as well, as they were simple enough to add and contrasted with the surrounding verdigris. Following steps 1-5, I painted the sword of the golem, and began adding reds to the main body of the golem Step 10: Adding more interest with some scrapes on the sword. Step 11: Flock and Done! And, go hang out with an old war buddy while you're at it.

Hello all! While I'm waiting for my dull coat to dry so I can finish basing, I was curious if anyone has any experience with weathering pigments. I came across these at Hobby Lobby today: http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/87080weathering/ Our Hobby Lobby recently upgraded its inventory, so there's a LOT more Tamiya, Vallejo, etc. products. I've seen similar products over at the Secret Weapon website: http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=37_38 So, what's the sitch? These look like they could be useful....