Wraithlord - Part I

I did a thing.

To add to the pile of in-progress projects, I was rather inspired to slightly modify a Wraithlord that was standing about in boxes of spares. I hope the original owner (you know who you are) will not mind. The original pose always looked a little to statuesque for my liking, and was at odds with what are supposed to be graceful war machines. I have a small jewellery saw from working on Contemptor dreadnoughts, and I figured this shouldn't be too difficult.

I wasn't sure what pose to do: one leg crouched, or both legs bent. The former goes with a swordsman look, the latter a hunter in waiting. I figured this was not the sort of thing to be pouncing on prey, so went with the swordsman look - and it also was easier to only carve away at one of the knees.

Taking the model apart as best I could first, I cut through select areas to make it easier: the shoulders (and shoulder guards), the legs at the hips, the ankles (part cut, part rip & tear), and the shoulder weapon. The hands separated at the wrists easily enough, but the feet needed to be carved off the prior base. The head and loincloth also just popped off - most of the model was stuck with superglue I suspect, making some of this much easier. The model's right knee took the most effort and some very careful cuts with the saw, but I managed to salvage the knee itself which would later cover up pinning to bend the leg.

Stripping the model was fairly simple. I tried kitchen degreaser first, and that worked mildly ok - but probably needed several days. I didn't have such patience and decided to give isopropyl alcohol a go (aka rubbing alcohol) and that worked a treat - used outside for good ventilation, gloves on, and a very old brush.

And there the pieces remained for quite a long time. I was stuck on how to base it, which is critical if I wanted to have one leg bent and the other straight. I simply wasn't sure how I was going to setup the slope this would require, and I wasn't keen on buying materials that I wouldn't use much of. Then it occurred to me: Rylanor turned out alright and I still had some of the shattered dominion base left. I could use pieces of that, some putty, later texture paints and perhaps grass and flower tufts to build it up.

Difficulties in pinning have made some of the joints less than ideal, and in future I should definitely use some handy-hands and rubber clips to hold pieces in place to get an idea of the angle to drill. Pinning works best when the pin (paperclips in this case) are straight. The knee required some bending, and the arms, but the hips were a bit of a nightmare and I could have done a lot better. Also, better where possible to glue one end of the pin, then cover it in some putty before gluing the attaching part. This will push the putty more securely between the join and give a superior connection overall.

The forearms had something attached (not any weapons), but I felt they stuck out too much and were distracting and so removed them and filed things back. I'm not entirely sure if I'll fill in the gaps or leave them there for visual interest. I'll probably putty over it eventually. The loincloth no longer fit with the lowered stance, and I didn't want my lack of sculpting skills to try make a different one, so I simply shortened it with a dremel until it fit. The groin guard was also ever so slightly mismatched with the changed leg position and so has very small section removed either side. All of this adds extra silhouette volume to the lower areas; without this it might seem far to visually top-heavy.

The head isn't glued in place yet, and I'm thinking to add some hair dangling from the back perhaps - really not sure if that would add or detract from things. The shoulder weapon isn't glued in place yet either, but I think that will be the final pose - and I might want to pin that rather than relying on glue.

Once I've added some texture paints to the base (or sand, or whatever) and primed everything then I'll need to figure out which Craftworld. Probably Ulthwe. I'll also try really hard to lean on the airbrush a lot and not get carried away with details - while I could easily go overboard with painting, I do want to try move through models a bit quicker in future. I also have no plans to rush the rest once the model is assembled, so it might take a long while to reach part 2. Just depends on motivation and inspiration.

-- silly painter.

Face

 

Mr Wonky Eye.

While poking around various models and preparing the next main working topic, I came across a spare head. It's a resin cast from an Astartes model where I'm using the helmet instead. Straight off the bat: yes, the face is a little off. It might be the sculpt, but I could possibly fix it up by nudging the model's left eye down slightly. There's also a weird sneer thing going on, which is definitely the sculpt, and not much I can do about that. None of that really matters too much however, because this was just a practice piece in painting faces.

As a bit of practice the goal was exploration of colours rather than a finished display piece. I wasn't as super-neat as I could have been, blending could've been pushed further in places (particularly the forehead), and so on. I was far more interested in facial colour planes: more yellow on the upper third, more red in the middle, and blue (kind of) on the lower third.

...and I'm John Chin.

I had the idea to literally pick a base colour and mix slight amounts of yellow, red, and blue into it to create variation. I originally tried to use a base of Cadian Fleshtone, however that particular paint needs some recovery and I had to abandon it. Instead I switched to using the more-yellow tone as the base.

• Bestigor Flesh
• Rhinox Hide / Mephiston Red (1:1), which I already have pre-mixed.
• Incubi Darkness, which is a little more green than blue but it was close by and I figured it'd probably still work.
• Ulthuan Grey, for the eyes.

Other than the primer of course, the above are the only paints I used. There's nothing particularly fancy, just mix them and paint. Other than the Ulthuan Grey, all the other paints are mixed to varying degrees - mostly just to tint the base colour. The cheeks are more red, and I also pushed that further to outline the eyes. The model's left eye could have used a much thinner lower eyelid highlight, and although the sculpt has definite trouble here this is one aspect I'll try remember for future reference. Give the lower eyelid a highlight, but make it very thin!

Pushing more of the Incubi Darkness mix into the hollows of the cheeks defines them clearly and gives a leaner, more masculine impression. It's important to very subtly highlight towards the jawline or it looks like there isn't much jaw and the hollow just turns into a cliff. The photo below shows the other side where I didn't do this properly, and it's good for comparison to see what does and doesn't work. I also glazed the Incubi Darkness mix around the nose, and that worked really well - it defines the facial shape in a soft and natural way compared to what I've previously done.

Look upon my chin and despair!

The chin sticks out a bit far, and I didn't help that by increasing the contrast under the lips. The highlight of the chin is also too far down. There's a reason for that: a small imperfection in the resin left a bubble hole and I was trying to fill it in with paint and a dot of blu-tac. It's worth it to notice what doesn't work on the chin, hopefully allowing me to get it right in future. I probably should've done a cleft in the chin too.

All in all, I'd say this is a success. Sure it's a little rough, but it's still some of the best colours I've ever done for a face. A greater degree of realism, and almost like an oil painting. If I can fix up the Cadian Fleshtone I think that would give me some more to work with on the forehead (it needs a touch more red towards the eyebrows). I also might paint the hair, but not sure which colour to go with there just yet.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack - Part VI (Showcase)

 

Just took a little off the top.

Finally found the time to actually finish the squad of Intercessors. As usual, things just got in the way - they should've been done a couple of weeks ago - but I also used the time to add smaller details that I might otherwise have ignored, such as the squad marking on the right knee.

There's not a whole lot to say overall, nothing much I haven't already done many times before. The matt varnish makes them show up much more nicely in the final photos, but it does tend to dull down the edge highlights. That the number one lesson to be learned here: push the airbrush highlight contrast even further, about twice what might otherwise seem necessary. I can bring it back at the end if necessary, but it saves a lot of time if I don't have to.

Actually it was edge highlighting that took up the majority of the final steps. I edge highlighted before the varnish, and then again afterwards to bring it back in places. It's a lot of wasted time if I could just get it proper to begin with. I'm considering using Averland Sunset to edge highlight before the red filter, just to see how much of that might show up at the end.

Sheer momentum can be effective.

I can still glaze reds when I want, and this will come in useful for a particular future project, with a good brush and the right medium (acrylic flow improver in this case) helping much more than just water. It also seems to work nicer over the matt varnish, which is something to keep in mind.

I haven't highlighted the metallics as brightly as I have in the past. There just seemed no need. I'm liking the duller appearance these days as it seems more suitable, but with a secondary  benefit of not stealing the show from the main volume highlights of the armour. On the subject of metallics: using Black Legion (Contrast) to base those areas works brilliantly, allowing the metallic paint to give better coverage, and is particularly useful if a gloss varnish was previously applied. That's a definite part of future painting steps.

Not much else to say. I wanted these models because I liked the old jump pack design, even if the new design is still quite tasteful, but also because I don't like the ankle thrusters of the newer models. On the whole, I think this small conversion experiment turned out well.

-- silly painter

Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack - Part V

 

Just don't ask where the extra mag was hidden.

Too long since the last update, mostly because continuous work, but thought it's a struggle I have been progressing ever so slowly with the jump pack guys. Despite some more being done however, this isn't likely to be a long post - there's nothing too interesting that hasn't been covered before.

Painting ten at a time has been both as benefit and a downside: one paint over ten models is easy, and once started it's going to mean all ten progress at the same pace. I don't need to switch out paints, I can just go to the wet palette throughout the day whenever I get a spare minute and continue straight away. The downside is that there are ten, and it's kind of demotivating for every small step being done across them all. I sometimes only get literally one minute to do something, and I might not bother when thinking about all ten that need doing.

Despite everything, I've managed to almost get them ready for the final varnish phase. There are some small details that separate out each model, and a round of edge highlighting yet to be done on the red. The smaller details can be the worst, and to speed things up I'm trying for a three-paint approach: I'll not use several paints to get it just right, but blend, glaze, and mix between three (or even just two, if one is a wash). Details are small, and there's not a whole lot of difference in the end result. For armour scroll patterns I have about 5 paints across 6 steps, but here I just did a base coat, wash, and mixed the base coat with the final highlight colour and glazed as I felt like it - a much, much faster approach with a nearly identical end result for something of this size.

Space Marines can jump.

The jump pack glow took a very long time because I didn't just reduce it to three paints, using instead about seven. It's painstaking work, and took three days to get done across the models (using minutes where I could). I might have the models finished were I not being so pedantic, but in this particular case I wanted the practice. I've also managed to get similar done for Dante while I was at it, so it's actually eleven jump packs that I managed.

I could have left things there, but purity seals were lacking and I added one to almost every model. The Intercessors didn't feel complete without them, so I took some time to paint them up - however as they were still separate from the models I took the opportunity to use a rubber clamp to line them all up and paint them more easily than dancing about the model itself.

The bases are done, with some added skulls painted rather crudely, and now all that's left are some wrist computer buttons (simple silver with a technical paint over the top should be sufficient), spend a week edge highlighting the red, varnish, metallic highlights, and any final armour edge highlights. It is still quite a lot, and I'm guessing two weeks before it's all wrapped up.

-- 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.

Commander Dante - Part II

 

I like to think he's just hopped off his flying Land Raider.

The focus of the last week has been to get Lord Dante's armour more or less finished. I might add spot highlights later, but I doubt it - I'm fairly happy with the result. There is a slight catch though: photographing this model is not an easy task, and the "golden angle" is slightly off the photographed axis; the highlights don't quite match up with the lights that I normally use. This is a model painted to be viewed in real life, not as a digital facsimile.

At any rate there wasn't a whole lot changed to the formula from before. I added some black to really darken a few outlines and increase general contrast. It's fairly subtle but really makes the model that much easier to read: despite the reflective conditions and angle of the photo, the sculpt is still easily discerned. In general the process is:

• Rhinox Hide / Balthasar Gold to provide coverage.
• Black mixed into that or just Rhinox Hide for the deepest recesses.
• Balthasar Gold mixed into the original mode, for initial volume highlighting.
• Gehenna's Gold / Balthasar Gold for further highlighting.
• Gehenna's Gold / Auric Armour Gold for edge highlights.
• Canoptek Alloy / Gehenna's Gold / Auric Armour Gold for extreme highlights (only done on the helmet so far, not pictured).

The amount to mix varies, and there's a lot of glazing, back & forth, remixing, adjusting highlights, etc, that's simply done on the fly. Knowing where to place highlights was simply a matter of angling the model against an overhead light and taking notes: the original airbrushing made this a trivial exercise. Bounce lights were likewise quite simply once metallics were glazed sufficiently in areas: the reflection could be seen immediately, and a higher value colour chosen to accentuate the effect. If I had to sum up the approach: make it slightly reflective, paint according to a light source, and exaggerate as much as possible because of scaling reasons. Also don't be afraid to layer, glaze, and mix metallic paints.

The white chest detail is only three paints: Mechanicus Standard Grey, Ulthuan Grey, Corax White. Mixed and glazed in that order. The Mechanicus Standard Grey serves as a recess shadow colour to outline the details, with Ulthuan Grey added to raise the brightness very slightly, and to shift ever so slightly into a blue hue. Corax White just raises the brightness more, but doesn't go quite as bright as something like White Scar. Going too close to a purer white would dull the metallic shine by comparison, and I want the White Scar for the brightest reflection points of gemstones. I've not decided how much better I could do on the white, but I think it will do. I purposefully stayed clear of Contrast paints over concern of using too much an obscuring some of the detail like I nearly did once before. There are of course other white details to be filled in with this scheme, but I need to paint some other models first I think.

Much yet to do on this model, but I'm enjoying this one quite a lot. With still a long time until it will be completed, with the armour done I can at least get an overall feel of how it will turn out. One hopes the Sanguinary Guard will be equally well done, whenever they are given a refresh.

-- silly painter

Kontrast Festival 2024

 I had the good fortune to attend Kontrast Festival 2024, and so decided to write down some notes to compare it if I have the chance to attend again in following years. I was supposed to attend last year, but technical issues prevented me from going. So here's the good, the bad, and the ugly as I saw it.

The Good

The quality on display was top notch, and there was plenty of vendors, entry to the venue was free, and there was also plenty around for children to do. It happened to coincide with a Polish day for children, so the general area was really nice for families. Painters seemed friendly enough, though I didn't say hello to any in person (I figured some of the more well known would have too much of that already and I didn't want to intrude upon what little free time they might otherwise have).

The Bad

Too many people is actually one of the problems. The display areas just couldn't cope with that many people constantly hovering around. If I were organising, I'd probably setup a one-way route to walk through: gives everyone a chance to see everything, encourages people to not stop and hog space for too long, etc. I simply couldn't see as much as I wanted not because I had places to be, but because it was utterly boring just standing there waiting for a gap to move forward into. These are miniatures, you need to be close to appreciate them, and a glimpse between people from across a room just isn't going to do it.

I went to one presentation (I won't say which) and it was...well, it was a bit boring, ran over time, and didn't really match what was said. Perhaps the other presentations were better, or I was simply expecting more. Either way, that one presentation was kind of useless from an information perspective - better to just watch the youtube video of it later. I'm not sure how to make such things better in person unless you have a chance to talk and socialise, neither of which was on the cards for me. The presentations could play a large part of the festival, but perhaps need to be looked at differently.

The Ugly

This is going to be very controversial. It's just my opinion, and I can entirely understand it not being popular, but it's generally good to have opinions that aren't just in an echo chamber. This is nothing to do with the festival itself, but rather a comment on the state of the community I guess: everything was just uninspiring, unoriginal, repeated.

The models on display were all painted to a very high technical level. So much so, that perhaps people got a bit lost in the technical details and forgot the bigger picture. While there were of course some standouts, about 90% of the models had exactly the same super-matt finish (possibly for photography reasons, but these were on display in person), very similar colour palettes, very similar blending, very similar styles. Maybe I was missing a lot from having difficulty in seeing what was on display to begin with, but I didn't notice any cel-shading for example, no cartoon looks, didn't see gothic horror, bold black & white sketches, or the whole range of artistic ability that 2D art has enjoyed for hundreds of years (if not more). While yes a 3D model actually limits a lot compared to canvas, I didn't notice a whole lot of experimentation (there was some, just not a lot). Maybe presentations can focus on that.

The other part I noticed was related to what was on sale. The vast majority of larger scale models were scantily clad sexy females. Neko Galaxy is a little more unique, but almost entirely female sculpts. I was actively looking for something male, and heroic (or at least not monstrous). There was a barbarian from Mindwork Studios (next to a scantily clad sexy female), and the frost giant looked almost right but the style of that studio isn't quite what I was after. Radio Miniatures had the best - but that was historical gaming type stuff that isn't for me (though I was still very tempted, the scale was too small for what I was looking for). I would've liked to see druids, forest archers, barbarians, wizards, etc, for the fantasy stuff, and more on the sci-fi, cyberpunk, etc, side of things. I can understand that when painting a model for a while then it helps to be a pleasing subject, but at some point it all just becomes the same and I would've liked variation to be explored more. 3D printing helps artistically here, but 3D printing still doesn't match the quality of the resin casts that I saw.

That's a Wrap

And that wraps up my impressions. I know some of it sounds a bit unfair to say the least, especially as I'm not anywhere near the top levels and haven't entered competitions myself, but for what I look for and how I want to progress as a miniature painter, that's my thoughts. Actually realising how much of it just looked the same over & over is going to help me going forwards as I start to find my own style and how I can focus on experimenting with my own works. These reflections are after all mostly for myself to look back upon later rather than a soap box to shout from.

-- silly painter.