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!

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.