The Final Push – Lawnor approaches 100% painted

I painted up the last of the models in the immediate queue not from SFB this week and took the quick and easy models to paint nest: The three statues for Super Fantasy Brawl.  I also fired up the 3D printer to use up the last of my resin before it expires so I printed out a replacement for the damaged weapon for XXXVIII, who I printed late last year.  He is now painted up.

I’ve also started printing lots of other fun stuff to use up the last of my resin.  Once I’ve confirmed something has had all its parts print correctly I’ll add it to my remaining total.  So far I should have an umber hulk, a necromancer, a couple of tieflings, couple of goblins, and parts of a not-great unclean one.  There’s more to come though.

I tried following an Angel Giraldez wolfman guide on the fur here and it didn’t exactly work.  I can see what it’s trying to do but I didn’t pull it off properly.  Its a good learning experience though.  The rocks I like though.  This is from an Asset Drop guide and I’ve done it 3ish times now and I like it more and more.  Gonna have to keep using it.

Doktor Nachtbluten (name copy and pasted every time!) had a few issues.  One of his bag straps broke off and had to be replaced with green stuff.  I broke his lantern putting him together and that fix is less than ideal.  I also appear to have mistaken his walking stick for printer scaffold.  it was missing so was presumably clipped off and thrown away.  Oops.  I’ve replaced it carefully with a paperclip.  Looks good to me.

I first tried my hand at full OSL in my first year of painting.  I have someone out there with a big blue blob over half of their head and I still wake up screaming some nights from the memory.  I have a large sith lady with two red lightsabers to paint soon, and KD:M arriving in a couple of months so I have no choice to do OSL very soon.  I’ve used this model as a chance to try again.  I found this guide online which out it in terms I found aproachable but it was astill massivelt intimidating as I couldn’t tell if it had worked until I’d finished the entire model.  I couldn’t just test it on the coat before continuing so i was living in fear that all my work would get wasted right at the end.  I may have spent a day longer on this piece due to procrastination.  With him done I feel more confident for my next attempt.

If anyone has used this method with other colours I’d love to know if it works just as well and if there are any colours/tones I should favour or avoid.  This guide says yellow works best but doesn’t discuss other colours.  Dunno if theres a good reason for that.  I’m assuming I can just pick any bright saturated colour and so long as my highlights approach white I’ll be ok?  I don’t know how well this would look if I were to paint yellow light over blue though, for example?  Would the green look natural or just odd?

Here we see the model both before and after I applied the yellow light, which was pretty much the final stage.

This leaves me with one more model ready to paint before I fire up my 3D printer, deal with the intimidating Sith from Ritual Casting, or dive in to the Box of Undersireables, apart from Super Fantasy Brawl.  I washed, air dried, cleaned up (Minimal clean up but I may yet notice lots I missed), and primed the whole SFB set.

If anyone from Mythic or any of these big box kickstarters is reading this (I’m sure you all follow me closely!) I have a request.  Can you do a hobbyist’s option on these kickstarters please.  We check a box or order a specific version of the pledge and our models do not arrive pre-built.  Maybe we don’t get the fancy packaging and its all shoved in a brown box or something.  Pre built models create issues with access for clean up and for painting.  It’s also annoying when we spend out money and theres a huge gap in the model because someone in a factory didn’t care and had deadlines to meet and now we can’t fix it.

I know you can’t do this at retail, but maybe its more practical at KS as we are ordering pre-production and it won’t take up shelf space in stores?

I upscaled Suraya for printing so she’s on a 50mm base which makes her about 60mm-ish from feet to hair.  I also upscald the scaffolds thinking this would be fine as I was too lazy/unsure of myself to reapply them.  It worked.  Kinda.  Theres flat discs on her everywhere they connected.  It’s not the best.

I used two completely different schemes and sets of paint on the leathers and the fur.  The lion pelt is Reapers Blonde Hair paint, and the leather is based on a P3 tan leather scheme from a Cygnar guide book.  Somehow they look the same.  That was not my intent.  I’ve KDM turning up in a month or two.  I think I’ll paint the white lion following the same scheme but move my mid-tone up a paint or two (IE use the old mid tone as the new shade)

They above picture should only be viewed while listening to the below music

I printed Sister Corazon last year at the scale she was issued at (28-30mmish).  She printed well enough but then the swords broke off long before I removed the scaffold.  They were bent and they were paper thin.  They aren’t made of enough material to survive being straightened or for the glue to bite in to to hold them on.  No way I could drill a pin in to them.  Not a chance.  Even if they had survived as far as priming, they;d have snapped off under the weight of a 00 brush on them so I opted to leave them off and try and carefully file down the hilts from the hands.

It feels like they were designed at a much larger scale and they didn’t check the integrity of the components when it was downscaled.  Pretty sure I asked them about this and they insisted every model was designed at 28mm scale and everything had printed fine for them.  I didn’t push the issue but either they aren’t being entirely honest, or every test print is done with the highest of high end machines and the bestest of resins.

I got this next guy in an AssetDrop Monster Box last year along with a basic MDF boat.  I didn’t really have much interest in either, but he’s come out OK. He fell over at one point and a finger broke off.  I didn’t notice at first and had a panic search before finding it.  I’ve glued it back on as best as I can.  Its quite noticeable if you know what you’re looking for, but otherwise I think I’ve gotten away with it as best as I could without filing down and filling the gap and I’d already done a few layers of the flesh at that point.

I made the base myself from coffee stirers.  Word of advice for anyone doing the same: The planks will expand as they absorb glue so leave a little room at each end.  I had to do repairs once they pushed themselves up.

I’m adding this to the new Spring Clean challenge.  Its a but cheeky as I’ve been working on this projct for months, but it is essentially one massive Spring Clean challenge.  I’m doing all the stuff that’s been sat ignored on my shelves for years and finally finishing it.  I hope to have everything outside of the undelivered and the Box of Undesireables (Mostly early Mantic stuff I’d rather sell as I don’t use and I got fed up of they way that materials resist a good cleanup) finished this year, and ideally about the same time that KD:M or AT:O gets delivered later this year.

I at least want to finish the 8 models on my desk (Averaging 2 a week under furlough so far) and the monthly extra model that arrives before KD:M gets here (Shipping May?).  That should just leave my untouched Super Fantasy Brawl core box before I do a stock take on the Box of Undesireables and admit I’m probably going to end up painting that after all.

I also have about 1.5l of resin to print before it expires around July.  I’m just waiting for the temperature to rise as I’m told prints fail below 20c and I don’t want to crank the heating up 24/7 all that way just for the printer.  I’m npt sure how others have kept the printing up over winter.  I should look in to printing some more 40K Khorne Daemons substitutes for an upcomming Crusade but I’ve no idea what I’ll want.  If anyone knows 40k Khorne Daemons and doesn’t mind offering advice I’d love a chat.  I hear they’re a little weak by themselves and I should plan on cross factioning it.  I’ve seen mention of adding Nurgle but adding Khorne Marines or just chaos marines seems more thematic but I’ve no clue of it fixes the issue.  I’d prefer to build and paint with an eye to playing in other game modes too.  I know Crusade is more open in what you can add to your army.

I’ve also got a £50 OTT store voucher expiring around June/July which may be spent on MCP or 40K, but I’d be open to a solo player alternative.  Anyone any suggestions?  I might consider the next Warhammer Quest if I knew anything about its campaign mode or gameplay, and if it’ll be out in time.

I finished off the Cockatrice and started work on it’s undead version straight after.  I’m not seeing them on the TTCombat store anymore.  Not sure if they are just out of stock or if they’ve been discontinued.  There are problems with these sculpts.  Quite a few bubbles, a squdged splodge on the living guys belly, and lots of gaps that needed attention.

The biggest issue is with the pose of the undead one.  See that rock he’s stood on?  Thats not part of the model.  He comes in that pose with a chunky clear flight stand.  No connection point on the base or the model so I assume I’m supposed to get a drill and put a huge hole in his belly for it.  That’d be so ugly and there’d be no ignoring it.  There’s no way a single pin through the dainty ankle of the single foot on the floor would support all that weight without a second support.  This guy is quite heavy.  This is a lareg reason why he’s been sat in my pile of shame for two years.  The rock was a Tutorial Tile from Asset Drop that was about the right height for the job.

There were a few washes on its flesh that I knew would take hours to dry so I got a lot of building work done while waiting.  The following guys got primed this weekend as a result.  Thats everything from my count built except one Ritual Casting model that intimidates the hell out of me because she’s 10″ tall and has 2 lightsabers and I’ve no clue how to do OSL (Help wanted: Got any tutorials that might help with red OSL on dark brown, grey or black cloth or leather?  She’s a Sith).  Super Fantasy Brawl needs checking for cleanup before priming still.

One of the prepped models is my first Carnivale one.  Its been washed twice and still won’t take primer.  It’s had 5-6 coats and its still as patchy as a thing thats very patchy.  I’m still prepping its base so it is going to get another coat anyway.  I’ve no idea if I’ve gotten unlucky or if this is a thing with all their models, or perhaps something about this particular sculpt?

I also received this month Community Challenge model from Monkeys With Fire and Micro Art Studios: Bernette Vigil for Wolsung.  She’s my next project and I’m layering coats of flesh as I type this.

I finished the ogres at last.  Took over a week due to distractions (See below) and all that fur on that mammoth / cat / thing.

Next up is TTCombats Cockatrice.  I saw this on a Weekender and loved it and instantly backed the KS.  I then won a copy of the Undead Cockatrice too so yay!

Question: Adding grey to paint apparently desaturates the colours.  Is anyone experienced with this and can offer advice?  I want to do that with these colours for the undead version.  If I add a little neutral grey to all the colours will they look dull and lifeless?  Should I go 50/50, or just add a drop?  Should I mix dark greys with dark colours and light with light, or just stick with a mid tone grey?

For my own reference later, here is the colours I’ve used so far:

Zenithal prime
Based flesh first (P3 Khardic Flesh)
Base Secret Weapon Tire Black (50/50 with thinner in airbrush)

spraying with the feathers to try and leave shade in the “steps” between from here on out

High 1 over all but flatter undersides: Secret Weapon Rubber
High 2 Secret Weapon Rubber Highlight towards the tips of outer feathers

Tips base: 6 parts Rubber, 6 parts, VMC 70.966 Turquoise 12 parts thinner
Tips high 1: added 5 parts VMC 70.808 Blue green and 5 parts thinner to what was left in my airbrush
Tips high 2: Added 2 parts VMC 70.918 Ivory and 2 parts thinner to what was left in my airbrish

Undecided at this time, but there will oikely be a pin wash of nuln oil in the cracks/edges.

Its 6pm on a saturday and I’ve just tried to keep painting her but I cannot.  My hands no longer hold a brush well enough for me to keep trying.  They don’t want to hold small things and they shake too much for me to do any precision work.  Nothing medical going on here (I hope).  Just gardening side effects.

The previous owners of my house left a lot of rocks and rubble down the bottom of my garden.  I have new neighbours and they are the first people to go in that back garden in 20+ years (its a nightmare over there).  They are making it habitable and want to redo my fence and have got a skip outside.  They’ve let me dump all my rocks in it so a fence can be put through where they would have been in the way.  I spent a day diging up all the rocks and another carrying everything to the skip that could be lifted.

Today I borrowed a sledgehammer, a pickaxe, a lump hammer and some masonry chisels and broke up the final 4 too-large-to-lift pieces.  A chunk of wall and 3 concrete lumps from the bottom of fence posts.  Right now my hands would happily work with the sledgehammer but they wont do fiddly things like untie my shoelaces, hold cutlery, or work with a paintbrush.  I hope this changes by the morning.  I guess I’m going to bed early and catching up on the Arrowverse tonight.

Pic 1: My garden early on in Lockdown after I started removing all the crap my absent housemate had put up for his chickens (deceased) that prevented us from getting to the bottom of the garden

Pic 2: My garden after the first day of digging with all the rocks smaller than a brick brought up to the patio out of shot for easier disposal

Pic 3: My garden 4pm today.  I am knackered and need new hands, but I’ve done the things I never thought I’d be able to do.