MASS PAINTING ATTEMPT

In anticipation of the metric shitton of Mini's that I bought in for as part of the Reaper Bones Kickstarter I've decided to cease my ebay activities for awhile to try and catch up with the huge backlog that I've been steadily building up. I've found over the last couple of months I've spent most of my hobby time prepping mini's ready to be painted only for another load to turn up in the post as soon as I'm finished. With this in mind I've decided to break my models up into groups based on basic tones and colour pallets for example all the 'greenskins' together, all the pink fleshy things in one group and anything undead in another group and so on.

So to start with here's everything pink and fleshy ready to be 'fleshed' up, the thinking behind this is that if I get all the base shading done on all the mini's in a oner I can add variation in skin tone etc at the last stage with the highlighting:

Here they all are flesh based and washed in Ogryn Flesh wash and some Devlan Mud for the deeper recesses.

Here's a nearly finished example of what I'm going for across all the figures.

Below (on the right of the pic) is the last mini I received before my self imposed ebay ban, if anyone knows what range he's from let me know as he was just listed as a 'wargames giant'. There are no markings on his base and I'm guessing from the crudity of the sculpt that he's from late 70's or early 80's. To add to the mystery he seems to be cast in some very strong heavy duty metal as he weighs a ton despite being hollow and his sword is the least bent piece of lead I've seen. So if you have any idea give me a shout.

The only finished paint job I have for this update is an old Ral Partha Goblin Archer from their Fantasy Collector Series, i've gone for a more yellowy skintone rather than the usual green. This is also probably the last time that I do this as it was so fiddly but I managed to string his bow as it always bugs me seeing un-stringed bows. As I didn't have any wire thin enough to hand I used a stray beard hair which I won't be doing again as I don't think my nerves could take it due to the tendency of me to loose the hair due to me breathing near it. I've taken the photo's of the Goblin against two different colour backgrounds as I'm still not sure which shows off the mini best, please let me know which you think works best in the comments below.  

And on a completely none mini related note here's a picture of Gilbert one of my cats chilling on the couch

A FEW NEW PAINTED ITEMS

Finished a few old Citadel Minotaurs to add to the beastman group, they're all part of this set:

I've had these four guys for years and would love to have the full-set but at the moment they all seem to go for silly money on ebay. I've got a couple of the Minotaur lords somewhere that I need to add to the group but I'm done with painting minotaurs for the time being.

The next one up is a Blood Bowl minotaur that fits in with the rest of them quite well as I imagine that minotaurs don't need much in the way of weaponry.

Next up is a Grenadier Demon (Hadeus Lord of Herds)

And here's the guys all together

Also just finished a member of the Dwarf Kings court (http://www.solegends.com/citboxes/dwfkingsct/index.htm)

As you can probably tell he's painted up to resemble a certain Rodent wizard, I'm really happy with the free hand on his hat.

This week I finally caved and put in for the Reaper Bones Kickstarter, they're up to over a million now with four days to go and they keep adding amazing rewards, honestly check out what you get for the $100 pledge, honestly look at it:

How good is all that, if you haven't already dropped your pennies go do it as it means that I'll get more stuff for my cash :)

TERRAIN TUTORIAL (RUINS)

As a couple of people were asking how I do my mossy ruins in the last post I've created a quick tutorial so you can all give it a go:

First up grab your materials:

 For this I'm using the left over scraps of packing foam that I had from builds in the last post and a scrap of self adhesive floor tile that I'll be using as the base. You can pick up packs of these floor tiles from most pound shops with various finishes. There's also no reason why you can't use other materials for the ruins (card, polystyrene etc) this is just what I had to hand.

Cut your sections of foam up into suitably sized pieces making sure to carve up the edges and corners for an uneven finish. Now stack/glue them up however you want, I used cheap craft PVA (White glue) and for extra security pushed some cocktail sticks through the centre of the stack for extra stability. Make sure you leave this to set overnight possibly even longer depending on your glue.

For the next step take a tube of ready mixed filler or any other Poly filla (Spackle) type substance and slap it on randomly to your pile of foam. I didn't notice until I'd already started slapping on the filler that I had I used a different type of filler to my previous builds, on this build I seem to have used an ultra-fine type filler that was a little crumbly once dry. On the previous pieces in the previous post I think I've used a filler that dries to a more rubbery finish that has a little give which in the long run should stop any chipping or cracking. Without the aid of time travel I can't tell you which of these will last the longest but in my head the more rubbery of the two should.

Slap the filler over your pile of foam, don't worry about covering the whole thing just try to end up with a 'random' finish. If you're using a less textured material you may want to add some sand to your filler.

Next add your ground cover, mine is the same mix of Sand, pebbles, railway ballast and desk scrapings mixed with PVA into a kind of basing porridge. It's the same stuff that I use to base all my mini's which I keep in an airtight Tupperware that stops it setting (sort of).

I seem to have missed a photo for this step but after everything is dry base coat your stack in black for anything that's stone and brown for your grassy areas, I use these acrylic paints:
http://www.theworks.co.uk/Acrylic-Paint---Black/5052089003170.html
but any craft paint will do.

Once your base coat is dry, highlight the rocky areas up through your greys to a light dry brushing of white.
I just used what I had to hand which was Codex Grey, Fortress Grey and White Scar.

Once your stone work is dry take some washes (I use green, sepia and black) and start added patches to break up the grey stone, again don't worry about how the ink goes on just slap it on.

Next you can finish of the grass base by highlighting up through the green's to yellow on the areas that you under-coated brown.

Next up is the part that really makes the ruins look realistic. For the moss and leaf litter I use a mixture of two different Gale Force 9 scatters, (SPRING UNDERGROWTH GF9010 and I think Dark Conifer Flock Blend GF9011) I also use a home made flock of crushed up popuri dyed using inks to simulate dead leaves (in the top of the top picture), lastly are some off cuttings from a doormat.

Firstly take your brown dead looking flock and mix it with some matt varnish until you get a sort of clumpy mess. Don't worry about the colour, the varnish gives everything a blueish tinge when wet but dries clear.

Now start pasting your flock onto your ruin using a coffee stirrer, try to stick to edges or anywhere that you could see leaves fall settle and pile up.

Next mix up your green moss flock in a similar fashion to the previous step and start piling it on in any cracks or crevices.

 I add a few little bits of the home-made leaf litter to give it a little more texture and for the final touch I add a few bits of the door-matt with some tweezers and a tiny bit of super glue:

So there you go, give it a shot and let me know how you get on and let me know if there's anything missing from the tutorial or if there are any crazy spelling mistakes.

BACK IN THE SWING OF THINGS

I'm well and truly back in the swing of things now and managed to fire together some more terrain in the same vein as the stuff in the last post:.

All really simple to put together but in the end look really good.

I also managed to finish 5 more mini's, the long plan is to have a multitude of warbands covering as many factions/races as possible so for now this is the start of my beastman/were group. They're all from varying ranges and manufacturers but sit well together, here's the group together.

 I'll try and breakdown where they're all from with each image.

First up is a Runequest Broo, awesome solid-base old-schoolness with integral shield and obligatory mohawk. Here's the original promo drawing for the range, he's on the bottom left:

Next up we have a C38 Chaos Beastman, apparently he's labelled as Wolfman even though he looks more catish. I've just noticed that I've messed up on the toenails so I'll be revisiting him soon.

Next up is a Fiend Factory werewolf, more from the range here:
http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Fiend_Factory_-_FF

 Lastly are two what I think are Grenadier mini's

Finally here are some group shots as I think they look awesome:

On a separate note if you haven't checked out the Reaper kickstarter go and have a look as it's looking pretty awesome at the moment, I haven't added my support but I strongly suspect I will before the last 12 days are up.