Ongoing projects

Hello readers and fellow dads!

This place clearly needs to liven up, so here are some stuff I have been working on or is ongoing right now. This is not all of it, but it was what I had in my "decent photos" folder. Hope you like it.

This is the Dead Rider from Malifaux. A model I actually bought mostly to complete my Ressurrectionists diorama, in the slot where Izamu used to be. That model is a bit out of theme with the rest of the crew. It  was a total nightmare to assemble, and even though it looks cool enough, it really was a horrible kit  to work with. I recommend waiting for the new plastic kit if you fancy this model.

Here's a fun little piece I speedpainted just because one of my friends (and fellow Painter Dad) had brought it to the table so many times unpainted that I just couldn't resist. This is just brass/copper, the new oxide paint, drybrushing and then a simple stone base in greys. Love it though, and now Mattias won't have to keep pushing this down his prio queue. ;)

Speaking of Mattias, here is a present I got for keeping an eye on his pet. Chronus, the Ultramarines tank-boosting sergeant! Fun model to paint and it actually got me hungering for some more techmarine goodness. Maybe a Thunderfire Cannon is in my future. That seems to be a very broken kit unfortunately.

Also, my Infinity Aridna crew is shaping up! This was an early WIP and these are actually done now, painted to a very basic tabletop standard but still playable. I really can't say enough good things about the quality Corvus Belli are putting out. Fantastic. But I will wait a while until I paint this gang to a higher standard. More pics and models to come though, this was an old pic!

LinCon 2014

So all the regular Painter Dads had signed up for the Malifaux tournament at LinCon 2014. None of us had ever played anything more advanced than friendly games, so I was very excited to get to see some new crews, new players and fancy tricks. I really did not expect to finish anything better than last place, and 8th place out of 10 was the result. Very fair though, all the top players were quite experienced and we all learned a lot (and bought a lot of stuff in the convention stores, especially Narren, who are just awesome). I will make sure to play this tournament and maybe one more each year!

But I did win something, and not just any little thing, but Best painted crew. Very proud of my little guys, shown here on the display board I created for the convention. The sign I had ordered did not show up until the first weekday after the con though, so annoying. But still, I was the only one with a display board and that and my high saturation strong highlights style is probably what won the title.

So the pressure is on to create a new crew and new board for next year! Not making any promises, but Nicodem seems like a lot of fun... :)

Cheers,
Andreas

Dr. McMourning

Wow, this model was a treat to paint. I got it from a friend for my birthday which is almost a year ago now, but I haven't had the right inspiration until recently. I tried avoiding metallic paints - not that I'm going to call it NMM yet but it's a start. Have to get Sebastian and the rest of his crew now... not loving the new plastic minis though. We shall see!

Gremlins are fun!

Not only on the board but also to paint. I got to try out painting one of my brother's gremlins. Speedpainting from the start with some detailing at the end. Maybe 2-2,5 hours' work total. Loved it.

Sternguard veterans, rescued

So it's finally time. Here is the result of my eBay rescue mission - before and after. It was really a quite arduous task to get them all done, and I had to shift in other projects to keep me motivated. But that's just how I work when it comes to painting I guess.

Before

After

The photo is a bit fuzzy and it's too late in the evening for me to fiddle with the settings on my SLR, but I hope it gets the results through anyway.

Should I get the new plastic ones and make it a full ten man squad? Maybe next year... :)

Tyranid Warrior Prime from Hydracast

Hey folks!

My friend Fredrik really wanted this cool custom cast of a Warrior Prime and to push him over the edge and actually buy it ($45) I promised to paint it up. The Russian guy who makes them is really talented and it was a joy to assemble. Almost non-existent flash and good joints. Anyway, here is the result from a few different angles. I am still struggling with the photography (much too saturated and not sharp enough) but at least it's not iPhone pics.

So that's it - a really good sculpt as I said. Support this guy and go buy some of his stuff! :)

Op Sternguard rescue, part 3

Well, it's been a while! I will not whine about not having time... the only excuse is that I find these guys a bit tedious to paint up. Or maybe I'm just sick of Ultramarines. Who knows. The result is ok though! Here are the first three, all done.

Op Sternguard rescue, part 2

Finally done with the cleaning phase. It took some tedious scraping with a fine needle to get all the brown goop out of the armor recesses. I discovered some blue primer in the very bottom of the layers, interesting! Anyways, the next step is basing after the greenstuff and superglue has completely set. I will leave some of the arms off as you see in the picture, to be able to paint the chests properly. Two arm fittings are the worst, but I will help it along by doing some greenstuff pre-fitting at this stage. That will make it so much easier to just pop the arms in place after the parts have been painted.

Operation Sternguard rescue

It's time again. I know I know, I promised myself not to buy any more second hand models on eBay. It's just not worth it with all the cleaning and the horrible horrible epoxy glue and ruined bits. But this had to be an exception. Since GW rolled out new models for the Sternguard Veterans, I knew I wanted a set of the old ones before they become hopelessly hard to get hold of. And I knew I wanted the metal ones, so there was at least a shimmer of hope of getting them clean. After only a couple of days of browsing the Swedish version of eBay, Tradera, I found these beauties for the bargain price of $14 plus shipping.

Mmmm that's a gorgeous paint job right there. I have to admire the brush control here. How in the name of Jebus himself did this guy manage to get such a thick coat of paint on so neatly? I also like the ambitions. "Three colours to play in the tournament? Ok, you got it! Blue-black-red-DONE."

Nevermind though, I'm sure he (or she) is very nice IRL. And I love Crimson Fists, I wish I had done my army in their theme. Now, on to my project. Time to see what these suckers have under their coat(s) of paint.

Emperor, I am melting!

After the first dunk in the acetone free nail polish remover (thank you, darling!) he is looking very surprised and a bit soggy. The top coat basically falls off, and the black plastic in the slotta base melts and gets stuck to the skin of my fingers. A hot tip is to break off all plastic parts if you can.

You used WHAT as a primer?

This is after a good scrubbing with an old toothbrush. That brown stuff is really awful and just won't come off. It's not regular primer because it sits quite thick in places. Two or three dunks in the bath of horror later, and they look like this:

Almost there now.

Good thing that these guys use regular space marine backpacks, because the original ones are ruined...

Stay tuned for part two - reassembly and priming!

Tau Cadre Fireblade

A model I actually bought just because wanted to paint it. I don't even own the Tau codex (yet). I'm glad I did though, the new plastic single characters from GW are really fantastic quality and makes me feel even more hesitant when it comes to Finecast.

Tidy base rims

If you are like me then your base rims look quite messy after painting the base. Drybrushing, spilling etc leaves a lot of paint marks. I had problems getting the right shine when painting the rim black - it didn't look like a factory fresh plastic base. Then I found an old paint pot I had discarded because of its strange shine: Undercoat Black. And it works perfectly!

Paint bottles, part 2

I have been very happy with the switch to bottles, but some of them have pretty bad clogging. So I did what I always do - browsed eBay! These nail polish mixing balls are a top tip for solving that little issue. Just make sure they are smaller than the diameter of the bottlenecks.

The Redchapel gang, extended

So I promised one of our readers to do a post with my entire Malifaux crew as soon as I was done with the last one. That took a whole lot more time than expected, but that is life when there is a new baby in the house. Here they are, in no particular order, bathing in the evening sunlight!

Seamus, avatar of dread

Seamus the mad hatter

Madame Sybelle

Rotten belle #1

Copycat killer

The hanged #1

Rotten belle #2

The hanged #2

Rotten belle #3

Grave spirit

The whole gang assembled!

The Dreamer and Friends

Hi

I'm a new contributor to this blog, and it feels really nice to be able to post my finished The Dreamer crew as a first entry.

I hope you like it!

The Dreamer and his nightmares

How to: dropper bottles

This might strike you as a somewhat obvious tutorial, but maybe I can inspire you to get it done even if you have thought of it yourself. Buy bottles off eBay. I bought these, because they take slightly more paint than a standard GW pot (so I can put one full and one half empty in the same bottle). Also, the diameter of this bottle fits my paint rack.

Water down and stir your paint thoroughly. Use clean water and make sure you stir up the often dried up paint in the bottom of the pot.

Pour paint into bottle carefully. Use a funnel if you have one small enough. But with a steady hand you can avoid having to clean a funnel, it is not very hard to pour since it is thick and slow.

Clean up any paint that got on the sides of the bottle and put on the dropper top and cap, then remove the label from the old pot. This should be very easy, it just comes right off. Don't touch the sticky part if you can avoid it.

Fasten the label on the bottle as high up as you can, so it is not obscured when sitting in a paint rack.

Profit!

A new format

Dear readers,

You may or may not have noticed a small but very significant change in the title. To make this blog more interesting, more active and with even higher quality content, it will from now on be written jointly by several dads. A very warm welcome to Stefan and Joakim - I know they can beat me at painting but I think I can beat them in other areas. ;-)

The focus will be even more narrow now with almost exclusively painting and hobby oriented content. We hope this will make the blog more useful to you.

Watch this space for tutorials in the future!

- Andreas

PS. All of Stefan's content has been merged into this blog, so be sure to browse the archive and tags!

The crew, assembled

Let me introduce you to Seamus the Mad Hatter and his gang of undead ladies of the night. I finally finished the Grave Spirit totem (in front), completing a kind of sucky but playable crew. I promised myself not to buy any new models until I finished these ones, so now I am off to the shops! ;-)

Anyways, hope you like them. Criticism and suggestions is as always welcome in the comments.

Essentials

I just have to tell you about a couple of products I have grown to love over the last few months. They are by no means obligatory for successful miniature painting, but they sure do make life a whole lot easier.

From left to right:

• Tamiya Clear Red (X-27). This is a glossy acrylic paint that flows very nicely from the brush and looks just like fresh blood when it dries. Perfect for splattering on a sword or dripping from a wound!
• Citadel Lahman Medium. Mix in a drop of any acrylic colour in this stuff and you get a glaze of that colour. Extremely handy for when your washes doesn't quite match up with the basecoat and layers you are working on.
• Vallejo Matt Varnish. Wow. Take a big brush and paint this over your mini once it's done, and you have a piece that will not chip or wear down when gaming and transporting it.
• Vallejo Surface Primer. Get rid of your expensive primer spray cans! Well, if you don't own an airbrush, keep them. But this stuff is really good since it can be painted on with a brush. I'm guessing here but I think you use 1/10th of the primer compared to spraying with spray cans. Also, it does not leave streaks on the model when painted on.
• Vallejo Gloss Varnish. Simply perfect anytime you want a wet look. Gore, slime, water, wet mud, etc. Also protects the paint underneath really well of course.

State of painting

So what's up, you say? Well I'll tell you!

The Malifaux project is churning along nicely and I now have three models painted from my crew of seven. More on that further down. In the hobby gear department I purchased a paint rack from the good polish people at HobbyZone. Great quality and construction, at a reasonable price. I could almost fit all my paints in it... so here is my current painting setup:

The big thing about this setup is that I can take it out, paint, and then stow the whole thing away. I am blessed with a very understanding and patient wife, but still, the place has to look nice.

Below is my Copycat Killer totem, a fun little fellow who is quite high up in my want-to-paint queue at the moment.

And next to him you can see another new purchase - grey primer in a bottle. This stuff can either be airbrushed on or painted on with a brush. I did the latter on the Copycat Killer, and I think the results are stunning. The paint goes in everywhere and does not leave any streaks that I could see. So if I'm just going to prime one little model, I will not waste spray can primer on it anymore. Love it!

The next pic is my current WIP gang, excluding the Copycat Killer. The Big Mek is also something I really look forward to painting, but I promised myself to finish the boyz before painting another ork unit. So he will have to wait. I took a break from the orks and now I am actually starting to feel quite inspired to paint them. That's a good thing!

Madame Sybelle was in the WIP shot above, but by the time I started writing text to these pictures I had actually finished her. So here is a group shot of the painted half of the Redchapel gang. I have stopped using spray varnish to protect minis since it usually leaves a nasty frosting. These are instead varnished with vallejo matte varnish on dropper bottle, a product I can't believe I could work without. It dries totally clear and matte, without disturbing the colours at all.

Seamus is in the house!

So I finished my first Malifaux model. Here he is! Now I'm moving on to the rest of his crew.