The Final Push – Lawnor approaches 100% painted

I’ve got 4 ogres to paint so I’m doing them all at the same time and trying to tie them all together.  Probelm is, the GW guys look like they want to wear clean crisp colours and the Atlantis Miniatures ogres look like they want to be wearing dirty earthen tones.  I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but I’ll likely head towards earthen tones.  I’ve finished the mount and painted the flesh and bones on the Ogres.  I should have them done by the end of the week.

I’ve got 4 ogres to paint so I’m doing them all at the same time and trying to tie them all together.  Probelm is, the GW guys look like they want to wear clean crisp colours and the Atlantis Miniatures ogres look like they want to be wearing dirty earthen tones.  I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but I’ll likely head towards earthen tones.  I’ve finished the mount and painted the flesh and bones on the Ogres.  I should have them done by the end of the week.

I painted up the last or my recent rpizes this week, all from Monkeys with Fire and donated by Reaper and Titan Forge

I’ve also been thinking towards future projects and done a little prep.  A year ago a friend gave me their unpainted Frostlord on Stonehorn and three sprues from its construction.  It came almost fully built.  The rider is separate and there’s 2 leather straps left on the sprue.  While working out it’s at that stage I also noticed there were enough parts on the sprue to build another ogre, so I now have an ogre crossbowman to paint too.

The Monkeys With Fire anniversary stream happened recently and I won a Reaper paint set, 2 minis, and some Micro Art Studio sci-fi billboards.  Along with my prizes, I also receiver the February comminuty challenge model: Small World Sophie by Reaper

While waiting for that box I also painted up a couple of prizes from MWF I’ve been saving from over the years.  I’ve since painted Sophie and Jada Twinsuns from the above delivery.

There it is.  The final model from the Conquest starter set: The Abomination.  That means all I have keft is 40 models to paint just for the fun of it, at least until the next big box arrives in a few months.

Spires Paint lists as a reminder to future me:

Bone

Base: P3 Jack Bone

Wash 1: Gw Seraphom Sepia

Wash 2: Handcraft Tabletop Terrain Wash Dunkelschatten / Dark brown Grey 267.01

Drybrush 1: P3 Menoth White Base

Drybrush 2: P3 Menoth White Highlight

Horns

Base: Mr Paint Brown-Grey

Drybrush 1: Mr Paint Dust Grey

Drybrush 2: Mr Paint Bine White

Wash/filter (Around base of each horn only): Brown-Grey with just a hint of Black

Dark Cloth

Base: P3 Coal Black

Wash: Gw Nuln Oil

Drybrush: I started with Coal Black mixed with Menoth White Base, but it was similat to p3 Trollblood Base so I switched to that for convenience.  it ended up a little more blue and less green as a result, but speed is the key to large armies

Burgundy Cloth (Menoth robes guide)

Base: P3 Sanguine Base

Wash: P3 Exile Blue, P3 Sanguine Base, P3 Coal Black

High 1: P3 Sangune Highlight

High 2: Sanguine Highlight & P3 Menoth White Base

Drone Flesh (Cryx Pallid Flesh)

Base: P3 Ryn Flesh, P3 Carnal Pink, & P3 Trollblood Highlight mix

Wash 1: Base + P3 Traitor Green

Wash 2: Wash 1 + P3 Beaten Purple

Wash 3: Beaten Purple, Traitor Green and P3 Midlund Flesh

High 1: Ryn Flesh, Carnal Pink & Pr Menoth White Highlight

Spire Flesh (Retribution of Scyrah Iosan Flesh)

Base: P3 Ryn Flesh and P3 Menoth White Base

Wash 1: Base + P3 Sanguine Highlight

Wash 2: Base + P3 Battledress Green

Wash 3: Sanguine Highlight and Battledress Green

High: Base + Menoth White highlight

Chitin

Base: 3-4 large brushes of Revell Aqua Colour Tar Black 361.06 to 1 drop VMC Turquoise 70.966 (On my first day of mixing and basing with this it came out more green than blue, but definitly dark.  When I mixed it up again later for a highlight it seemed more blue than green.  I don’t know what I did different.

Wash: GW Nuln Oil

Drybrush 1: Base

Drybrush 2: P3 Coal Black

Drybrush 3 on highest and sharpest edges only.  Keep this subtle: P3 Trollblood Base

Bug Eyes

Undercoat: Gloss Black

Airbrush Base: Turbo Dork Dark Net.  Only do one or two even coats and then spray from above so the colour is less strong on the undersides of the eyes.  I thought of this a little too late.

Post Varnish Treatment: I gave mine two coats of Satin varnish when all was done.

Red Gems

Undercoat: VGC 72.053 Chainmal

Base: Many layers ofAmmo Mig Acrylic Crystal A.MIG-093 Crystal Red.

Post Varnish Treatment:I gave them aonther coat or two to restore its glassy appearance.  This worked out better than just gloss varnish

Claws

Base: P3 Cryx Bane Base

Drybrush: P3 Hammerfall Khaki

Wash: I think I used GW Athonian Camoshade, but I ususally use GW Nuln Oil

Ceramic Mask

Base: P3 Trollblood Highlight

High 1: Added a little P3 Menoth White Base and kept adding a little more as I built up the layers

High 2: Final High 1 mix, with a little P3 Menoth White Highlight, adding more and more again

High 3: Last mix adding pure White again and again

Next up I chose the Demon of Lust by Klukva, bases on Slan from the manga Beserk.  I’ve not read it, but I won some Klukva vouchers a while back and I liked this model.  I’ve a large sith lady to paint soon and I’m looking for a good skin paint scheme for her so I picked up the Vallejo Nocturna Malefic Flesh set and thought I’d test out one of the three schemes on her.  I did not have the best experience.  If you have experience with this guide/set please let me know of your experiences.

Vallejo paint kits have been a mixed bag for me.  This is my fourth.  This one more so than the others had dissapointing instructions.  They aren’t instructions.  They’re a list if paints.  This might be fine for a high end painter, but for someone looking for help it’s almost worse than nothing.  Let’s take a look:

Pic 1: I have applied the recommended base colour.  Please note that it looks nothing like the image in the guide.  I am following the Purple Tones guide here.  In the pic she is light pinkish edging towards white.  On my model she is brown.  Only one paint has been asked for so far.  The colours should not be so different.  Either someone is not telling the whole truth or those pictures are really bad.

Pic 2: I started applying some of the first highlights and just no.  This is wrong.  I’m starting again.  They are clearly assuming skills and knowledge they are not discussing, if not outright lying to us.  Time for me to redo a base coat, get out my largely unused wet pallette and try doing this while reading between the lines.

So here’s what I did, more or less

Base and highlight 1: I added a little of their first highlight to their base colour and got an even coat over the model.  I then put a blob of their base and their first highlight on a wet pallette and smudged them together, creating a smooth transition acorss the blend from which I could apply multiple stages of thin highlights over my model.

Shade: I took their base colour and smudged it in to their shade colour as above and did the same again.

Final highlight: Same but smudging my first highlight in to a little of their final highlight

At no point did my colours match their photos, but I like the results.  I need to work on my thinning and wet pallette use, but I do like the tones.  It reminds me of the PP Cryx Pallid Flesh recipe, which I’ve always liked.  Maybe others can match the photos with these paints, but I feel their guide pics are misleading and I’m happy enough with my results.

Time to test of the Nocturna Flesh Blue Tones recipe on Raging Heroes Shiveryah:

Pic 3: Now my photos are starting to be misleading.  While her purple tones weren’t as vibrant as in the guide, she was more purple to the naked eye.  A pale grey-purple.  Step 2 was to highlight with Pale Flesh and yet in their photos the model just gets more purple.  There’s no purple in Pale flesh.  Its a pale flesh colour.  Its like their pics aren’t meant to show you what they’ve done, but are clean repaints of the same piece using just the colour they’ve mentioned.

Pic 4: I’ve followed their guide as best as I can using the techniques discussed for the Demon of Lust.  What I have now is someone with pale purple Dark Elf skin and I really like it, but it is drastically different to what I can see in their photos and not what I was working towards.  Now I’m writing this I’m lookin at Pic 4 below and it does not match the model on my desk, so I’m guessing cameras don’t show this paint shceme very well?  I would not call this Blue Tones.  It’s more purple than the Purple Tones recipe above.

This just leaves the Green Tones recipe to test.  I don’t have a model to hand that is asking for that.  I’ll have to have a hunt around and see what I want to test that on.

So far, I rate these paints, but the guide is misleading/lying.  The colours are all muted and desaturated and I have achieved good results with them.  It’s just a shame they didn’t take a little more time over the guide.

If you have experience working with this guide please let me know of your experience below.  Am I the problem here, or have others had similar experiences?

If anyone at OTT is reading this I’d love an Edit button at the top as well as the bottom of the project entries.  My entries keep getting long and longer and always require many edits.

I finished work on the last of the Spire Drones and the two Spire themed objectives from the Conquest 2 player starter set over the weekend.  This leaves me with only 40 models left to paint, still ignoring the bits box and the box of stuff I’d much rather sell, although I’ve made no attempts to sell since Covid as unnecessary trips to the post office seem bad for everyone.

I’ve built and primed the final model from the box, the Abomination.  He’s bigger than I thought and a real pain to stick together.  The tricky part was pinning each leg to the body and aligning each of the feet with the legs in such a way that the feel all touch the floor in a plausable way and all four feet fit on the base, which I think could do with being bigger for this guy.

I also built and primed a few fun models for afterwards so I wouldn’t have to wait for anything to dry further down the line.   I’ve just been put on furlough so it would be a shame to waste any of that hobby time.

I’ve had a productive week.  I finished the first 12 Force Grown Drones and went back and painted the hat I had missed on the Pheromancer because the studio paint scheme has it painted bone, but the art has it painted as cloth.  I always thought cloth made more sense, but I’m not an alien elf bioengineer so what do I know?

Monkeys With Fire’s January community painting challenge was to paint a Zanshi from Infinity (Donated by Corvus Belli).  I’ve painted mine up following the Angel Giraldez guide books as an attempt to learn.  I’m quite happy with the results.  The white and the yellow were airbrushed on but I removed the paint from most of one kneecap while painting the trousers and had to paint it back by hand.  I can’t see the difference so I’m quite chuffed.  This was a welcome change of pace from all the batch painting I’ve been doing.  On that subject, I’ve already laid down the first coat of the blue/green cloth on the next 12 drones.

Oh, hey!  Look at that.  I’m back under the number of models to paint that I was at when I started this project!  I do have 1.5ish litres of resin to use up when the temperature rises.  I’ve a robot dragon to print and who knows what else.

I’ve finished painting the Spire Brute Drones.  I thought I’d finished painting the Phermancer too.  He matches the studio paint scheme, but then I saw the art work and his hat is cloth and not bone like with the studio scheme.  This makes much more sense to me so I’m going to go back and paint that when I paint the cloth on the final 12 Drones as I’m almost done on the first 12 now

I also received my prize minis from MonkeysWithFire.  It also included my free mini for the MWF January Community Challenge, donated by Corvus Belli: a Yu Jing Zanshi trooper with a Micro Arts Studios MDF base insert.  A bunch of us are painting the same mini and should have pics sent back by 2nd January.  I have the Angel Giraldez books so I’ll be looking to follow them.