Textured Bases

 This post is slightly different to normal and won't focus much on painting, but instead creating textured bases - particularly by using textured rolling pins from Green Stuff World. This all stems from wanting bases that are more appropriate for certain environments, e.g Space Hulk settings, Imperial Palace, etc. Generic gravel or dirt doesn't quite fit in these circumstances.

I considered 3D printed base toppers, or resin sculpts, etc, but while effective for smaller groups (e.g kill teams) they lack enough variety for larger forces and the costs can add up quickly. While browsing for other parts, I came across the texture rolling pins from Green Stuff World. I'd seen them before, notably for Eldar, but this time I saw some designs that might fit what I was looking for. In the end I chose Ancestral Recall for ornate flooring that might fit the excessive opulence that is likely to appear around the Imperial Palace (and be therefore suitable for Custodian Guard), and Factory for industrial flooring, grating on ships, etc (Space Hulk comes to mind for these, or Boarding Actions).

Marbled floor with gold inlay.

My very first attempt, was to use an old glass jar to roll out green-stuff onto waxed paper, transfer it directly to a base and then use the texture roller on that. After some trimming around the edges and a quick bit of painting (more on that in a moment) the result was...pretty good. I did however learn some important lessons:

• Rolling out on wax paper was a bad idea as the paper kind of stuck to the green-stuff.
• Rolling directly onto a base gives uneven thickness.
• Leaving bits of the cured green-stuff seam causes imperfections in the end result. I made this mistake a lot.

For my next attempt I bought a cheap acrylic rolling pin, normally intended for icing sugar apparently, and cookie cutters of multiple sizes. While not the perfect size, the cookie cutters should get me close enough. This worked again remarkably well.

Old and beaten factory flooring.

A couple of mistakes with putty that had already cured, but the acrylic rolling pin gave a more even result. Next up I wanted to get consistent thickness however, and so I hunted around for a way of doing this. I've only been doing one base at a time, so in the end I went with layers of cardboard with a hole cut in the middle. I tried 4 layers, 3 layers, and 2 layers, leaving the 1 layer for the actual textured rolling pin. It seems that 2 layers for the acrylic smooth rolling pin, and 1 layer for the textured rolling pin, is the sweet spot for what I intend.

Ideal for black and yellow chevrons.

The cookie cutter is slightly larger than the top of the base, so after the green-stuff has cured for several hours I remove it from the flat surface (a piece of glass in my case) and glue it to a base. The glass has some Vasoline rubbed on it before I roll out the green-stuff to help lift it off, but I find it easier when it's cured enough to be rubbery, but not before it's like hardened rubber. A hobby knife helps to peel one section off, then I can use that to help lift the rest without tearing at the putty. After gluing to the base, the hobby knife can be used to slice away excess overhang - but a Dremel rotary tool most definitely helps to smooth that out and unify everything. Just make sure to wear a respirator mask when doing that.

Creating base toppers is fairly keyed in now.

I did one test to try create two bases at once, but this showed a particular uneven thickness that I should've been aware of. The cookie cutter should be used in the middle area of the green-stuff, as the outer edges will be pushed away from that and might have a reduced thickness.

I did contemplate for clay based toppers, but ultimately decided to stick with green-stuff. I can confidently create new prints now while avoiding the almost certain mess that comes with clay, and all while keeping the tools clean. I try to use excess putty for creating tubes, cabling, insignia that might prove useful one, etc, but there is definitely some waste. I'm not sure on the cost effectiveness of using all that green-stuff (clay would be _much_ cheaper here) but the results are good, I like the designs, and can create different sizes as and when I need them. If I were army painting, then yes I might just roll out some clay and create dozens of bases in one go, but an army painter I am not.

To round off, here are how I've painted each so far, starting with the marbled flooring:

• Black primer.
• The "baby wipe" technique and Wraithbone spray.
• Praxeti White drybrushed across most of the whiter areas, and catching edges.
• Basilicanum Grey and flow improver into the recesses.
• Pallid Wych Flesh along edges, certain raised areas, and generally glazed where I wanted it more white.
• Retributor Armour to pick out some of the flooring design.
• Not done yet, but I may pick out the smaller diamond tiles in Corvus Black later.

And for the factory flooring:

• Black primer, mostly to hide the green.
• Wraithbone over all of it.
• Space Wolves Grey (Contrast) over the whole base.
• Necron Compound drybrushed over the higher surfaces and metal grating.
• Basilicanum Grey in recesses, some glazing where necessary to tone things down a bit.
• Iron Warrior / Dawnstone mix across edges, some scratches, etc.
• Skrag Brown watered down for rust effects.

It's a bit of a convoluted process, but I do like the result. Not sure if I'll keep it - depends if I can think of a more efficient method to get something similar or not.

Still need to clean up a few edges and get painting on them all. With the process sorted, the novelty has started to wear off and I can instead plan the models that will go on top.

-- silly painter.

Starting Sculpting

 

Sanguinary Grey

I've not had any time for painting at all for the last couple of weeks, but a few things are in progress. Which is slightly odd; I was going to try finish off some in-progress projects this year, but instead I've been just adding more. It's not that bad though, because I have been starting to try my hand at some proper sculpting.

The inspiration for this most definitely comes from Trovarion. I have no doubts that it would take quite a while before I'm as good as he is, but I need to start somewhere. I've been poking around green stuff and milliput for quite some time, but mostly just to fill gaps rather than actually seriously try to sculpt anything. Then along came the refreshed Sanguinary Guard.

It's important to recognise my own personal takes on what has gone wrong with some of the Blood Angels models recently released, as this is the motivation behind wanting to sculpt. I was actually looking at the Blood Angels Captain and wondering what it was that I simply didn't like about that model. The design seems to mostly be fine - muscle sculpted armour, various appropriate details, the head options are fine. Then I looked at the knee pads and it suddenly made sense. The old miniature designers knew a lot more about their craft I suspect, because they needed to when hand sculpting. Part of this is composition: and when there's subtle details creating ornate, artisan armour then surfaces devoid of detail stand out like a sore thumb. The knee pads in the older Sanguinary Guard have an iconic detail, but that means curved surface detail is balanced throughout the entire model. The chest plates on the new Captain are too bare - for all the prude social anxiety these days, nipples serve an artistic purpose of breaking up all of that surface area. Blur your eyes when looking at that new model and all you'll see are bug-eyed chest plates and a knee pads. The same can be said for the new Sanguinary Guard, who also suffer from another problem: they're all the same. There's no individualism, no soul to any of the designs, which is antithetical to what Sanguinary Guard should be.

The solution is therefore to try and kitbash and convert my own. I don't particularly want to pay full price for models that I simply don't like without major work being done on them. My own attempts are going to fall well short of display quality, so again I don't want to invest money into something that I know will end up mediocre at best. Even with the replacement parts from the Crimson Lords campaign from Greytide Studios, some sculpting is likely to be required.

Where now to begin? I bought some of the old push-fit Assault Intercessors. They're cheap, have good poses that will work without needing bases to make them look like they're flying about the place. There are also five on the sprue, giving me two to practice with.

The first attempt here was to see how well an old ("firstborn") torso would fit with the Primaris scale. It doesn't. I had to carve out most of the chest to fit one of the old upgrade sprue pieces, and even then the position is off: it's too high. The nipples looked odd. I've kind of solved that by trying to fill in the gaps and add a scroll to pad out the chest details and obscure the nipples. Here we come to the first problem: green-stuff doesn't file nicely.

Silicone clay shapers work very well to smooth out green-stuff, but it's an almost rubbery finish. It's workable when new, but after trying the freezer trick (placing uncured green-stuff into a sealed bag and freezing it to use again the next day) it wasn't quite as pliable. It's easy to knead, good to bulk out areas, but for a smooth finish and holding detail it simply isn't what I'm looking for. Another problem when sculpting is having the material stick to the surface: injection moulded plastic can be very smooth, and green-stuff will not stick readily to it. It might help to roughen the surface beforehand, which I will try next time.

As a complete opposite, removing green-stuff from some areas is proving difficult. I don't want to remove all of it, just carve out under the chest piece where I'd put too much. The thinking was that I could clean it up later. As it turns out, I should ensure surfaces are shaped as smooth as possible (with roughened surfaces) beforehand, as then later I only need to smooth out the putty - and while it's curing I should be careful to trim away excess then rather then trying to carve it out later. It's simply easier, particularly with green stuff, to keep the excess putty to a minimum. I did this with the holster, which doesn't fit with Sanguinary Guard, by trimming the shape down and filling in gaps to create just another pouch. Green-stuff might work here alright: it has a natural finish that fits to the texture of pouches, smooths out well enough, and I don't need to file away excess.

I would like a couple of extra tools to poke shapes with. I have some which are ok, but I might buy another one or two if they look appropriate. I'll also consider using vasoline to keep the putty from sticking to the tools.

When sculpting details, it's easy to smooth across a general shape. Something like scrolls, however, require some more thought. I need to practice creating thin strips of putty that are in roughly the right shape, then somehow transferring them to the model. Either that, or put a roll on and directly poke it to the proper shape. I think for future scrolls I should make the central strip, let that cure, and then add details on the ends. Curved patches are probably better as circular blobs that I try to poke pieces out of rather than rolls that I curve around - again, particularly with green-stuff. I may find milliput handles differently here.

I've started small on this model, and so far there's nothing that a bit of clever painting can't hide. I'll try to add some blood drop shaped gems to the left greave next, though I'm in two minds of how to approach that. I could either try to sculpt the shape in place, or make a stamp to press a blob of putty into the proper shape. The latter might have problems if the putty comes away on the stamp. I might try by hand first just for the practice.

The next model I try I'll likely keep the basic chest piece, but replace the central skull with a blood drop. After that, the third I'll probably try to make bare, add a blood drop in the middle, and nipples to the side. I'm not sure that I'll directly carve out grooves on the knee pads - a bit of freehand could achieve the same thing. I guess a trip to the art store is in order.

-- silly painter

Practice with Oils

 

Gemstones, oil on canvas.

And now for something different.

I've been looking for excuses to practice with oil paints a little more, but with free time at a premium I also wanted to tie it into miniature painting somehow as well. To that end I've started with trying to paint gemstones of various shapes to consider how the light might interact, framing, anything really to up my game on them.

Oil paints mix really well, but spread differently to acrylics and have a much longer drying (actually curing) time. Using a canvas allows larger representations to be played with, different shapes to more easily be explored, and no need to preparing entire models just to paint small little gemstones.

There was no particular plan here, I just started and went with it. The upper left red gemstone was painted similarly to how I paint those for Blood Angels, naturally, but I didn't take into consideration oils as a medium. I based coloured the area and tried to layer others on top. It didn't work very well, mostly because I didn't feel like waiting overnight to apply the next layer and wanted alla prima while I had the time. So the first lesson: mix on the palette, thinly apply basic tones, and then blend together. The brighter orange was overpowered by the red and so the effect doesn't work on another level: with that much light causing a powerful reflection point, then much of it will transmit through the object and give a brighter value on the other side. If that red was the brighter value, then it would only be a small sliver on the opposite edge instead of two thirds of the gemstone. This test is paying off already.

For the green gemstone I tried to improve upon my technique with oils as a medium, and the colours used. Yellow works wonders as a highlight and I think it mostly worked in this case. I could perhaps have gone slightly brighter, but it's much better than before. I also used a little red near the black shadows (more specifically where light isn't refracting and diffusing to the viewpoint as easily) which mixes to a slight brown with the green. It's quite subtle, but I think it helps identify that the surroundings aren't green, there's some other colour hues to the light, and also helps the black transition into brown and then green more easily. I'm not sure how this might look on very small gemstones on miniatures, but it's worth looking into. Finally I bordered the gemstone with a darker green for framing purposes. This provides an edge shadow impression and gives more depth. Additional light surrounding would also help here, but that's for later.

Onto the blue and I just wanted to play with a different shape. I'm not really sure how a more polygonal cut would look so I simply mixed in some white on the edges. I should've used a light cream tone to give more vibrancy to the blue, although I was trying to keep the palette to a minimum. If I start on Space Wolves then I'll need to explore this shape some more. The surrounding splash of blue frames the gemstone better - not required on a miniature, but helps when viewing on a 2D plane. Perhaps it might be something to try on a model one day: some very subtle light bounce through gemstones.

The purple spherical gemstone didn't go nearly bright enough, but that's again more down to the minimal colour palette than anything else. I tried to compensate by increasing the darker area, but it didn't really help. Regardless, a thin bright edge around the gemstone really helps define the shape - this works on spherical designs, but I'm not sure how to translate it to other shapes yet. The reflection line is different too, following the shape but giving the brightest (in theory) reflection point as a single dot. Also, while the highlighted areas are crescent shaped, the darker zone is more circular. It's almost like there are overlapping circles, each one with an offset centre, going from light to dark. Good to bear that one in mind.

I might play again with the red and apply a few lessons learned, and then move onto NMM style painting, and perhaps water reflections as well. Limited palette, single paintbrush, much more flexibility to study particular themes that are applicable how light and colour work in general. Highly recommended to anyone looking to improve their painting.

-- silly painter.