And we were doing so well!

I guess the run of regular and frequent posts had to come to an end sooner or later. We shall remember that shining period fondly, but as the old saying goes: "You should absolutely cry over spilt paint - that shit's expensive".

Nevertheless, here we are with another post (just in time for the end of the year!). I have not been idle the last while, just extremely busy leading to not as much painting as I'd like and even less posting about it. But I have a few items to show you and without any further preamble here they are!

These are some tribal warriors from Osprey Games, painted and based with a Mesoamerican theme for a commission I took on a while back. They're going to be figures for a roleplaying game and it was a lot of fun trying out dark skin tones, vibrant colours, and muddy, jungly bases. I'm very happy with how they came out, and so was the recipient.

This is just the first installment of the miniatures I painted for this campaign - still to come are some more enemies and, of course, player characters. There will, however, be a small delay posting about them as I want to ensure I don't spoil any of the Dungeon Master's carefully-designed plot.

Until next time, and, indeed, next year - happy painting!

A Month of Mayhem

It's been pretty quiet here, huh?

The last month or so has been hectic for me. I haven't painted as much as I'd wanted. I've also not finished anything in a while - instead, most of my projects are WIP or just getting started. Some have barely moved past the planning stage. Still, we're overdue for an update here, so I'll let you know what's going on hobby-wise.

I'm not entering into the Everchosen competition. I really wanted to, because I need to push my painting again to improve and competitions are a great way to do this, but I just didn't have time to paint something for it with personal and non-hobby things getting in the way. Also, the models I really want to paint next aren't eligible as the rules state that entries have to be current GW miniatures, and the model I had prepped for that kind of painting next is long OOP. Ah well. I'm going to aim for Golden Demon next year, anyway.

I have several projects on my painting table right now. I'm still playing around with contrast paints and plan to make a post dedicated to them soon. I've got anther unit of skeletons half-finished, and a bunch of undercoated ghouls (I found another 10!), and some dwarf slayers and eldar rangers waiting to be undercoated. I'm also working on a ghoul king I had lying around.

This blog is slowly being updated to move all my photos to blogger's archive instead of photobucket. I found out recently they've been sticking an ugly logo over my beautiful models so I've started the tedious task of downloading my images one at a time and replacing them. It'll be done by the end of the year... I hope.

I'm taking commissions again! It's been a while since I've painted for anyone but friends and family (and myself) but as I've had good feedback from selling painted models online and I need a budget for my hobby again, I figure it's time to give it another go. Plus, I often find when I'm overwhelmed by my own pile of painted miniatures it's easier to work on someone else's! I've added a page with details of the service I offer and a rough guide to what I charge.

More or less you're now up to date. If you've read this far you've definitely earned a photo. Here's a couple of WIP shots of my Ghoul King (base is still drying!):

(These photos were taken with a phone camera which I think is making the contrast a little more extreme than it really is. I'll play around with the setting for future pictures but for now it's something I can try to improve on the model itself.)

Until next time, happy painting!

Skaven Warlord

Some models just don't want to be painted. This was one of those models.

I started this model years ago after getting it into my head that yellow and red would be a good colour scheme for some skaven. This guy was to be a tester for my other models (as you can see from Snikch my colour scheme went out the window) and I originally wanted him to be display level. Unfortunately, while I had a lot of fun with the yellow the red gave me a lot of grief. After a couple of days trying to get it the way I wanted, I stood back from the model and decided I didn't like any of it very much. Worse, I didn't know what to do with it. So I shelved the project and moved onto something else, and this Skaven Warlord has been sitting on my "to paint" shelf, blu tacked to a paint pot for longer than any other model.

Then, just a few days ago I was playing with my new contrast paints (expect another post on them soon) and I'd run out of undercoated models... except for this guy! So I decided I'd make him a test for using contrast paints in combination with my usual painting techniques. Two (or maybe three?) days later he was finished, and I'm very pleased with the results. He's not display level by any means, but he's definitely a nice tabletop level.

Anyway, I hope you like him. It'll be a while before the next rat appears on my blog!

Until next time, happy painting!

Slapdash Dwarf Thunderers Part 2

Waaay way back in this blog I introduced my slapdash dwarves with a unit of 10 thunderers. I'm sure you'll agree 10 is hardly enough for a dwarf army, and fortunately I had some more collected from Battle for Skull Pass sets! I painted these guys ages ago and completely forgot to share them, but better late than never I suppose.

These are all my thunderers, including the 10 from the earlier post, above. As you can see, I have a third champion masquerading as a rank and file troop in the back to make two units of 14, but I'm very happy with them nonetheless.

I'm also trying out my old photo background which I cut to fit into my lightbox. I think it's a good change, but I'll have to be on the lookout for some slightly darker card as it looks more grey than black.

Finally, you might have noticed there's a new feature on the blog - a contact form! As I mentioned in my previous post - I've decided to start taking on some commissions again to support my hobby, and now there's a way to actually get in touch with me if you're interested in having me paint something for you. While there are lots of examples of my work and style on this blog to give you an idea of what to expect if you commission me, I'll be painting some new models specifically to show the quality I aim for with commissions (definitely not slapdash!). They'll be coming up shortly.

Until next time, happy painting!

Blood Angel Scouts

Are you ready for some photos? You sure? Well here they are!

I decided to experiment with my Blood Angels colour recipe on a unit, and after looking through my unbuilt collection was delighted to discover some scouts that I'd forgotten about. I love space marine scouts and these guys were a lot of fun to paint. I spent extra time on the end adding freehand to all of them, and the heavy weapon model got extra love on his chapter symbol. If  When I paint more Blood Angels I'll push the highlights on the red more with the airbrush - something I didn't catch until I was painting the other elements on the model - but apart from that I'm very pleased with them.

As I don't really need them in any army and there's no point them gathering dust on my shelves, I've decided to try to sell them on eBay (here if you're interested). I see a lot of "pro-painted" models that go for ridiculous amounts relative to the actual quality of the painting and I know these are better than most of them, so I figured I'll have a go at getting a ridiculous price, too. I've set them at what I'd expect a commission painter to charge and if I get something close I'd be happy. If not, well, I can always rethink my pricing structure or just keep them. I've also put my competition winning captain up there (here).

Finally, I've decided to start accepting commissions again. I used to many years ago but stopped due to time constraints. Now I'd like to have a little spare cash to fund my hobby as well as paint a wider variety of models, so will be looking to take on projects on a casual basis. If you're interested, there'll be a contact me button appearing here soon.

Thanks for looking, and happy painting!

Slapdash Dwarf Cannon

With only a few models left to complete for my slapdash dwarf army, here are the first of my warmachines:

These models were painted a long time ago, but as warmachines now have bases in The Ninth Age I needed to source some 60mm round ones to finish the off, which I have finally done. As the crew were already based I decided to leave them serparate.

The cannon themselves aren't the best - they were painted long before the crews one lazy day when I just felt like slapping paint on something. I probably should go back and touch up the metal with some washes and another highlight, but that's not really in the slapdash spirit, so they'll probably get left as they are. A couple of models have also collected some fantastic dust (the rest have only collected respectable dust), which is yet another reminder that I need to invest in a proper display cabinet. (They clean up just fine, but I've too many things to work on without retaking photos, so they'll just have to be a permanent reminder to also dust better before photos.)

Anyway, I hope you like them. I'm just looking forward to having a fully painted army for once.

Until next time, happy painting!