Bits Bits and Bobs

Alot of how much we are willing to pay for something comes down to how much of it we get. There's also the detail, accuracy and quality of sculpting, etc. But most things in miniature modelling on are a similar level these days and fall into similar price brackets. If you are a student scumming off my parents like I am, or have screaming kids, or are just plain old fiscally aware (Scroogey) then we really want to save money while still enjoying ourselves in our hobby.

I thought about it long and hard. Then I decided I would sit down and compare some similar kits from different companies and see what kindof quality and volume you got from them.

Then I thought this was boring and thought I would make use of my intense gymnastic and martials arts training as a young, orphaned child and instead dressed up as a catwoman/ninja and broke into a Modelzone warehouse to steal tanks and glue. Previously I had only used my skills for breaking into fine art institutions containing legendary works of art or the guarded houses of old horrible ladies owning piles of jewels. Silently and invisible skulking around buildings, ducking out of sight of wandering flashlights and the gazes of portly underpaid security guards. Applying amazing strength and finesse to bound over complicated sensors and detection systems.Sneaking up on highly trained guard dogs to give them paralyzing belly rubs before they could scent me and become aggressive.

The warehouse was different. It wasn't easy like stealing a Faberge Egg. I couldn't put swanky music and a suit on and just whisk it out from under someones nose in an overly complicated but dull series of stupid coincidences and waste of acting talent. This would take planning, practice, and skill.

I planned a route through the building. I could get in through a small window on the top level of storage, but I would not be able to leave through it again with a full bag on my back. Thinking back I could have pushed the bag through first and then followed myself, but it's too late now. Maybe next time I crave hundreds of tiny contacta glues I'll try it.

Entry should have been simple. I just had to climb up the side of the building using the guttering and then swing myself through the unlocked window. I should have been wearing my giant whiskers; my ass got stuck and I made a loud ooph noise as my momentum was stolen. Approaching footsteps told me that the men working the night shift were not accustomed to their boxes making oomph noises and had come over the see if there was anything happening. I saw his belly round the corner first and began a desperate wiggle to escape.

You may think you have wiggled desperately, but until you are stuck halfway through a window with your arse in the rain and a fat man waddling towards you with a flash light you haven't wiggled at all. It chaffed slightly.

I can suck my stomach in. I haven't worked out how to suck my ass in so decided to abandon the window idea and finally pulled myself out. My swearing and clanging on the metal of the walls had made quite a racket and attracted the attention of the men doing inventory overnight. They had all come to my position, and as I clung to the guttering outside I could here someone getting the lift over to check the window.

A graveyard shift - not many of them in the building. I slide down the soaked pipe with much swearing and I think I ripped my trousers too. I legged it as fast as I could to the side door, propped open so the blokes could stick their head out for a cigarette every so often. Luckily the downpour was heavy, as I ran like a cat being soaked in the rain - yowling and hissing everytime my foot hit a puddle and arching my back and baring my teeth when water sloughed off the side of the building down my back. I poked my head in and grabbed the first small box off a shelf that I could see. Then I popped back out and splashed home in the rain, elated with my success.

Sitting at home I decided although I had the option of employing years worth of intense training and skill, I should use it for good - like Batman. That was why I had chosen to emulate catwoman after all. And ninjas. There were ninjas in the first Batman film. So here's a comparison of what you can get in different boxes, and what kindof price you can get them at.

My father and I sat down together to build a Revell Truck thing from the 1950's or sometime around then. I'd picked up the thingy and a Sherman tank by Revell for about £8 each at Modelzone on sale. They are 1:35 scale; a tiny bit bigger than 40K scale.

This was the beastie we were putting together. I didn't think it would be too big a deal - then I pulled out the sprues and saw the hundreds of tiny its. Father and I decided to go crazy and follow the instructions. It started us off building the engine; we were building from the inside out.

Yes I understand this

 Here's the sprues

These are the canvas sheets that cover the form of the track, and some external accessories like the jerry cans. 

Here's a mix of things including shocks, window wipers and strange magical components that make vehicles go broom broom.

Some more external components like the wheel covers. 

The set even comes with tiny window wipers and mirors.

It took damn well ages to get anything put together. Here's what we managed to get assembled.

We realized as we tried to go further from here that we were putting together very fiddly things that we kept crushing with our stupid impracticed hands like the clutch pedal. Instead we decidedto start building things from the outside in, and see what bits were left over.

Essentially the truck is a cube and therefore only requires six pieces to complete, give or take a few. There's so much on the sprue that is aimed at people wanting historical accuracy but in reality there's not much needed for the model to work structurally. Most of it can be used as mechanical bits in bases or in conversions.

Most non-GW type sets come with these. Revell, Dragon, some Tamiya sets. Even if you don't want the model itself, or the set isn't the right scale these are really good to pick up when you see them on sale and use for parts. The actual outside of this truck for example would be really good half buried in a diorama.

I inhaled too much and then cleaned a bath for two hours with a toothbrush.

Today has been interesting. Went into town centre to pop into Hobbycraft, Gamesworkshop and Modelzone. Grabbed Badad Black so now I have all of the GW washes! Much to my delight and dismay we discovered that the Modelzone sold Vallejo paints: the only time I've seen them outside of the internet! I bought salmon pink, chocolate brown and flat brown, and the large old gold, gold and white golds! Hobbycraft had Winsor and Newton series 7 brushes - left with the 000, 0 and 1.

A good, but expensive day overall!

Oooh and I bought a doughnut!

The rest of the day was spent on the titular activity; stripping a set of sisters of battle. I had left them in some fairy power spray before I went out and set about scrubbing them off with a toothbrush in the bath when I got back. I managed to flick paint absolutely everywhere over the bath! I should've taken a photo... but it was completely covered. I'd thought I would just be able to wash it away. Alas - twas not to be.

Where the fairy spray had dried of the flicks of paint it had dried on to the bath and wall tiles. I had to cover it in spray and scrub that all down to: with a toothbrush. It's not my bath either so I was determined to leave it spotless lest I suffer the grump of James' dad. Soooo many tiny spots of paint... soooo much scrubbing...

I don't know if you're ever used fairy power spray but its very fumey and you are definitely not supposed to inhale it. This didn't stop me! Oh boy did I huff and puff and scrub that bath down.

Nearly two hours, spraying, scrubbing, wheezing. Lightheaded, throat and lungs burning, wrists tired, toothbrushes mangled. I will be damned if that is not the cleanest a bath has ever flipping been though! Me too, I think. I'm surprised I didn't go blind over that stuff for two hours.

That shirt makes me look morbidly obese! I haven't brushed my teeth for bed this evening because I do not want to get into that stupid bathroom ever again >: |

Then I had the joy of filing down all the lines and crap on my newly naked models. Nearly got around to priming them - ended up deciding my last shred of will to live was more important. Going to be using the halfords primer from now on. I had to strip most of these models because of the awful coverage they got from the skull white. The couple I'd tried the halfords on, however, were smooth and fine; no missed bits, no bubbles, no loss of detail, very strong opaque colour, uniform coverage. I most definitely think the halfords primer outstrips the citadel by miles. The spray is better as well. Much less waste when I used it compared to skull white.

There will be actual reviews of the primers soon so I'll stop rambling on about them now. Still very lightheaded and spaced.

On the train to and from town today I was sat making a list of things to add to the blog;

Guides - paints, brushes, airbrushes, mediums, painting techniques, colour theory, thinning paints, an affordable approach to the hobby

Tutorials for the other various stages of painting miniatures. Making scenery. Actually getting the photos sorted out for the two that are up.

More variety in the inspiration page

Links pages

Reviews of products

A special army themed update each week showing awesome conversions and paint jobs

Overviews of armies/units/fluff once a week

Guide to the different games/miniature model brands

Weather and effects

and a few other random bits.

For now I am going to curl up in bed and watch some Deadly Premonition. If you haven't heard of it - don't look up anything about it, just start watching it here.

Trust me, do not look up anything about it and persevere with it. Especially if you liked Twin peaks this game is amazing and the mystery that unfolds is done brilliantly.

Neck Ache

I spent hours cranning my neck over some sisters of battle today. I'm painting them in bluey greys on black primer. They are coming along really nicely - as is my blending and layering! I've had to pack them away before I thought to take photos because I'm going to stay at my friends for a couple of weeks tomorrow morning.

When I stopped painting I actually couldn't use my hand properly it was all cramped and stiff, and my neck was killing me! But it was worth it - cloaks look awesome.

Primed some more sisters in white today. Looks like the halfords primer is outclassing the citadel one in everyway; cheaper, easier to spray, and a better, smoother result. I'm going to have to strip the sisters I sprayed with citadel skull white today because they just look awful. Patchy coverage and grainy where it has hit.

I still need to see if I can strip the halfords primer before I spray it on too many of them though.

Gonna do some more work on the blog tomorrow, and get some more pictures up.

Colour Sheets!

So what I'm working on at the moment is a set of hand made resources to help people choose colour schemes, primers, and basecoats. Yesterday was my trial run for layering.

The basic ideas are this;

Sheets of paper sprayed with a fine but complete layer of primer, fully dried
Working from left to right progressive layers of colour are added. The paint starts off at typical milky consistency. The first swatch of a colour has one layer, the second has two, and so on.

I'll be doing this over various primers. This set of colour sheets is designed to help people choose what primer to use, or what colours will look like over their primer. Lots of people don't always realise how much that first spray is going to affect their final work - hopefully this will help everyone, and myself, predict better what our final colours are going to look like. I've been surprised by how much better some colours stand out on black than grey or white, for example.

Also it is going to show how many layers it takes paints to become opaque or whether they are opaque to begin with. When painting over darker basecoats knowing just how translucent your paint is can make a huge difference to how you shade and highlight.

So the first set of colour sheets I did had 8 strips, starting off at just below 50:50 paint thinner. Next time I'll probably do about 6 strips with 25:75 paint or 20:80 so the progression is better. While I was painting the layers the differences were much more visible but now it's dried they all look the same from the third or fourth swipe. I'll redo those colours against last though because gooood it got boring after a while.

I made sure I was painting with the same brushes and strokes; red sable, two even strokes next to each other. Each layer was perfectly dry before I applied the next one.

Nowdog is staring at me for a walk so I will have to end here and trot round the fields with el capitan labrador!

Tutorial - Step Two - Priming

Always prime your models in a well ventilated area. Wearing a little face mask is a good idea as well, especially if you're going to do a lot of priming and painting!

Acrylic paints don't 'stick' to bare metal or plastic models very well. You will end up with a patchy, blotchy paint job and it will be difficult to apply and control the paint on the model in the first place. Primers have slightly different formulas to their paint equivalents. They are better designed to adhere to the model (or surface) they are sprayed on, and form a better bind with paints applied to them. Additionally primers can help smooth the surface further.


There are a number of different primers you can use, not just ones labelled for models. The most popular ones I've seen have been;


Games Workshop
Army Painter
Duplicolour Sandable Primer
Krylon Primer


There are lots of primers out there so don't feel limited to just using something from Games Workshop or the like, because they can be unecessarily expensive. But if you don't end up branching out, do a quick google to see if other people have tried it and how they got on with it so you don't end up wasting money unecessarily.

Primer needs to be matt - this is the main thing to look for when trying random sprays!

The easiest colour to start with is black for most people, but you can get primers in any colour and finish. One of the great selling points about Army Painted primers, besides being half the price of Games Workshop's, is that they are available in a huge range of colours. As are auto-primers, like dupli-colour and halfords own brand.


No matter how you end up spraying your models the first few steps are going to be the same; make sure the weather and humidity is suitable, shake the hell out of your can, put your minis on something you don't mind getting covered in paint, and do the spraying somewhere well ventilated that you can also cover in paint.


Primers are labeled with conditions they work best in - outside of these you're likely to end up with patchy or chalky lumpy spray. At the very least never spray in the rain, the extreme heat, or much colder than room temperature. You should shake your can for at least a minute, more if it's new or hasn't been used in a while. This mixes up all the substance that has settled in the bottom of the can. Cardboard and newspaper are good for spraying on.


Now for the actual spraying!


The Ideal Way!


Keep your can of primer upright and spray parallel to your models. This means having your models upright too, or spraying paint straight up their butts.


Either spray them in there based, or stuck to masking tape. Double sided masking tape is the easiest for that, or you can use single sided tape stuck sticky side up by more sticky tape!


PHOTO


This is a neat trick to use sometimes regardlss of how you're spraying because some model parts can be so fine and light that they get blown away by the power of the spray.


Prop this against something and spray away!


The Less Ideal Way!


Spray them however the hell you want. Keeping the can parallel to your models will help keep the spray even across them. It's easier to spray with the can away from vertical the more full it is, as you don't have to worry about where the straw is in the paint.

PHOTO

Even if you're spraying your models whilst hung upside by your ankles like a bat make sure you always keep these in mind;

PHOTO of upside bat spraying

Don't spray to close - 6 to 12 inches to start and change as gives you the best results.


Don't spray in one huge, continuous splurge of paint. Use of quick sprays instead. Helps you save paint as well as not drench everything.

Kept the mist fine - don't spray a model so much it starts pooling on it. Unless you're going to have a little nameplate on your Dreadnought saying 'Mr Lumpy'. Do a couple of fine passes over the model - instead of that huge splurge!


PHOTOS OF GOOD AND BAD SPRAYING.


The sound the can makes when you spray should be uniform as well - any popping or spluttering means either you're not holding it at the right angle for how full it is or its not mixed properly and your not getting the right ratio or paint and propellant out.


Try shaking it or changing position. If one doesn't work try the other.


Try and keep your primer layer fine. The thicker it is the less detail on your final model.


Leave the models until they are completely dry, then turn them over. If you've sprayed them in their based you can just spray the whole model in one go.


Sometime you'll only notice mold lines and flash once the models have been primed. Don't worry about this - just remove them as usual and if possible give them a very fine spray to cover up the clear spot. Or go over with a couple of layers of thinned paint.

PHOTO

And don't worry! If you mess up your priming job it is removable from both plastic and metal models. Try, and if it goes wrong you can try again :)

Tutorial - Step One - Preparing Your Miniatures from Packaging

Models - both those out of boxes and out of blister packs - often come with flash, mold lines, and attached to a sprue. The first thing you need to do with your model is remove all the excess material and make it look as though it was never there to begin with.

You will need;
Clippers (Sharp pliers)
Files (Fairly fine ones)
Sandpaper (Optional)
Sharp Knife/Scalpel (Optional)

PHOTO OF SPRUE MODEL

Remove the pieces of your kit from the sprue using the pliers or small sharp scissors. It's possible to twist and pull the pieces off but you risk damaging or warping the pieces. Use something snippy rather than a knife - much safer.

Flash is easy to remove from metal models. It is the little strands of metal attached randomly around a miniature as a leftover from where the metal was inject into its mold and effectively leaked outside the wanted shape. Just snip these off and if necessary use the file/sandpaper to smooth the area down.

PICTURE OF BITS OF FLASH

Mold lines can be slightly more complicated as they can run all the way across the model and through fine details. These denote the line where the two halves of the model's mold met but weren't perfectly fit. Larger pieces can be snipped off like flash, but most likely you be filing small but prominent mold lines down.

PHOTO OF MOLD LINE ON PLASTIC AND METAL

When you start filing or sanding beging very gently. Until you get a good idea of how much you can take off and how big your file is you want to be careful. If you don't file enough you can go back and carefully give it another go, but if you gouge out a hole you need to get creative with filler or your paint job!

If you use a knife or scalpel, make sure its very sharp. Hold it against the model with the top ridge facing towards the direction you're pulling. Strip off the lines with smooth strokes. Don't apply too much pressure or you'll gouge the model and probably your thumbs as well.

PHOTO ANGLE/PULLING

The final step is to give models a quick rinse with soapy water and leaving them to dry. This removes any of the agent used to make the model easier to remove from its mold, and any oils transferred to it as it has been handled by people. These can affect how well your model primes. If its a step too far and you aren't trying to do a decent paint job you don't necessarily have to worry about this step.

At the end of this process your model should end up looking like it was never attached to anything in the first place!

PHOTO OF HAPPY MODEL :D

Boredom and sleepiness breeds... tutorials?

I've been completely exhausted and falling asleep today so in no fit state the paint anything. Instead I've started putting together tutorials for the site :)

They'll be going up as unfinished posts. I just wanna put up what I've got at the moment so that I can see what everything looks like and watch it come together on the blog. Also I'm impatient. All the posts will be linked to in the tutorial section when I redo that properly and neaten everything up.

I'm still trying to work out how everything should actually be organised and formatted. I'm going to build a litte white box tomorrow to take crisper photos in. Photos that you can actually identify the object in...

Blending! (In grey!)

I spent a few hours sat down today filing my metal sisters and removing various flash from their models, and painting a few of the finished and based ones. I started with five, working on their cloth.

I really like bleached bone for cloth at the moment but I've decided to try outside some cooler grey shades on these for now. I started with some shadow grey for the basecoat.

Basecoat: 1:3:1 Paint: 10% flow: matte medium

Two layers

By the time I'd finished painting the last one, the first had dried so I got onto the first layer of shading.

I used shadow grey and space wolf grey as my two extremes, and for the first layer just used a 50:50 blend of them wedged between my palette.

I did my blending by lining the deepest part with the shadow grey, and the remaining 2/3 with the medium coloured. I blend the line together using very very tiny circles through the two colours. If one colour goes too far over I just get the tiniest bit possible on the brush and push it back abit.

I do this with two paint brushes; one for the light colour one for the dark. The paints are about the consistently of milk, and I have very little in my brush. If I can see the paint in the brush, there's too much and I dab it off on my palette.

As I blend on the model I regularly wipe of the excess paint so I don't just end up with a huge patch of intermediate colour.

I think it went quite well. I'm finding painting very relaxing and engaging at the moment. I'll try and get some better photos up soon, I've started using a proper camera so that's something new to learn as well!

Pointless!

I've actually spent a good few hours painting the past couple of days, but I haven't done anything I feel is photo worthy other than stripping my sisters. I need to finish scrubbing those guys off :(

At some point I will have enough blending failures to post a photo update on the past week. Thus far about blending I have learnt;

Incredibly thin paint. Thinner than you've used for anything else. Makes a very big difference, but does feel like a waste of time at first.

Not so much medium ratio to everything else - makes it a bit gunky for blending. More liquidy the solution the better.

Let stuff dry before I start doing the next layer. This links into the medium I was using to thin my paints, as well though. I'd get impatient doing one model and start trying to do the next layer blending onto a half dry under layer. Queue lots of gunky-funkyness.

I know wet-blending is slightly beyond me since I only just got back into painting, but I'm still having a lot of fun doing it even when I'm doing it horribly wrong. At some point I'm going to base some sisters in black, some in white and sit and force myself to paint at least their base colours from head to toe. At the moment my models are a victim of 'first colour placed perfectly second colour spilled all over it' syndrome. I'm too impatient!

I grabbed a new sketch book and set of sketching pencils today to sit and practice some drawing.

I've been exhausted for about a week now, and not having the happiest few days. More will be added to the blog when my head is screwed on a bit more methinks. At least I'm updating everyday!

Exhaustion

I am so fricking exhausted today. I went to paint around 4 o clock and I was so tired by that point that I couldn't get my eyes to focus on the tiny elf mans backside. I managed to do about and hour or two of painting and then gave up because I was falling asleep. Practiced some wet blending - went really well. I'll get some pictures into this post tomorrow, I forgot to take them and I'm too comfy in bed to go do it now!

I took the dog for a massive hour and a half walk with her doggie friend, a labrador poodle cross. Then after that I decided to do a 16 mile cycle to hobby craft to buy some more stuff. Picked up a really nice brush holder - holds like 40 brushes upright and only cost £4. I also got the Winsor and Newton matte and gloss mediums. I used them today and they make a wonderful difference to the textures and feel of the paint! I shall post comparison pictures of how the paints look using different mediums and consistencies soon.

There are a couple of new pages added to the site - one a tutorial resource and one a guide to equipment to get started. They are both very rough and not very well organised, and not finished, but I work better by building things up and correcting them as I go.

Have another dog photo to make up for any relevant ones.

Quickie

Just thought I'd post a few shots of my work space(s) before I take doggy for a walk. Spent the whole morning scribbling down ideas for diaramas and duels. Ideas I'll be good enough to use in about 5 years - woot!

Now to walk the beast.

Squeezy Bottles!

I went back to the hobby craft store and spent 20 minutes scouting out all the isles until I FINALLY found some stupid tiny squeezy bottles. Also ordered some off ebay but hey, having more of this stuff isn't a bad thing!


I mixed together my flow and retarder solutions and added sexy labels to my squidgy bottles using paint. I was far more excited about using this stuff than I think a normal person should be, but oh well.


I started on some elves - painting their cloaks bleach white. Basecoat colour went on amazingly with the flow added. About 3/4 coats in total, over black primer.

I love how creamy and smooth the colour looks. The paint was 50:50 flow solution and bleached bone paint.

When it was dry I threw on some layers of Grypphone Sepia wash;

But being impatient I proceeded to cock it up from there and not let things dry properly before I tried to highlight and blend. I think I tried to do too much in one evening and now my elves are sat on my desk looking embarassed about the state of their cloaks.

Tomorrow I'll try again, properly this time, and increase the concentration of the retarder as the paints still dried before I could get to blend them. Didn't stop me trying! And now they are lumpy lumpy models...

Let's get started!

I recently dug out all of my warhammer stuff after a couple of years creative haitus. With the summer off (3 month uni break - whoo!) I've decided I want to get back into everything. I've got quite a substantial army - Witch Hunters - with alot of it completely untouched. Thus far I've found;


Throne of Judgement
Penitent Engine
Exorcist
About 20 base coated sisters
About 30 Painted Sisters
2 St Celestine
2 Inquisitor Retinues
Various HQ models I can't remember the names of
C'tan the Deceiver
10 Seraphim
Box of Skeletons
Vampire's Carriage
Couple of Eldar Avatars
And some High Elf stuff I can't remember because I don't have it with me.
Random Lord of the Rings elves
Box of Galahad elves



In addition to that I discovered that even after 2 years of neglect in a box, my 100+ GW paints are all still usable. I have about 30 brushes, file sets, clippers, basing materials, glues, you name it.


My best mate went out the other day and bought himself the Space Marine and Orks big box set as well, so I've got some lovely ork stuff to paint up.


I started about a week ago by digging up some of the old elves I'd painted terribly and just spraying them over again. They are plastic so I couldn't be bothered to faff about stripping them. I just used them to get back into the swing of things a bit, and as can be expected from someone who hasn't painted for years they look awful!







Not bad for the first thing I've painted in ages I guess. I didn't go the whole hog because a) repainted managed to make lots of the details useless and b) my hands have the artistic control of a buffolo at the moment.

But it was great fun to get back into it. So much fun, in fact, that I went on a buying rampage at my local hobby craft store! I spent way too much money...

I picked up some flow improver and some fluid retarder (favourite name of the day) and some plastic glue;

Also grabbed some washed and paints I was missing (don't know why I forgot to bring black and white home with me)

And I got two Winsor and Newton brush sets. I have only just noticed that the mahogany set is polyester and not sable... urgh... I'll use them anyway - can never have enough brushes!

And I got myself a giant rainbow-gay chest of drawers to store all my nerdy secrets in;

There was also a sale in JJB next door but until I cover my clothes in paint I'll refrain from posting them here.

Annoyingly I couldnt find any dropper bottles to mix up my retarders/flows in. I'm withholding on painting until I can get those and properly thin my paints. I'm very neurotic about doing everything properly at the moment - I don't want to ruin anything expensive.

So yeah - from now on this blog is going to be my progress as I go from wtf end of this paintbrush do I hold to SUPER PAINTED GOLDEN DEMON extraordinare. With the occasional dog photo thrown in.