Wet's in my palette?

A good while back [over a year ago even!] I finally decided to make my own wet palette. Some sponges, baking paper and a small seal-able tub. It couldn't have cost me more than £4 in bits.

So what do I think...? Honestly it has not revolutionised my way of painting as I'd been led to believe it would. I used it during the twin Imperial Knights and as I don't do a significant amount of blending anymore the primary benefit has just been keeping the paint 'alive'. Where I used a colour on the sheets it stayed wet for far longer than my existing palette. As I refuse to abandon my current palette I think the coating of paint absorbs a lot of moisture, in effect becoming a 'dry palette' making any paint put on it dry quicker than a clean one. So the wet palette has allowed me to come back to a blob of paint a few days later and still use it. However, I think I put too much water in so it has bled into the sponges which worries me as I can't tell if they've changed colour from the paint or it's actually mold - something I've been told commonly occurs if you don't use distilled water.

So, despite being marginally impressed I've actually switched to what I'll call 'micro-palettes'. You should find them easy to identify - they're Pringle's lids [clearly we get through a lot]. They're just handy to use, theoretically reusable too with a quick rinse under a hot tap and one less piece of single-use plastic going into land fill [for a while] or hopefully recycled but who knows nowadays?

I just find them really handy and particularly around Christmas I came away with half a dozen or so. No doubt I'll persevere with the wet palette for some things too, I certainly feel regret when dropper bottles squirt too much paint onto a Pringle palette and I know it'd be good for ages on the wet one. So, given my erratic and basic painting methods the wet palette gets a 3/5 for me. I'm thinking if I really wanted to paint a great model with some proper wet blending then I'd be more impressed but I no longer try to paint like that, so it's not as useful. For now it's an occasional help rather than a necessity.

Blood Bowl - Human Team Original Middenheim Marauders - Ogre Big Build - TO DONE!

Although trying to avoid buying new figures with the Middenheim Marauder almost complete I suddenly realised I could add an Ogre into the team for a bit more heft but more importantly some variety. I was also seduced by the 'relative' value of this guy.

He's £12, which on it's own could be viewed as expensive, but a Genestealer Locus is £17.50 and you get much less model for your buck and even less packaging [which might be a bad thing, I can't tell]. 

He's a pretty decent sized unit, only undermined a little bit because GW puts put so many big models nowadays. As I have a few of them, now he's made he looks a little diminutive next to them. That said put him next to one of my metal 2nd Edition Ogres and he's a beast - which does beg the question why I didn't just use one of them in my team - they're earmarked for their respective Chaos Teams

It's also worth noticing the detail on his gut shield. I could not understand what was going one and as you can see from the picture above and the actual 'Eavy Metal pack shots - that skull face is criminally overlooked. I might be taking a few more liberties with my colour scheme on such a big model - a few more metallics but we'll see how it evolves.

And so I get my Big Build Big Galactic Stamp of Approval - yay!

Blood Bowl Nurgle Team - Big Build - TO DONE!

My youngest got Christmas fever. I'm not sure if it was due to his diagnosis at the end of 2018 or just now he's 13 he's aware that giving gifts is something he wants to do personally and not just me buy and gift them to family members on his behalf. Anyway, despite the family ridicule of my hobby he wanted to get me something and had shared with the wife he wanted to explore painting it with me. So I was then tasked by the wife to choose something that I could get that he would then pay for.

I wanted to choose something ideal for the novice and thought Nurgle because if it looks all messy then that's the point! A Blood Bowl team also supplied a number of models, some of them pairs which I thought was great for me painting one and him painting another.

I made a little conversion on the Pestigors, snipped and rotated some of that branching spinal protrusion. What wwas furstrating was that I had a few metal Nurgle bits from a random ebay purchase - some tentacles and a belly. I had thought they could be used to help add more variety but forgot and then made them!

The only other issue was these came with slotta bases but don't have slots! That required cutting an old plastic gift card into 2mm strips and gluing them in place.

This is a WiP test for the bases. I'm going to have them trudging through a tar-like swamp with glossy black 3D texture paint, which I still have to add. The stick thing is from the Beason [witches] broom I got ages ago. Hopefully it shouldn't snap but they'll be painted bleached and stained where the tar touches them.

So I get my Big Build Galactic Stamp of Approval.

Now usually I would do the basing first but the technique above needs to be done last [I'm OK with that]. So I got them undercoated black and then a zenithal Red Oxide highlight. Although looking at these pictures part of me feels I should just go duo-chrome, but first of all it's red [not particularly Nurgley and my Middenheim Marauders are red too] and secondly how do I get my newb-painting son to achieve what is potentially possible from this starting point?

The plan is orange sponge-weathered armour plates, rusty trim, orange boots and gloves with filthy cream trousers and shirts. 

I'm also thinking of a mix of odd skins colours - sickly green, raw and bruised Caucasian, rotting greys and turquoise, maybe even a purple and pink? Can't decide if that's just going to confuse matters or if we just go off the Nurgle Rotters box at least he'll have something to look at and emulate.

There's no rush on these though, I've a hydraulic robot arm to help him build first, that he got for Christmas. It's all on sprues and has an 87 page construction manual! At least him helping to build these with me gave him some experience when building the robot arm, although it's a challeneg even for me so I'm currently doing most of the heavy lifting - hence why we need a robot arm!

Blackstone Fortress - Espern Locarno - TO DONE!

Now my character for  #blackstonefortress Espern Locarno [#paintingwarhammer]. I was compelled once again to add a few 40kaddict signature colour elements:

• yellow/black chevron wire to his 'recording device/Walkman'. 
• verdigris
• orange eye lenses

I also hadn't mentioned the script on his parchment bib, maybe it's like a Google map list of directions? I added the simplified Dark Angel Chapter symbol just to add further connection to my own forces. I wasn't particularly convinced about the orange lenses - so many times I do all this shading and highlighting only for me to question whether to add Tamiya Clear Orange X-26 and in this instance I know it'd be better for it and can't!

I decided the laurel wreath would be embroidered gold and I actually think it brings it all together. The cloak is less than I hoped but better than I feared half-way through. Perhaps a galactic star-field pattern might add some interference for the blends?

Having 'finished' the model I could not get past my dissatisfaction with the lenses. I saw a pretty good example and decided to just tweak them with a shadow under the pure white highlight. 

I'm much happier now - it's a bit more googly eyed but I think that's the point. The face and head should be a little exaggerated, I mean look at his hat! I've pretty much painted beyond the confines of the lens, into the surrounding frame but I'm happy.

Just a close-up of the base with the curious note that Locarno's force cane is positioned at exactly the intersection of one of the 'cracks' in the floor. Is it because the cracks move to meet the navigator or is Locarno so attuned to the empyrean he will find those power junctures naturally? Who knows? I just thought it was a nice little touch and gave me some direction in where the lines should be positioned.

Yeah, I wish his cloak looked more like this Big Galactic Stamp of Approval...

Blackstone Fortress - Beastmen - TO DONE!

I manage to finish the Chaos Beastmen for  #blackstonefortress [#paintingwarhammer]. There are definitely some compromises here. I could not fully reconcile the black armour in places. Ordinarily I'd have gloss varnished it, but as I've mentioned Liam is not a fan and ultimately they are his figures.

I was perhaps a little too uniform on the colouring, it might have been nice to mix in some different fabric colours, but that would have required decision making and from experience that causes delays. 

The bases came out soooo well. I added a little more black shading in places to smooth things out and make it more 'blackstone'

The GW tutorial does a 50:50 gloss varnish Lahmian Medium coat for a slightly shiny surface but again no gloss. I think it might have made things a little richer but even if I had been allowed to do it the others wouldn't so it would have looked a little odd.

The little trapped spy lens had a crude red OSL added. Again Tamiya Clear Red X-27 would have been the icing on the cake for me but I had to respect the 'client'.

The hooves and horns came out really well and something new. Alongside the bases this was a couple of new techniques and skills, so although compromises and less than optimal colour choices were made I think I pulled off some nifty new models and had a blast with it.

Still get a Galactic Stamp of Approval though!

Blackstone Fortress - Espern Locarno and Beastmen - bases

Now to follow the Games Workshop #blackstonefortress bases tutorial [#paintingwarhammer]. I have to say these were ridiculously easy to do, in fact the initial lines are potentially good enough in my book.

If you're new to the hobby and worried about basing this would be ideal. It looks cool, it's simple to do and the only real challenge is straight lines... however, this is ideal practice for brush control and improving fine motor skills. If you ensure you use thinned paint you can get the basic lines down and then a second coat near each junction takes it up a level. Drybrush the rubble and it's golden!

Or ramp it up to the next level with some blended slabs.

I think this was Incubi Darkness, thinned very much so your essentially glazing each section but extra coats at one end increases the gradient. Blotchy on places but I can live with that.

Additional lighter turquoise highlight on the junctions of the lines too.

And then a final lighter turquoise, followed by a dot of pure white on each junction and on the base edges [why not?].

Espern Locarno had his cloak done, it's not great unfortunately but again good enough. 

Details next, then varnishing.

Blackstone Fortress - Espern Locarno and Beastmen - next steps

Moving on with the #blackstonefortress models [#paintingwarhammer]. I added Incubi Darkness to all the clothing, painted the hooves brown and shaded them. All the metals got Typhus Corrosion

Hair and horns highlighted.

I added some further highlight to their faces. I used the first level highlight colour from my Red Planet basing paint-  mainly just to add definition and help the faces from becoming featureless red blobs.

Black armour plates got high contrast highlights. Ordinarily I'd be gloss varnishing these but Liam objects to gloss varnish and definitely when there are also highlights applied... seems my whole schtick is at odds with his 😜 still, interesting to have some restrictions, but I still got my orange grenades in...

Espern got further highlights, I'd originally intended him to be black skinned but a tanned flesh looked  little more in keeping with the whole scheme. I also committed to red shoes. I had a twisted idea that he'd be wearing sparkly 'ruby slippers' just like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Any time he needs directions he just clicks his heels and says 'no place like home'! 😂

The cloak isn't quite getting there but once again I shouldn't judge this until I;m finished. His ruby slippers got some sparkly stippled highlights.

Some minjor details next and bases...