lederhosen

I know, four posts in one week!

I got together with some of my fellow gamers last weekend and we spent a couple of afternoons painting up our Pathfinder figures. It's been a while since I did any painting, so I'm a bit rusty; we had to throw out a lot of paints/glues/etc. Some pics of mine:

This is Nura, freshly undercoated. You can read more of her adventures here. In-game Nura has just hit level 3 and is pretty much broke, having blown most of her money buying spells from kobolds, but this version has a bigger wardrobe budget.

I picked this figure mostly because the clothes were a bit more interesting than what I normally see on female caster figures, which is either "generic robes" or "as little as possible". Perhaps not the most practical for tromping around dungeons, but Nura has magical cleaning spells and strong friends to do the heavy lifting.

Figure cleaned up and undercoated:



Base colours on:



(Looking back at the photo on the Reaper catalogue, apart from being consumed with envy for anybody who can paint that sort of detail on a 30mm figure, I note that I've interpreted her clothes a bit differently, as far as which bits are outer vs under layers etc. Oh well.)

Just after inking her skin:



seriously, the main thing I have learned in my time painting figures is INK ALL THE THINGS THEN INK THEM SOME MORE. I have no patience for painstaking highlighting; the right ink can really bring out details very quickly. At least, as long as the sculptor has done a good job in the first place; if the shape is bad, ink will emphasise that too.

Nura's dress, after highlighting/drybrushing:



...okay, so I'm not completely against highlighting, there's a time and a place for it, and the drape-y dress was a big part of why I bought this figure in the first place so it makes sense to put in some effort here.

The violet-magenta contrast is a bit stronger than I'd normally do for highlighting, but in this case I figure she's wearing something like shot silk. I realised halfway through painting that I didn't have any light blues to highlight the blue portion, so instead I mixed one of the darker ones with yellow for the green highlight you can see here; again, call it shot silk or mageweave or whatever.

Front-on, mostly finished:


And after doing the eyes. Usually I'd ink, then paint the sclera white, then dot the pupils with a felt-tip; this is really fiddly and often requires doing over and over. This time around, the ink gave enough contrast between her eyes and the shaded surrounds that I was able to skip the middle step and go straight to the dotting.



There are a few bits I want to touch up before I varnish, but I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming along so far.

My father-in-law got a new camera and gave us his old one, so at last I have something with a decent macro mode. I've created a new Flickr account (since I got locked out of the old one) and have posted up some pics of gaming miniatures.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68417429@N02/

Unfortunately many of them are still blurry in close-up (not the camera's fault - more to do with lighting and absence of tripod + my shaky hands). But some turned out better than I'd expected.

( Squigs, dryads, Genestealers, and Sir Stephen )

After several rounds of "that would look lovely *paint paint paint* NO IT'S RUBBISH" I finally seem to have hit on a colour scheme for my Tyranids. Posting this mostly for my own benefit:

( So I can remember how to replicate it. )

*In theory, I'd like to actually use these guys for a game of 40K one day. In practice, it takes longer for me to assemble a small portion of a 40K army than it does for Games Workshop to put out a new edition of the rules. By the time I have either my Tyranids or my Raven Guard anywhere near complete, it'll probably be Warhammer 45K or so.

**Canonically, the 'nids have both. I like this idea, so I emphasise it by making the two look very different - chitin for the exoskeleton, more of a bone look for the endo-.

I like this figure.

Edit: If link doesn't work properly, just scroll down to the search box on the bottom left and enter 'hamster'.

Painted up a squad of 40K Marine scouts (just awaiting some finishing touches). Notes to self:

- Yes, Raven Guard have a nice simple colour scheme that simplifies painting, but this is balanced out by the fact that GW don't make transfers for them. After looking at some painting tips, I may be able to manage a stylised raven. (And I only need to do it for two of the scouts, since the rest have cloaks covering their shoulder guards... once I get on to the other Marines, it'll be a different story.)

- Speaking of cloaks, these worked pretty well if I say so myself. I wanted a camo pattern, but it needed to fit in with the chapter's colour scheme - Marines tend to be proud of their colours, and while the Raven Guard are more enthusiastic about stealth than most of their brethren, I can't see them wearing bright desert camo. Also, it needed to be simple enough that I could paint it quickly, and keep it consistent. What I ended up with: black base coat, then vertically-oriented diamonds of Model Color's Dark Grey, then randomly-oriented short lines of London Grey (slightly lighter grey, still fairly dark). End result is a dappled shadowy look that should fit in most settings; I then highlighted the most prominent bits with more of the Dark Grey, and brushed on brown 'mud' around the edges.

- Bases: Filler sanded and painted in burnt umber and then brushed with a lighter brown, so it could be seen as either mud or rock. Scenic grass added (the tall stuff), which made them look like they were skulking and had the unintended benefit of concealing the bits on the legs where I'd skimped on detail.

- Missile launcher: Painted in the same camo colours (but not the same pattern - here I just went for random blotches). I wanted this to look like it'd been banged around and dragged through bushes etc, so I brushed over the more prominent bits with metal for that 'paint scraped off' look.

- Faces: Always fiddly, these, and when I'm doing a squad of five I don't want to spend forever trying to get the details right. The fluff tells me that the Raven Guard Marines get paler and paler as they age; the Scouts are among the youngest, but I still thought they should be a bit paler then usual. So I went with Game Colour 'Elfic Flesh' (the lightest flesh paint I have - practically an off-white) and then brushed over them with Reaper Flesh Wash. This came out about right (Rey's comment on seeing them was "they're a bit too pale", which was just what I was aiming for ;-) and I just went over the eyes with Elfic again before dotting them with a smidgin of black.

The end result amused me; the ones on the box just have standard Space Marine faces, and one of mine has a similar 'hardened soldier' look. But for some reason, one of the others is wearing an expression that can only be described as "OH MY GOD IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!"

- Night-vision goggles. I know that real night-vision goggles do not glow on the front side (and if they did, they'd make their users stand out like a beacon) but dammit, it looks cool. Horrendous light yellow-green, followed up with green ink. Same effect for the back end of their rifle scopes, although this is barely visible once they're put together; for the front of the scopes, I just used the same light grey/black wash that worked so nicely for the telescope on my cottage.

Poor design decisions:

"The vulnerability [in the new Boeing Dreamliner] comes from having the plane's in-flight internet access computer system connected to the plane's flight-safety, control and navigation network."

Had a quiet weekend at home. Did not go anywhere, except to do a small amount of shopping. Did not do anything, other than a couple of loads of washing. Spent the rest of the weekend reading and painting a Tyranid.

Painting notes: chitin = gloss black base, painted over with 3:1 chaos black/red metallic, then highlighted with a 1:1 mix and drybrushed with unmixed red metallic. Worked out rather nicely - that little bit of metallic makes it look something like a glossy beetle shell.

Fleshy bits: deep sea blue, highlighted with violet (looked nice), then highlighted again with blue-violet* and suddenly it looked awful. Cringed at the thought of repainting the whole thing, then fell back on 'slather the whole thing with Chestnut Ink'. And suddenly it looked good again.

Slimy bits to cover up some gribbly putty work: Emerald Green ink. Also used for the saliva.

...I really need to get a camera with a macro zoom. I'm fairly pleased with this one - it looks ferocious and yet pretty.

Meanwhile, bloody hot here - painting under lights didn't help either. I had a fan on, but between the heat and the fan it makes the paint dry very quickly on the brush, and also the fan blows tiny bits of fluff everywhere.

*Which is for some reason less blue than 'violet' is.

It's that time again... the time when I upload a bunch of photos and clear out the camera. Some cute dog pictures and a lot of modelling ones (not the sort where I take my clothes off, the sort where I build things out of foamcore).

( Cut for lots of photos. )

Have been working on a terrain piece for our D&D game: a stretch of river. So far, the process goes like this:

( Aargh! )

sarin_girl came over on Thursday night with food and her Fearsome Camera, and she and reynardo took some photos of the collection. Yay! The figures came out a little dark - I think we need to use a darker background next time - but this is much better than the pics I got before.

( Some of the highlights, cut for images: )

Many more, with some commentary, up on my Flickr page where the above are hosted. The photos and commentary are in reverse order, because I'm incompetent :-)

Another year, another Windows vulnerability, and quite a nasty one by the look of it; might want to check your security settings, if you haven't already.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on November 30, but Tropical Storm Zeta is still hanging in there. The NOAA has a list of the many records broken by this year's hurricane season.

velvetink has some photos of the smoke from the recent bushfires to the north. It was Sydney's hottest New Year's Day on record (45C/113F, and 47C elsewhere in NSW; hotter for the firefighters, of course).

Dog-Or got me a DVD of Peter Gabriel's music videos for Christmas. Such a thoughtful doggie! Still waiting on a present I ordered for somebody else on October 31; if it doesn't arrive this week, time to chase the company again.

Bought myself a little electric drill, which has made the whole pinning-models process much easier - a lot faster than using a pin vise, and more importantly more control. What am I saying? I'm an instant-gratification child and the speed's what really makes me happy, but the control is also good. I'm still working on my giant eagle, which broke off its base under its own weight (lovely pose, shoddy engineering). My Cunning Plan is that if I angle it into a turn, I can have half of its tail scraping the ground (rather than just the very tip) and get three pins into it between the tailfeathers rather than just one, but I'm still not sure that'll be enough to hold it. Any modellers got suggestions here?