NEW LEAD

Not a huge amount of progress on the painting front for this update as I was busy drawing the Golden Goblin for use in the upcoming old-school paint battle being organized by Orllygg:
http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/da-golden-gobbos-very-easy-going.html

Above are both versions of the Golden Gobbo, the original black line version created with a fine liner and the  filed in version that took a silly amount of time using photoshop's bucket fill tool as I couldn't workout a quicker way, I'm, sure there is one but the end result is pretty good so I can't complain


This update is more of a more of a here's what's damaged my wallet this week kind of update.

First up we have some more giants/ogres:

The guy on the left is one of the brilliant Nick Biddy Citadel Giants that I purchased as part of a random ebay lot, he's missing his club but I should be able to fashion one pretty easily.
The special needs looking guy on the right is an extremely old school Fiend Factory FF16-1 Giant Troll Attacking with Spiked Club (you can see him here in the ninth row down, http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Fiend_Factory_-_FF)
He looks like he's been moulded out of play-dough and is a completely horrible basic sculpt all runny melted wax details and soft edges but I still love him. I imagine he's the product of the horrible union between a troll and an ogre and hopefully when he's painted up he' fit right in with the other giant-kin family I seem to be collecting.

Next up is a repaint of a D&D Loyal Earth Elemental jazzed up with the edition of some basing material to make him look like he's recently been raised.

I should have put in a normal figure for scale but to get an idea he's mounted on a 50mm base so he's/it's fairly large.

Next up a ton of random citadel, and other manufacturers mini's

Two Rangers from this range (http://www.solegends.com/citc/c07rangers.htm) and a slightly later citadel knight

A Citadel Hobgoblin beast-master, an Aly Morrison Kobold from this range:
http://www.dndlead.com/Citadel/ADDMonsters.htm and a Grenadier Demon that will fit in well with a Beastman warband

More old school orcs

More Orcs

Big Grin the Half Orc (http://www.solegends.com/citc/c10halforcs.htm) what I think is an Essex great scaly Orc and an early chaos knight

What I think is Chainmail mini, a solid base Chaos Fighter (Vargus Soul Stealer) and a fantastic Bob Olley black Orc

Some Fiend factory stuff I think and something that looks like a really squashed alien

A Chainmail Dwarf, a chaos snail from scibor and some early fiend factory trolls

And finally what will be some causality markers when they're painted up.

Terrain Progress

Just a quick update on the Terrainathon, here's what I got up to over the weekend:

Not quite finished on the tree front as I can't get a foliage that looks right, I may give the old pan scourers another try but for now all they need is a little highlighting and some ground flock adding and they're usable. I didn't manage to get in a game of anything as the terrain making seemed to take a lot longer than I had anticipated but hopefully sometime this weekend I may be able to squeeze in a game.

I haven't done much else in the way of painting but I have nearly finished the  Golden Gobbo pic that I'm putting together for Orlygg's old school painting comp, he just needs tweaking slightly and scanning and he's ready to go.

INCOMING TERRAINATHON (?)

As my wife has agreed to play something in the way of a wargame at the weekend I decided as she's never played anything in the way of tabletop games I'd better get hold of some simple easy to pick up rules so with this in mind I purchased 'Song of Blades and Heroes'. After skim reading some reviews online it sounded perfect and I should hopefully be able to give it try on Sunday that is providing I can blitz through some terrain creation on Saturday

My plan at the weekend is to create enough scenery to cover our small living room coffee table for a small 5-10 vs 5-10 skirmish involving the outskirts of a small farming community. At the moment the list of things I need to create over the weekend are as follows:

Various sizes of wheat/crop fields, using the cut up door mat method
Sections of track way/ dirt roads from vinyl floor tiles
Paint up the Dry-stone walls that I nabbed off ebay
Create some CD sized forest pieces using twigs and pan scourers.
Base up some of the aquarium plants I have for undergrowth
Paint up a cheap towel to use as a gaming matt similar to what's used on the Last Chance War blog (http://lastchancewar.blogspot.co.uk/)

Hopefully if I manage to finish all of this time I should have a decent serviceable setup for future bat reps.
All of the above has to be created without making any noticeable mess otherwise Mrs Ilikepainting lead will cut me so wish me luck.

Not a huge amount of miniature progress this week:

I've no idea who manufactured the sheep but in my opinion it's an awesome mini. The peasant with the sheep is I think a Foundry mini but for the life of me can't find him on their site, he came with

Next up we have what I think is a Ral Partha or Grenadier wraith and a citadel wraith from the Night Horror range. On all of the bases above I've tried to jazz them up with the addition of what's supposed to be leaf litter. To create this I mashed up some po-pourri with some devlan mud and stuck it down using Matt varnish and it seems to have worked pretty well and as a bonus these mini's now smell like vanilla.

As I never know how to end a post I'm going to starting signing off with images that I've taken kind of like a visual full stop, there will be no rhyme or reason to these photo's only that I took them:

Switzerland November 2011

GESSO GOODNESS

I've not got a huge amount finished this week but I have made a fantastic discovery and that discovery is Bob Ross Artists Gesso.

Some time ago whilst perusing the Lead Adventures forum I came across a thread all about base coating preferences and techniques. In said thread someone was extolling the virtues of Artists Gesso, so when I noticed a bottle of Bob Rock grey Gesso in town on my last pound and charity shop recky I thought I'd give it a shot.

I can confirm that Gesso is the greatest thing ever to happen in the field of undercoating miniatures and here follows my weird rambling sort of review on Gesso

Here's the gesso I purchased, If I remember rightly it was around £10-£12 for the 475ml bottle which compared to the citadel fortress grey I was using previously is a bargain. At the current rate, to purchase 475ml of fortress grey would set me back roughly £90.

The first thing you'll notice about the gesso is it's consistency, it pours with a similar 'flow' to cream which means that undercoating things like chainmail and fur take no time at all as it runs into all the low lying details and flows off the brush perfectly. The lead adventures thread that was all about gesso mentioned that you could literally dump the gesso onto mini's really thickly and not worry about clogging up any fine details due to the way it dries. Without seeing examples for myself I was very sceptical until I tried it on a test figure, I've included an example of the process below using a very finely detailed Reaper mini.

Here's the bare metal mini:

Here she is again with the Gesso slapped on quickly and thickly, note the obscured detail on the hair (click to enlarge):

Finally here's the mini once the Gesso is dry:

Due to the way it contracts and shrinks as it dries you can see the gesso hasn't obscured anything on the figure and in some respects has done too perfect a job as it's made the mold lines I thought I'd sorted really stand out :)

So after the grey gesso revelation I decided to spend yesterday undercoating a ton of stuff ready for painting  and made a start on a couple of townsfolk of unknown manufacture and a couple wraiths from various different companies:

Cheers Bob Ross

CITADEL SOLID BASE C28 GIANT

Unfortunately I've not made any progress with the terrain that I started last week, so instead here's a mostly Giant based update.

Just finished painting one of the Early Citadel C28 Giants, the ones with the separate weapons and heads, the one highlighted below:

There's some more pics of the various parts up on the collecting citadel mini's wiki:
http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Giants_-_C28_(solid_base)

I nabbed him on ebay for a couple of pounds awhile back as I think he was listed as an unknown wargame troll or something along those lines which was lucky as these early figures seem to go for silly money.

Here he is again this time with a flash:

I'm not 100% sure on the colour of his clothing as I don't think it contrasts enough with his skin tone, I should have gone with a similar colour to his belt or a more earthy blue.
And here he is with the small orc warband I've got going,

NEW ADDITIONS THIS WEEK:

This week I've added this lot to the lead pile:

He's one of these guys, sculpted by Nick Biddy and released in 1987:

He's a little on the flat side detail wise with not much in the way of definition but should hopefully look good alongside the other giant once he's painted up.

Along with the fella above I got these two guys:

The first of the two is the Citadel Giant Hill Troll sculpted by Kev Adams. Ever since I saw him on the amazing Somewhere the Tea's getting cold blog (http://teasgettingcold.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/mane-attraction.html) I've wanted to add him to the collection. He has such a dopey looking face and should fit right in with the Orc warband. The second figure is one of the amazing Jes Goodwin Ogres (http://www.solegends.com/citc/c23ogres.htm).

Also managed to nab the old citadel Zombie Dragon along with an early Citadel Creeping Young Dragon for £12.

They turned up as a buy it now for them both and as people seem to be asking for £30-50 buy it now for just the Zombie dragon I went for it. The Zombie Dragon needs a little more cleaning up and sorting out as there a ton of really deep recess's clogged with paint and I seem to be missing the very tip of the tail along with the neck being broken in half. It should hopefully be easy to sort out with a little pinning and some greenstuff.

Also nabbed a couple of the dwarf Lords of legend for a future dwarf warband.

Lastly but by no means least I finally managed to get hold a copy of Slaves To Darkness for a decent price (under £40) which seems crazy as there are still copies being bid on that are over the £50 mark, all I need now is a copy of Warhammer Armies and the Siege book and I'll be completely Oldhammered.